UFC 91’s PPV numbers have been verified at 920,000. This number doesn’t take into account all the late purchases, so the number will end up hovering either just under or just over one million buys when those late buys are tabulated.
UFC 92 is at one million buys and will likely end up slightly over.
Those numbers are high, but the most shocking of all is UFC 93, which is trending right around 320,000 buys for the Rich Franklin vs. Dan Henderson fight. Dave Meltzer has a good explanation in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer:
To put that into perspective, I don’t think even the most optimistic UFC fan would have thought UFC 93, sandwiched between two major shows, and airing in the afternoon live, would have been anywhere in the realm of Royal Rumble numbers, and the numbers may end up quite close. The number being so high indicates UFC 91 did garner a ton of new fans that are continuing to buy PPVs.
It’s also another indication of losses not hurting drawing power as much as people would think since Franklin was obliterated twice by Anderson Silva, and Henderson lost twice when challenging for the title, yet both meant as much if not more as PPV headliners than they’ve ever met when you factor in the tape delay aspect. Dana White was privately talking about it blowing away all the other U.K. show numbers and the final number shocking him.
Early in-house estimates from Zuffa for UFC 94 have the show doing 1.3 million buys.
A lot of credit for the numbers being so high is being attributed to Brock Lesnar, even though he wasn’t fighting on the shows. The belief is that Lesnar drew a whole new subset of fans who had never really purchased MMA on pay per view before, and since his November fight they’ve stuck around and continued to purchase the shows.
