It was the year of Conor McGregor. From January until December whatever McGregor did, people watched.
While we do not have an (unofficial) official PPV buy rate for December’s UFC 194, it’s expected to have cleared 1 million buys and the record gate ($10.1M) is due in large part to McGregor’s fans who travel to Vegas to watch his fights.
The year started off on cable TV for McGregor as he was the featured fight against Dennis Siver in Boston. It was one of the first UFC Fight Night’s which featured its own Embedded series. The Sunday, January 18th event which occurred on Championship Sunday in the NFL drew over 2.7 million viewers with a peak viewers of over 3.1 million. It exceeded expectations and is the biggest Fight Night ratings on the network.
The spring saw an extended Embedded series in which the cameras followed McGregor and Jose Aldo as they flew all over the world on an extended media tour to promote their fight which was to take place at UFC 189.
Even though Aldo was scratched due to an injury, McGregor’s persona, promotion and fan base made the event the biggest gate for an MMA event in Nevada at that time. While initial reports were bullish on the PPV buys, the event drew 825,000 buys. It was a considerable improvement over the previous July’s UFC event. UFC 175 topped out at 545,000 PPV buys.
McGregor was chosen as one of the coaches for The Ultimate Fighter opposite Urijah Faber. His presence on the show hoped to boost lagging ratings for the franchise. While the show did not produce a huge ratings increase, it was the best TUF series in terms of ratings, since the Rousey-Tate season.
Prior to his fight with Jose Aldo, McGregor secured sponsorships with BSN, Fanatics Authentics in addition to his Monster Energy Drink and Reebok. Although McGregor has not reached Ronda Rousey mainstream status, his quick KO of Jose Aldo helped him with the ascension. It is reported that he has been offered a role in Vin Diesel’s “XXX” sequel.
With his success, we could see McGregor looking for bigger and better things (i.e., a bigger piece of the financial pie). Lorenzo Fertitta told ESPN that McGregor will be the first in the UFC to earn $100 million.
When, and what weight division will McGregor fight next? We shall see. One might conclude that McGregor fights at UFC 200 in July and then in December. But will he have a fight prior to July’s massive event?
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