UFC 263 featured a pair of title fights and the return of Nate Diaz and the result was approximately 600,000 pay-per-view buys for the card.
According to the Sports Business Journal, the card headlined by middleweight champion Israel Adesanya as he defended his title against Marvin Vettori was another success for the UFC with around 500,000 of those buys coming domestically through ESPN+.
While he obviously had support with Diaz facing off with Leon Edwards and the flyweight title fight between Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno, Adesanya has continued to prove he’s becoming a consistent draw for the UFC whenever he competes.
Adesanya has consistently broken 500,000 pay-per-view buys for his past three appearances including his latest performance against Vettori at UFC 263.
In his two other recent fights, Adesanya headlined UFC 259 alongside light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz with that card selling approximately 800,000 pay-per-view buys worldwide. Prior to that, Adesanya served as the main event with his dominant win over Paulo Costa with that event selling around 700,000 buys worldwide.
Overall, Adesanya’s last three cards have to be seen as an unmitigated success for the UFC as the promotion continues to find new stars to help sell pay-per-views in the ESPN+ era.
This was also a jump up from the previous event at UFC 262, which sold around 300,000 pay-per-view buys domestically in May.
As successful as this latest card was on pay-per-view, it’s likely UFC 263 will be dwarfed by the next major event taking place when Conor McGregor returns for a trilogy against Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 on July 10.
The previous fight between McGregor and Poirier sold approximately 1.6 million buys worldwide with around 1.2 million domestically, which made that card one of the most successful events in UFC history.
