Coming off the hugely successful UFC 214, which pulled in a reported 850,000 buys, the UFC’s two most recent pay-per-views have garnered minimal interest, thus the underwhelming buyrate estimations.
Last Saturday’s UFC 216, which featured Tony Ferguson’s triangle choke of Kevin Lee, as well as Demetrious Johnson’s outrageous suplex-to-armbar finish of Ray Borg, had a live gate of about $678,000, which MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer said was “the lowest gate in more than a decade.” In terms of PPV buys, Meltzer wrote in his Wrestling Observer newsletter that, “very early indicators look up about 20 percent from last month, but that was a rock bottom 100,000 buy show.