Dana White reveals Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor more popular than Anthony Joshua with UK audience
The fight is yet to sell out but its pay-per-view buys are breaking various records
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Your support makes all the difference.With the days ticking down until Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor, the fight week festivities are well underway in Las Vegas.
Saturday’s fight has long been expected to break all viewership and revenue records and, according to UFC president Dana White, it is on track do exactly that.
Speaking on Tuesday at a media scrum at the UFC’s Training Centre in Las Vegas, Nevada, White spoke about his excitement to be involved in the event and just how far the distribution on the fight will reach come fight night.
“It’s crazy and it’s fun to be a part of something this big and so special,” White said.
“This thing is going to break every record there’s ever been in terms of combat sports and there’s already a ton that it has. It will be the most distributed fight in the history of fighting.
“Over 200 countries will have this fight and over a billion homes can get it if they have some sort of television. If you have WIFI I don’t care where you are—if you’re on the moon you can get this fight. It’s big.”
White said that the big different between this fight on Saturday and the distribution of the Mayweather vs Pacquiao in 2015 are the digital capabilities that the UFC are brining to the table as co-promoters.
He’s expecting that this advantage is going to be what pushes this fight into record breaking territory.
“Boxing has never done digital before,” White said.
“Our digital buys are off the charts and what that means is you can go on UFC.tv and you can buy the fight. The digital pre-buys are the best we’ve ever had by far. What does that mean? I don’t know, they’ve never done it, but they do pretty damn well for the UFC so you got to imagine that for this fight it’s going to be off the chart."
The UFC President was asked outright whether the Mayweather vs Pacquiao pay-per-view buys were going to be surpassed and White responded by saying that 3 million buys would be the minimum number they would expect.
White then added that the pre-buys in the UK have already surpassed the pay-per-view record set by Anthony Joshua vs Wladimir Klitschko earlier this year.
“We’re tracking ahead of Mayweather and Pacquiao,” White said.
“This thing is tracking. They’re feeling like that with the pre-buys right now, we’re going to break the record in England, in the UK, just on the pre-buys alone—1.1 million.”
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