Getty Image
If you wanted to watch the infinitely-hyped fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor back in August, you had a couple of options. The first was to drop $99.99 (or $89.99 if you’re a heathen who watches things in SD) to purchase the PPV. The second was to spend the hours before the main event trawling the internet in search of a link that would lead you to a website riddled with pop-up ads and featuring a chatroom with conversations being conducted entirely in Russian in the hopes the choppy 360p feed wouldn’t cut off in the middle of the first round.
Unfortunately, plenty of people who picked the first option were forced to pivot to the second when multiple streaming platforms crashed, which ultimately resulted in the fight being delayed. The UFC offered to refund people who had trouble watching the fight, while Showtime was immediately hit with a class-action lawsuit.
Despite the technical difficulties, Dana White claimed the fight had shattered the PPV record of 4.6 million buys that was set during Mayweather vs. Pacquiao in 2015, but some experts were a bit more bearish.
It took a while for the official numbers to get released, but it turns out those experts’ estimates were pretty spot on. CBS Sports writer Brian Campbell took to Twitter on Thursday and reported Showtime had officially put the tally of PPV buys at 4.3 million.
.@SHOsports confirms final #MayweatherMcGregor pay-per-view numbers from August to be 4.3 million buys, 2nd all-time behind 2015 #MayPac (4.6M)
— Brian Campbell (@BCampbell) December 14, 2017
It is worthing noting digital security firm Irdeto said an estimated 3 million people watched the fight illegally. When you consider the sheer number of streaming options that consumers currently have to pick from compared to a couple of years ago, it’s likely Mayweather vs. McGregor is actually the most-watched fight in the history of the sport, but I guess that’s why God invented asterisks.