Everyone expected Pay-Per-View demand for Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor to be high. Everyone was warned to order early. But there were still problems.
MMAWeekly.com confirmed on Saturday night that UFC Fight Pass, Showtime, and several other provider’s customers were having issues either logging in our their PPV feeds crashing.
Due to overwhelming traffic you may be experiencing log in issues. This will be resolved shortly.
— UFC Fight Pass (@UFCFightPass) August 27, 2017
Though all parties continued to work fast and furious to get the issue straightened out, word from inside the arena is that the main event was being delayed as long as possible to give providers as much time as possible to straighten out their technical issues.
Mayweather vs. McGregor was expected to surpass Mayweather vs. Pacquiao in PPV buys. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao sold 4.6 million PPV buys, but Mayweather vs. McGregor was believed to have the capability to reach 5 million buys.
It’s unclear how far-reaching the technical issues were and how much they might affect the overall purchases of the event, but it was serious enough for Showtime to send out the following statement:
“Due to high demand, we have reports of scattered outages from various cable and satellite providers and the online offering. We will delay the start of the main event slightly to allow for systems to get on track. We do not expect a lengthy delay.”
