How many social media followers did Conor McGregor gain even after defeat at UFC 257?
Conor McGregor won big in terms of new social media followers despite his loss at UFC 257. Nielson Sports, the analytical specialists working with all sporting leagues, produced a report that detailed the social media engagements and statistics generated due to UFC 257. According to the report, Conor McGregor amassed 439,000 new followers across all social media platforms.
Conor McGregor now has 39.1 million Instagram followers and 8.5 million followers on Twitter. Moreover, his presence at UFC 257 also brought along a large number of PPV buys. In fact, UFC 257 attracted the second-most PPV buys in history, with 1.2 million buys within the USA and an additional 400,000 international buys.
With this, Conor McGregor is now responsible for all 5 of the UFC's best-selling events. Right at the top is UFC 229 (Khabib vs McGregor) with 2.4 million PPV buys, followed by UFC 257 (Poirier vs McGregor 2) with 1.6 million PPV buys, UFC 202 (Diaz vs McGregor 2) with 1.6 million PPV buys, UFC 246 (McGregor vs Cerrone) with 1.35 million PPV buys, and UFC 196 (McGregor vs Diaz) with 1.3 million PPV buys.
Even though Conor McGregor lost to Dustin Poirier, the statistics report shows that he remained the central figure of conversation around UFC 257. The narrative about the Irishman's loss became a bigger headline than the narrative depicting Dustin Poirier's win.
However, this was not the most successful social media jump for Conor McGregor. As compared to his last appearance in UFC 246 in Jan 2020, the follower jump for Conor McGregor was cut short by more than half this time around. According to Nielsen Sports, Conor McGregor's followers jumped by 1.4 million across all social media platforms when he faced Donald Cerrone at UFC 246. In that fight, Conor McGregor beat 'Cowboy' Cerrone via TKO in just 40 seconds.
Did Dustin Poirier also win big like Conor McGregor on social media?
Conor McGregor has said many times that he is the money fight in the UFC. And true enough, any fighter that faces him receives a larger payday than usual. The same is also noted in social media trends.
When 'Cowboy' Donald Cerrone fought Conor McGregor, his followers across social media platforms grew by 341,000. Thus, after becoming the first person to TKO Conor McGregor inside the Octagon, Dustin Poirier saw a similar jump in followers.
'El Diamante' social media accounts saw the addition of 520,000 new followers. This number even beats the number of Conor McGregor's new fans.
Dustin Poirier's Instagram account now boasts of 2.5 million followers, while his Twitter account has 497.3 thousand followers.