Not Only Did McGregor Feel The Pain At UFC 257, So Did Fight Fans Who Paid $70 For Choppy Live Stream
By Cassandra Cousineau for LVSportsBiz.com
If you shelled out the $69.99 to watch UFC 257 on the ESPN+ and Conor McGregor’s first fight in more than a year and you missed half of the main card, you weren’t alone.
For a good chunk of the UFC fight event in Abu Dhabi, paying customers were left watching error messages spinning instead of the broadcast they were expecting. To make matters worse, the card was a pay-per-view event on the exclusive ESPN streaming channel.
Many fight fans took to social media to express frustration over the issue. When asked, UFC President Dana White said, “It was mostly on the West Coast.”
White explained the target of his ire at the 3:00 mark during his post fight press conference.
ARVE Error: Invalid URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi5QIo0LG18 in urlAs of 11 p.m. ET on Saturday night, there were upwards of 20,000 tweets from exasperated fans talking about the ESPN+ outage. Even Texans star defensive end JJ Watt asked for his money back.
Even UFC fighters chimed in on the issue, which appeared to affect several broadcasts on ESPN+ and came after White issued the edict he’d crack down on illegal streams of UFC 257.
ESPN+ Help issued a statement close to 90 minutes into the pay-per-view, informing buyers the issue was being addressed.
Even local Las Vegas radio and sports personality Chet Buchanan, the in-arena entertainment emcee for the UNLV basketball team and the WNBA Las Vegas Aces, weighed in on Twitter to express his frustration.
