UFC Issues Refunds For Mayweather vs. McGregor Streaming Issues

The UFC has ultimately decided to refund fans’ money who had trouble streaming Saturday’s Mayweather vs. McGregor pay-per-view event on their online service UFC Fight Pass.

Countless customers who purchased the event on the UFC’s website UFC.tv experienced issues with viewing the stream that were expected to be in conjunction with the sheer volume of the event, but many reported were initially met with responses proclaiming refunds would not be issued even though customer service had no immediate fix for the problems.

Some were eventually able to get access to the card towards the end of the co-main event, some were to able to access the pay-per-view until the middle of the main event, and others still were unable to view the card at all.

Because of this sheer discrepancy in offering a wide range of outcomes for an event that was billed as the biggest combat sporting event of all time and should have therefore proportionately delivered like it, the UFC and its President Dana White issued a statement on Twitter confirming they would indeed issue refunds for customers who experienced issues:

Statement from @DanaWhite: pic.twitter.com/ErvWRnjnVe

— UFC (@ufc) August 29, 2017

White’s statement reiterated his support for the fans that he focused on in a prior response, and based on the issues with their streaming service NeuLion, the polarizing UFC exec said the company had to take care of fans ‘as usual’ and had already started processing the refunds:

“We always try to put on the biggest and most exciting fights. We want our fans to have the best experience when watching our events. Unfortunately, we didn’t deliver the way we wanted on Saturday because of NeuLion’s technical issues on UFC.tv. As usual, we always take care of our fans and we will fix this. We have started processing refunds immediately for anyone who could not access the fight after purchase.”

SHOWTIME Sports also had a class-action lawsuit filed against them for similar problems, so the UFC may have wanted to circumvent any such legal action and admit where they went wrong.

Either way, those who missed out on Mayweather vs. McGregor, the long-anticipated and super-hyped boxing match that “Money” won by 10th-round TKO, will be getting their money back soon from the UFC.

We’ll just have to wait and see how that affects the overall buyrate and revenue number, which White said was on track to easily pass the previous record of 4.6 million buys.