Early UFC 226 pay-per-view estimates are under 400,000 buys

You said that Conor and Ronda appealed to "cooler than WWE" audience.
I say they appealed to "these are cool guys, everyone's talking about them, I'll follow their deeds" audience.

I was referring to the current 20-somethings & gave direct examples of why they appealed to them.
 
I understand the joke you were making but it didnt quite fit the context of the thread. Im sorry for calling you a spud youre a good bloke

But without the gayness!

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Lol, no wonder they're giving Brocock a title shot.

in 5-10 years no one will remember the ufc
Let's not get carried away.
For starters, I don't see any white guys currently under 25 ever giving a fuck about boxing.
As far as combat sports go, MMA, hence the UFC, is supposed to be the "most alive" for the foreseeable decades.
But, yeah, perhaps not as big as someone would've predicted in 2010. Not even close.
 
65$ for one event is just too expensive

thats half a year of netflix. people will think twice

ppv can still work for huge fights where people will invite friends to watch, but not for every decent card
 
65$ for one event is just too expensive

thats half a year of netflix. people will think twice

ppv can still work for huge fights where people will invite friends to watch, but not for every decent card

100% spot on
 
This stuff isn't rocket science. The UFC has watered down it's product ever since the FOX deal. The UFC name used to guarantee high quality fights. Now the average card looks like an HDNET card with two "known" UFC fighters headlining. I used to think - many moons ago - that the UFC would become huge if people just saw the exciting cards. Now it is a test of endurance to sit through a 13 fight card. Matters have only gotten worse with WME. To meet their profit goals they have cut back fighter bonuses, salaries, advertising and promotion. They can't get the stars to fight because they won't pay. WME sold 30 shows to ESPN - up from 22 to FOX - further spreading out the talent and weakening the brand. It is ironic they thought a big TV deal would weaken the bargaining position of stars, but they didn't get the 450 million a year. They wanted to reduce ppvs to 6, but failure to meet TV revenue goals has them saying no cutback in ppv offerings. Dana has lost interest in the sport. Ari and WME don't care about it and just look at it as media property to be sold. The best hope is for the UFC to be sold to some multi-billionaire mma fanatic, who adopts it as his vanity project. Any Saudi princes out there listening?
 
Its a combo of changing consumer habits and availability of mma. I mean there is a fight card almost every weekend.
 
They need to cut down the number of fights on these cards. 10-13 is way to much to sit through. Especially when there is a card every weekend now. Half these fighters don't belong in the big leagues but because theres so many cards we're getting average fighters and fights.

I'd be happy with 6-7 fights on a card. Fight pass and DWCS should be for the up and comers
 
The declining interest has more to do with the fact that UFC stopped getting 20-somethings into MMA.
In the zero's they had a large 20-something audience that grew into the forties & like most things they lost some of the older audience but they never replaced them with younger viewers.
UFC/MMA doesn't cater anything to that age group.
UFC production has not changed in 15 years. Its boring & stale & there is nothing modern about it.
Add in 20-somethings are used to everything for FREE & that makes PPV a harder sell.

But the big issue IMO is catering the appeal to younger viewers & neither era of owners have done that.
As much as it doesn't make sense to me why we don't see the full force of WME behind the UFC, I have a possible theory that they're waiting for the switch-over to the new contract. Like once they hit ESPN it's gonna be gunz blazing & perhaps a new more modern look & the whole 9. Just a thought. There's gotta be some kind of reason they aren't pulling the trigger yet.

he preliminary numbers look to be about 380,000 buys, or roughly the same as the January show in Boston where Miocic retained his title over Francis Ngannou and Cormier retained his over Volkan Oezdemir.
I still have early estimates for UFC 220 at 325k... so is the official number 380k?
 
As much as it doesn't make sense to me why we don't see the full force of WME behind the UFC, I have a possible theory that they're waiting for the switch-over to the new contract. Like once they hit ESPN it's gonna be gunz blazing & perhaps a new more modern look & the whole 9. Just a thought. There's gotta be some kind of reason they aren't pulling the trigger yet.

I still have early estimates for UFC 220 at 325k... so is the official number 380k?

Part one:
I think ESPN will go all out.
No idea about WME.
As much as I can make sense of a lot that they do (from a business perspective) that lack of UFC push I cannot figure out

Part two:
IDK man, I don't keep the chart/graphs you do.
Unless its a big number, they all blend in together.
But his wording puts in in that area.
It isn't more than 380k or he would have said that, so I'd guess 350-375k
 
Lol, no wonder they're giving Brocock a title shot.


Let's not get carried away.
For starters, I don't see any white guys currently under 25 ever giving a fuck about boxing.
As far as combat sports go, MMA, hence the UFC, is supposed to be the "most alive" for the foreseeable decades.
But, yeah, perhaps not as big as someone would've predicted in 2010. Not even close.

Millennials.... odd bunch.
 
Dana gives no fuck anymore. He sold his 8% for 400 millions. He will just gtfo sooner than later.

He had 9%
He bought back in for 6-7% ownership
Plus he gets 9% of profit as pay
So he certainly does care
 
He had 9%
He bought back in for 6-7% ownership
Plus he gets 9% of profit as pay
So he certainly does care
He bought back? For real? Didn’t know.

I was of course exagerating, he obviously cares. I do believe he cares less than he used to though.
 
He bought back? For real? Didn’t know.

I was of course exagerating, he obviously cares. I do believe he cares less than he used to though.

Yes he did
He had to sell his shares because they were tied to Fertittas.
So last year he made about $45m
So i think he cares as much as ever lol

just having less fun, bc now he works for a conglomerate & not his buddy
 
Do you think that hurts PPV sales though?
I could see the televised prelims being on a different channel all the time, some casuals might check lets say, FS1 and there is a baseball game on, and casual thinks ok no UFC this weekend. Even i thought there wasn't a UFC event on a few times because i didn't see any prelims on FS1 and turned out it was on FX or FXX and i didn't "look into it".
 
I’m not surprised. There’s not one active fighter that’s a cash cow for the UFC right now. Shit, I can’t think of one active fighter that I would feel confident to sell over 500K PPVs. Not one. I remember the days where every 1 out of 3 PPVs would do 500K or well over 500K. Sad that there are no stars in this sport anymore.

To be fair, there used to be less ppv's and more stacked cards.
 
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