Dana White last night said that UFC 190 is trending ahead of its biggest show this year, UFC 189 from three weeks ago. Early evidence of public interest shows that he may have understated that.
After putting so much promotional muscle around July 11 as UFC’s biggest event of the year, there were reasons that Ronda Rousey’s fight with Bethe Correia would have a hard time equaling the 600,000 plus buys that Rousey’s prior main event with Cat Zingano did.
The biggest and most obvious is the fight was in Brazil, meaning less media coverage in the U.S. than a fight in Los Angeles or Las Vegas would get. That’s key because it is Rousey’s appearances on mainstream media outlets that are essential in her drawing her own unique audiences to the shows she headlines. And while she got plenty of coverage, it was not at the level of some of her recent shows, and nothing compared to UFC 189.
It was also only three weeks after a big show, and for the same reason UFC 187 struggled three weeks after Mayweather-Pacquiao, it would be hard to generate huge money with such a quick turnaround between shows given so many people had just spent money and gotten together with friends for pay-per-view.
While some would also say that Bethe Correia was not the threat Cat Zingano was, at least on paper, I’d throw that one out. Correia, who, like virtually everyone in the division, appeared way out of her league on Saturday night, to the public, this was a much bigger grudge match. UFC history has shown its biggest numbers come when the grudge factor is the highest. Some would say her record quick finishes would make it so people wouldn’t want to spend $60 for one minute of action, although the people said the same thing during the Mike Tyson heyday and the opposite was the case then. Based on her setting her record numbers for a show she carried alone the last time out, that doesn’t appear to be the case now either.
But there were also positives. Rousey’s performance with Zingano had been her most impressive to date. As much as her previous sub-70 second wins have been impressive, that was at a completely different level. Even since the end of February, her star power has grown significantly, between a Sports Illustrated cover, two Espy awards, a role in Furious 7, one of the biggest grossing movies of all-time and another role in Entourage. With all respect to Serena Williams, she is almost surely the most popular female athlete in the country right now.
And it appears the latter was more important than the former. After the show, UFC President Dana White claimed the show was trending better than UFC 189, a show that did in excess of 800,000 buys on pay-per-view. In particular, White said usual trending numbers were up, and that UFC Embedded did almost as many views this past week as it did before the McGregor vs. Chad Mendes fight.
When it comes to Google searches, which have been exceedingly effective when it comes to immediately giving an impression if a show was or wasn’t a hit on pay-per-view, UFC 190 was through the roof.
Between Thursday and Saturday, terms related to the show, mostly searches for Rousey, as well as UFC 100 and for Correia, topped 5.8 million searches, with more than 5 million alone on Saturday night.
For a comparison, a huge cultural event like the Super Bowl or the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight will top 10 million. A weak UFC pay-per-view show will get 50,000, and a normal show will fall between 200,000 and 500,000.
UFC 189 did in excess of 1.3 million, including 1 million on the day of the show, mostly for McGregor.
The last UFC show to do in this range was UFC 168, which also topped 5 million, but much of that was people after the show was over searching to find video of Anderson Silva’s broken leg.
There is the thing I call the Pretty Girl Syndrome, so to speak, where Rousey’s Internet activity is going to be bigger than her pay-per-view drawing power. However, with the exception of UFC 168, and as noted that was far more for Silva and his injury than Rousey, none of her prior fights have even approached the level of this one.
Anecdotal response and photos from sports bars around the country indicated packed buildings early in the evening, and most notably, a very different clientele, with far more women than for any UFC event up to this point.
What is safe to say is that the general public had far more interest in this fight than UFC 189, even though the July show was promoted far more strongly. While it didn’t seem this way three weeks ago, Rousey, not McGregor, is the company’s biggest star. Rousey also draws from an audience that no other UFC athlete can draw from, something the company pushed hard in presenting videos of young girls, hardly the traditional UFC audience, talking about Rousey as their hero.
It is far too early to estimate pay-per-view numbers. And while these number comparison will lead you to conclusions that this show set records, that is probably not the case. But it’s a pretty safe bet the show was, just like UFC 185, far more successful than all but the most optimistic projections going in.