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What the UFC pay-per-view turnaround does and doesn’t mean for popularity overall
Thanks to Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor, and fewer key injuries, the UFC’s pay-per-view business is up almost 65 percent from last year. But having more people buy pay-per-views hasn’t affected the average UFC television event as much as you may think.
One year ago, the UFC’s numbers indicated that the company wasn’t in trouble, as it was still profitable on the cushion of all its worldwide television deals, but it appeared that things were on the decline.
Just looking at the pay-per-view turnaround, one would come to the conclusion that UFC declined steadily from its peak of years ago until 2014, and that this year has had a pronounced turnaround.
From a revenue standpoint, that is almost surely the case.
But upon further examination, the turnaround isn’t nearly as big when it comes to overall brand popularity. The turnaround is almost entirely due to the huge increase in popularity and name recognition of Ronda Rousey, and the emergence of Conor McGregor as the company’s first true featherweight mega-draw.
There were clear obvious reasons for a lot of the 2014 pay-per-view decline. The UFC’s two biggest draws, Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, were gone. The former took a sabbatical that looks more and more like a retirement, perhaps becoming the rare fighter who truly leaves at the top. The latter suffered a broken leg and he didn’t fight once during the year.
The reality is there was only one fight all year that hit a major nerve with the public to where it was the closest thing UFC had to a must-see fight, the Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier light heavyweight title fight. Due to Jones being injured, that was moved to the first week of this year, where it became the start of the pay-per-view turnaround.
McGregor and Rousey’s popularity averted what could have been another bad year, due to unforeseen problems. Silva returned, popped a good buy rate, and then failed a steroid test and wasn’t eligible to fight again. Jones failed a cocaine test which didn’t help his image, and then was charged with a hit and run. After doing the biggest numbers of his career with Cormier, he was stripped of his title and out of the sport for the foreseeable future.
The last weekend of 2013, when UFC presented a huge show, UFC 168, with Weidman vs. Anderson Silva and Rousey vs. Miesha Tate, numbers were in the 1 million buy range, give or take a little. The often spoken doctrine that pay-per-view was dying based on 2014, ignored that people were very willing to pay a price increase for the biggest fights. But UFC was never able to present them for a full year.
Today, the really big fights continue to do well. But the days when a UFC pay-per-view is a lock to do 300,000 buys, as was once the case, or even 200,000 buys, are long over.
This year, across the board, key business numbers have increased, but upon further examination, it’s really mostly a huge change in the pay-per-view category.
The floor for a UFC show is still barely 100,000, and unless you have Rousey, Jones, Silva or McGregor, there’s no evidence anyone else on their own is going to hit much over 400,000 buys.
UFC 191, the company’s next PPV event on Sept. 5, headlined by Demetrious Johnson vs. John Dodson for the flyweight title, will be a test to see if the stardom of McGregor and Rousey will carry over to build UFC’s base audience. Any number above about 135,000 buys would indicate some brand strengthening at the base level.
Between January and the end of July of this year, UFC produced eight pay-per-view events, doing an estimated 3,945,000 buys, or 493,000 per show. That is a whopping 65-percent increase in the estimated per show average. During the same period in 2014, the company did seven events, doing an estimated 2,095,000 buys, or 299,000 buys per show.
Keep in mind these figures don’t include UFC 190, the Rousey vs. Bethe Correia show, because it’s still too early to get an accurate estimate on that event. But based on early reports, a show that a lot of people expected to do in the 400,000 to 500,000 buy range, given it being held in Brazil and being three weeks after a major event, is expected to wind up doing the biggest numbers since UFC 168, perhaps doubling those estimates.
The gap will almost surely be far more than 65-percent by the end of the year. The August show, with the Rousey vs. Correia blockbuster, will greatly increase that average.
Last year, from August through the end of Dec. 2014, the UFC had five pay-per-view shows, only one of which topped 205,000 buys.
The total of those five shows was an estimated 1,095,000 buys. That could conceivably be approached this year by the Dec. 12 show alone, given the double headliner of the long-awaited Jose Aldo vs. McGregor fight, combined with a strong middleweight title fight with Weidman vs. Luke Rockhold.
During the first seven months of 2014, UFC’s seven PPV shows averaged 13,138 fans paying $2.19 million for live attendance. In 2015, the average attendance was up to 14,828 per show, but the average gate increased to $2.82 million, a 29-percent increase.
But this year the numbers were all over the board, from a very weak $554,000 gate in Montreal for UFC 186 in April with Demetrious Johnson vs. Kyoji Horiguchi, and an all-time U.S. record for UFC 189 of $7,201,648 for McGregor vs. Chad Mendes in July. There was a second monster gate, for the Memorial Day show, which did $5.19 million. It should be noted that when the vast majority of tickets were sold, the top of the card featured both Jones vs. Anthony “Rumble” Johnson and Weidman vs. Vitor Belfort. Given that Jones vs. Cormier, a bigger light heavyweight fight, only did $3.7 million live, seems to indicate that it was the combination of the two fights that made the show do so much better and not just Jones on his own.
For pay-per-view preliminaries that aired on FS1 during the same period, this year has averaged 1,067,000 viewers, up 23-percent from 865,000 for the same period last year. In a television industry where everyone in cable is struggling to maintain audiences, that’s significant. With more attractive pay-per-view shows, it makes sense that more people will be watching the prelims.
When it comes to the major FOX network shows, the difference isn’t as great. The three shows so far this year average 2,850,000 viewers, up four-percent from last year’s 2,730,000 viewers.
Last year had two sets of FOX prelims on FS1, averaging 617,000 viewers. This year had one, doing 607,000 viewers. Last year over the first seven months of the year had one set of prelims on FOX itself, doing 1,330,000 viewers, and this year had two, averaging 1,350,000 viewers.
It doesn’t appear that having far more attractive pay-per-view shows has changed the audience much on FOX. The FOX shows feature name stars, or at least champions or top contenders matches in most main events, but not the big pay-per-view movers.
However, UFC’s third set of shows, the Fight Nights, have also gone up substantially this year. But looking deeper into that, it’s not what it appears on the surface.
Because the time slots are so important in drawing audiences, in this category, we’ve combined both regular Fight Nights and The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) finals, since both essentially serve the purpose of being the almost weekly shows. To make the comparisons valid, we are also only figuring in shows that aired in prime time, as the three morning or early afternoon shows this year would skew the average and give a less meaningful comparison.
In 2014, though the end of July, there were nine Fight Nights or TUF finals in prime time, that averaged 864,000 viewers. Five of them had prelims on FS1 that aired in prime time, which averaged 618,000 viewers.
So far this year, there have also been nine Fight Nights or TUF finals that aired in prime time. The main cards are up 24-percent, averaging 1,073,000 viewers. The prelims are up 16-percent to 715,000 viewers on average. But there’s an outlier which gives those numbers somewhat of a misleading conclusion.
The McGregor vs. Dennis Siver fight blew away all numbers the company has drawn since leaving Spike TV, doing 2,750,000 viewers. When you factor that show out, the average is 863,000 viewers for the main card and 683,000 viewers for the prelims.
In other words, the numbers are really close to identical when you have what were basically the same level of star power on the shows.
There are also minor demographic changes that are considered for the better. The average viewer age of a UFC event on FS1 this past year was 40 years old, down from 41. That’s younger than almost every major sport, with the exception of soccer, on the network. The median household income of a UFC fan watching on FS1 this year is $60,500, up slightly from $58,100 last year. That’s well ahead of the national average. It’s lower than golf or soccer, but along the lines of baseball.
The conclusion from the television ratings seems to be that UFC is really not that much hotter, or colder, as a brand than a year ago when it comes to the average non-pay-per-view show. It shows that for the most part, the much stronger pay-per-view numbers this year really don’t trickle down all that much to anything but those big shows themselves.
That means if McGregor was to lose a few fights, or to get hurt and be out a long period of time, and if Rousey was to retire, UFC would probably revert back to about the same level as last year. Pay-per-view would probably be a higher than 2014 unless they got as unlucky as that year with injuries.
However, the Aug. 8 show may contradict all of this. The show, featuring Glover Teixeira’s win over Ovince Saint Preux, seemed about average in strength for an FS1 show. It also took place during the summer when viewership should be lower. But it wound up doing 1,159,000 viewers, some 34-percent above this year’s prime time non-McGregor average. It came one week after the surprisingly strong Rousey pay-per-view numbers.
And that’s the key when looking at numbers. Perhaps they are related and it’s the start of a new trend. Perhaps, it’s just one show. Because the big picture thus far is telling a different story, that the two-person turnaround doesn’t seem to have carried over to shows that they aren’t on.
Thanks to Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor, and fewer key injuries, the UFC’s pay-per-view business is up almost 65 percent from last year. But having more people buy pay-per-views hasn’t affected the average UFC television event as much as you may think.
One year ago, the UFC’s numbers indicated that the company wasn’t in trouble, as it was still profitable on the cushion of all its worldwide television deals, but it appeared that things were on the decline.
Just looking at the pay-per-view turnaround, one would come to the conclusion that UFC declined steadily from its peak of years ago until 2014, and that this year has had a pronounced turnaround.
From a revenue standpoint, that is almost surely the case.
But upon further examination, the turnaround isn’t nearly as big when it comes to overall brand popularity. The turnaround is almost entirely due to the huge increase in popularity and name recognition of Ronda Rousey, and the emergence of Conor McGregor as the company’s first true featherweight mega-draw.
There were clear obvious reasons for a lot of the 2014 pay-per-view decline. The UFC’s two biggest draws, Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, were gone. The former took a sabbatical that looks more and more like a retirement, perhaps becoming the rare fighter who truly leaves at the top. The latter suffered a broken leg and he didn’t fight once during the year.
The reality is there was only one fight all year that hit a major nerve with the public to where it was the closest thing UFC had to a must-see fight, the Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier light heavyweight title fight. Due to Jones being injured, that was moved to the first week of this year, where it became the start of the pay-per-view turnaround.
McGregor and Rousey’s popularity averted what could have been another bad year, due to unforeseen problems. Silva returned, popped a good buy rate, and then failed a steroid test and wasn’t eligible to fight again. Jones failed a cocaine test which didn’t help his image, and then was charged with a hit and run. After doing the biggest numbers of his career with Cormier, he was stripped of his title and out of the sport for the foreseeable future.
The last weekend of 2013, when UFC presented a huge show, UFC 168, with Weidman vs. Anderson Silva and Rousey vs. Miesha Tate, numbers were in the 1 million buy range, give or take a little. The often spoken doctrine that pay-per-view was dying based on 2014, ignored that people were very willing to pay a price increase for the biggest fights. But UFC was never able to present them for a full year.
Today, the really big fights continue to do well. But the days when a UFC pay-per-view is a lock to do 300,000 buys, as was once the case, or even 200,000 buys, are long over.
This year, across the board, key business numbers have increased, but upon further examination, it’s really mostly a huge change in the pay-per-view category.
The floor for a UFC show is still barely 100,000, and unless you have Rousey, Jones, Silva or McGregor, there’s no evidence anyone else on their own is going to hit much over 400,000 buys.
UFC 191, the company’s next PPV event on Sept. 5, headlined by Demetrious Johnson vs. John Dodson for the flyweight title, will be a test to see if the stardom of McGregor and Rousey will carry over to build UFC’s base audience. Any number above about 135,000 buys would indicate some brand strengthening at the base level.
Between January and the end of July of this year, UFC produced eight pay-per-view events, doing an estimated 3,945,000 buys, or 493,000 per show. That is a whopping 65-percent increase in the estimated per show average. During the same period in 2014, the company did seven events, doing an estimated 2,095,000 buys, or 299,000 buys per show.
Keep in mind these figures don’t include UFC 190, the Rousey vs. Bethe Correia show, because it’s still too early to get an accurate estimate on that event. But based on early reports, a show that a lot of people expected to do in the 400,000 to 500,000 buy range, given it being held in Brazil and being three weeks after a major event, is expected to wind up doing the biggest numbers since UFC 168, perhaps doubling those estimates.
The gap will almost surely be far more than 65-percent by the end of the year. The August show, with the Rousey vs. Correia blockbuster, will greatly increase that average.
Last year, from August through the end of Dec. 2014, the UFC had five pay-per-view shows, only one of which topped 205,000 buys.
The total of those five shows was an estimated 1,095,000 buys. That could conceivably be approached this year by the Dec. 12 show alone, given the double headliner of the long-awaited Jose Aldo vs. McGregor fight, combined with a strong middleweight title fight with Weidman vs. Luke Rockhold.
During the first seven months of 2014, UFC’s seven PPV shows averaged 13,138 fans paying $2.19 million for live attendance. In 2015, the average attendance was up to 14,828 per show, but the average gate increased to $2.82 million, a 29-percent increase.
But this year the numbers were all over the board, from a very weak $554,000 gate in Montreal for UFC 186 in April with Demetrious Johnson vs. Kyoji Horiguchi, and an all-time U.S. record for UFC 189 of $7,201,648 for McGregor vs. Chad Mendes in July. There was a second monster gate, for the Memorial Day show, which did $5.19 million. It should be noted that when the vast majority of tickets were sold, the top of the card featured both Jones vs. Anthony “Rumble” Johnson and Weidman vs. Vitor Belfort. Given that Jones vs. Cormier, a bigger light heavyweight fight, only did $3.7 million live, seems to indicate that it was the combination of the two fights that made the show do so much better and not just Jones on his own.
For pay-per-view preliminaries that aired on FS1 during the same period, this year has averaged 1,067,000 viewers, up 23-percent from 865,000 for the same period last year. In a television industry where everyone in cable is struggling to maintain audiences, that’s significant. With more attractive pay-per-view shows, it makes sense that more people will be watching the prelims.
When it comes to the major FOX network shows, the difference isn’t as great. The three shows so far this year average 2,850,000 viewers, up four-percent from last year’s 2,730,000 viewers.
Last year had two sets of FOX prelims on FS1, averaging 617,000 viewers. This year had one, doing 607,000 viewers. Last year over the first seven months of the year had one set of prelims on FOX itself, doing 1,330,000 viewers, and this year had two, averaging 1,350,000 viewers.
It doesn’t appear that having far more attractive pay-per-view shows has changed the audience much on FOX. The FOX shows feature name stars, or at least champions or top contenders matches in most main events, but not the big pay-per-view movers.
However, UFC’s third set of shows, the Fight Nights, have also gone up substantially this year. But looking deeper into that, it’s not what it appears on the surface.
Because the time slots are so important in drawing audiences, in this category, we’ve combined both regular Fight Nights and The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) finals, since both essentially serve the purpose of being the almost weekly shows. To make the comparisons valid, we are also only figuring in shows that aired in prime time, as the three morning or early afternoon shows this year would skew the average and give a less meaningful comparison.
In 2014, though the end of July, there were nine Fight Nights or TUF finals in prime time, that averaged 864,000 viewers. Five of them had prelims on FS1 that aired in prime time, which averaged 618,000 viewers.
So far this year, there have also been nine Fight Nights or TUF finals that aired in prime time. The main cards are up 24-percent, averaging 1,073,000 viewers. The prelims are up 16-percent to 715,000 viewers on average. But there’s an outlier which gives those numbers somewhat of a misleading conclusion.
The McGregor vs. Dennis Siver fight blew away all numbers the company has drawn since leaving Spike TV, doing 2,750,000 viewers. When you factor that show out, the average is 863,000 viewers for the main card and 683,000 viewers for the prelims.
In other words, the numbers are really close to identical when you have what were basically the same level of star power on the shows.
There are also minor demographic changes that are considered for the better. The average viewer age of a UFC event on FS1 this past year was 40 years old, down from 41. That’s younger than almost every major sport, with the exception of soccer, on the network. The median household income of a UFC fan watching on FS1 this year is $60,500, up slightly from $58,100 last year. That’s well ahead of the national average. It’s lower than golf or soccer, but along the lines of baseball.
The conclusion from the television ratings seems to be that UFC is really not that much hotter, or colder, as a brand than a year ago when it comes to the average non-pay-per-view show. It shows that for the most part, the much stronger pay-per-view numbers this year really don’t trickle down all that much to anything but those big shows themselves.
That means if McGregor was to lose a few fights, or to get hurt and be out a long period of time, and if Rousey was to retire, UFC would probably revert back to about the same level as last year. Pay-per-view would probably be a higher than 2014 unless they got as unlucky as that year with injuries.
However, the Aug. 8 show may contradict all of this. The show, featuring Glover Teixeira’s win over Ovince Saint Preux, seemed about average in strength for an FS1 show. It also took place during the summer when viewership should be lower. But it wound up doing 1,159,000 viewers, some 34-percent above this year’s prime time non-McGregor average. It came one week after the surprisingly strong Rousey pay-per-view numbers.
And that’s the key when looking at numbers. Perhaps they are related and it’s the start of a new trend. Perhaps, it’s just one show. Because the big picture thus far is telling a different story, that the two-person turnaround doesn’t seem to have carried over to shows that they aren’t on.
