Things are looking up.
After we spent much of 2014 worrying for the future of the UFC—or, at least, for its future on pay-per-view—business has been unexpectedly bullish so far this year.
With nine PPV events in the books and four left to go in 2015, estimates from MMA Fighting.com’s Dave Meltzer—compiled in one handy spot at MMA Payout—show the fight company has already surpassed its entire sales total for last year and could be on pace for its best calendar turn since 2010.
Credit the big buy-rate numbers posted by Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor during three combined headlining appearances for much of the turnaround. More amazingly, the organization has managed to right the ship with arguably its best fighter on the shelf since January.
If Jon Jones is able to disentangle himself from legal troubles in New Mexico and return some time early next year, he could be the final piece to an even more robust, financially pretty picture.
That’s encouraging news for anyone who draws a paycheck from the MMA industry—or fans who had secretly started entertaining doomsday scenarios.
The sky, it seems, is still right where it should be.
As I wrote in May of last year, the UFC initially floundered in the sudden absence of PPV stalwarts Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva.
Longtime welterweight champion St-Pierre unexpectedly announced an indefinite hiatus from the sport after a hard-fought victory over Johny Hendricks at UFC 167 in November 2013. A bit more than a month later, middleweight kingpin Silva suffered a career-threatening broken leg in a loss to Chris Weidman at UFC 168.
St-Pierre has still not returned and each passing day makes it seem more likely the 34-year-old French Canadian phenom may never do so. Silva rushed into a comeback fight against Nick Diaz at UFC 183 in January. He won but tested positive for steroids, and this month the Nevada State Athletic Commission handed him a one-year ban. By the time he’s eligible to return, he’ll be almost 41.
Because of that and other (mostly injury-related) adversity, UFC PPV numbers—already trending back to earth after boom years in 2009 and 2010—dropped sharply during 2014.
Through 12 PPV fight cards, the company mustered just 3.2 million total sales, for an average of 266,667 per event. Those were the UFC’s worst yearly PPV numbers since at least 2006 and were down from 6.08 million sales and a 467,308 average during 2013.
For the second time in three years, the UFC also canceled an event—UFC 176, which fell by the wayside after a late injury to featherweight champion Jose Aldo.
As an example of just how important GSP and Silva had been to the UFC’s bottom line, consider that the four events they headlined during 2013 combined for 3.16 million PPV buys.
In other words, the two champions made up 52 percent of the company’s total pay-per-view earnings all by themselves. Losing them was potentially crippling. Want to know where all those PPV sales went between 2013 and 2014? Do the math and then read the last three paragraphs again.
Answer: It sure looks like St-Pierre and Silva took them with them when they left.
As a private company, the UFC has always held most of its financial information—well, most of its information, period—as a closely guarded secret. It was never exactly clear how much, if any, money it was losing during 2014.
The things we did know didn’t look good.
Last October, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the UFC’s corporate credit rating. A month later the seminal financial services company issued a “revised profit outlook” for the UFC and said it “could be facing a 40-percent drop in profits for the year,” via a report from MMA Weekly.com.
If nothing else, the UFC’s lean 2014 served as a reminder of exactly how star-driven this sport can be. Fans appeared slow to buy into a new crop of champions (like Weidman), and the organization struggled to get anyone to stand out amid its new, overstuffed live-event schedule.
There was considerable hand-wringing over who would emerge from the UFC’s talent-rich but often-homogenous roster of 500-plus fighters.
It bears mentioning that in this instance, UFC President Dana White was right. The fight company boss played it pretty cool on the heels of Silva’s and St-Pierre’s departures. Back in January of last year, he told Sherdog’s Greg Savage he wasn’t worried about the future:
“Back in the day, everybody was going ‘what are you going to do when Chuck Liddell’s gone? What are you gonna do when this guy’s gone, that guy’s gone?’ I mean, I’ve been hearing this for 15 years.”
This year, we got our answer about why White was so confident.
At least for the time being, Rousey and McGregor have picked up the mantle left by Silva and St-Pierre. Though there remain valid questions about each new star’s long-term viability—Will Rousey stick around? Can McGregor beat Aldo?—they’ve at least managed to pull the nose of the aircraft up over the mountaintop.
The 28-year-old Rousey’s two main event appearances during 2015 were good enough to solidify her as the UFC’s PPV queen. Her 14-second victory over Cat Zingano at UFC 184 netted 590,000 buys, while her first-round knockout of Bethe Correia contributed 900,000.
McGregor, who is 27, fought only once on PPV, and his effort was hamstrung by the sudden withdrawal of Aldo, again due to injury. Still, McGregor’s fight against short-notice replacement Chad Mendes put up 825,000 buys at UFC 189.
That means Rousey and McGregor have combined to sell an estimated 2.32 million PPVs for the UFC so far this year—or approximately 48 percent of total sales.
That percentage may end up being even higher by the time the year is done. After all, McGregor still gets one more bite at the apple when he headlines UFC 194 opposite Aldo on December 12. Provided their long-awaited grudge match can avoid further delays, it’s expected to be the UFC’s top seller of the year and perhaps the first UFC PPV to top 1 million buys during 2015.
If UFC 194 manages to live up to those lofty goals, the organization should easily surpass its 2013 total.
The UFC’s other three remaining PPVs this year will be headlined by champions Demetrious Johnson (UFC 191), Daniel Cormier (UFC 192) and Robbie Lawler (UFC 193) and may not turn out to be box-office blockbusters. Still, they should be good enough to cement this as the rousing bounce-back year the fight company desperately needed it to be.
Give or take a few hundred thousand buys, 2015 might even turn out to best year since the height of the freewheeling Brock Lesnar era.
Meanwhile, Rousey is currently scheduled to get 2016 off to a rollicking start when she meets Holly Holm at UFC 195 on January 2. That appearance is expected to merely be the aperitif for the gala UFC 200 event scheduled for next July. Early guesses have Rousey smashing UFC PPV records with a bout against Invicta FC featherweight champion Cris “Cyborg” Justino for that one.
Which brings us back to Jones.
The 28-year-old light heavyweight GOAT has traditionally been a hit-or-miss PPV attraction.
Bouts against Rashad Evans (700,000 buys at UFC 145 in April 2012) and Cormier (800,000 buys at UFC 182 in January 2015) both sold very well.
Meetings with Quinton Jackson (UFC 135), Vitor Belfort (UFC 152) and Chael Sonnen (UFC 159) were more middle-of-the-road and all did in the neighborhood of a half million buys.
Jones’ UFC 165 fight with Alexander Gustafsson flopped, mustering just 310,000. Oddly, it also turned out to be the most competitive fight of his championship tenure.
At this point, however, there can be little doubt that getting Jones back would return some much-needed stability and prestige to the vaunted 205-pound division. His return after a long absence would also set him up for a run of big-ticket fights.
Jones’ unanimous-decision victory over Cormier will likely turn out to be his only fight of 2015, but it stands as the UFC’s third-bestselling event of the year so far. Combine it with Rousey and McGregor’s efforts and those three stars account for 64 percent of total PPV sales to this point in 2015.
Without Jones, the light heavyweight division has stumbled a bit. Everyone likes and respects Cormier, but his UFC 187 title defense against Anthony Johnson sold just 375,000 units. That’s well short of what a bout between Jones and Johnson might have done. Cormier’s upcoming UFC 192 meeting with Gustafsson may not sell much better either.
Assuming Jones is targeting a 2016 return—though his management has played it pretty coy on that front—a rematch with Cormier would no doubt go off like gangbusters. A second fight with Gustafsson would also likely perform better than the first (pending Gusty’s performance against DC) and Jones’ long-discussed foray into heavyweight remains a lucrative outside possibility.
As the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world, Jones acts as the lynchpin of the UFC’s traditional glamour weight class. Perhaps—like GSP and Silva—we never realized how important he was until the moment he stepped away.
In fact, imagining a 2016 where the UFC manages to get two bouts each from Jones, Rousey and McGregor starts to make its future prospects seem very rosy indeed.
Together, the trio could make up a three-headed monster of UFC PPV sales.
Even if spectators continue to balk at some of the company’s other young talent, even if divisions like heavyweight and lightweight continue to be plagued by uncertainty and even if injuries continue to be a major fly in the ointment, that would be a pretty nice (and stable) base to build from.
With the emergence of some new draws, the UFC is proving during 2015 that it can still throw a few haymakers.
If Jones returns and Rousey and McGregor stay in the game, 2016 might be an even bigger knockout.
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