The biggest threat to the UFC’s onward and upward movement in the mainstream world is itself.
Over the years, many would-be competitors have looked to rival the premier mixed martial arts promotion. EliteXC, the IFL and Affliction have all fallen by the wayside, with the UFC remaining at the top of the mantle, positioning itself further and further away from the rest of the pack.
Since signing an exclusive seven-year deal with a sports broadcast juggernaut in the FOX network, the promotion has graced the FX, Fuel and FOX channels, with many battles garnering praise both amongst the fans and media alike.
However, with all this new content and exciting endeavors, one has to wonder: Who is getting lost in the shuffle? Well, it’s the fans.
Last Wednesday, welterweight contenders Jake Ellenberger and Diego Sanchez engaged in a memorable three-round thriller, which earned both men Fight of the Night honors for their fan-friendly performance, though many of MMA‘s enthusiasts failed to watch the live broadcast, since Fuel TV’s providers extend only to a small populace.
It’s a dilemma that will look to remedy itself as the UFC helps garner the burgeoning channel more and more viewers with more exciting battles, which will elicit program providers incentive to pick up Fuel as a partner.
Though free television programming is always the right call, the UFC has become the juggernaut promotion of the MMA industry because of their avid pay-per-view model.
Stars like Georges St-Pierre, Brock Lesnar, Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz have proven to be strong draws in the PPV realm.
Many of these aforementioned combatants have exited the sport, while GSP remains sidelined due to injury and Ortiz, “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy,” has lost his allure, having tasted defeat in five of his last six outings.
The organization has made a continued effort to produce fights on an almost every-weekend basis, which has proven detrimental to the casual onlooker who can’t always ante up the 50-plus dollars time and time again.
There’s no direct correlation, however, the UFC’s PPV numbers have struggled to regain momentum as of late. Aside from a blockbuster battle between Alistair Overeem and the aforementioned Lesnar last December (which garnered over 800k in buys), many pivotal battles that have graced the Octagon have failed to produce the numbers they deserve.
An epic rubber match between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard, which headlined a double-championship card at UFC 136, produced a subtle 225,000 buy rate. The event came just one week after UFC on Versus 6 and just a few weeks before UFC 137.
With so many shows and so many fights underway, many fans could find themselves in a frenzy, being lost in the fray of over-saturation.
It’s a good problem to have if you have the means to order PPV’s time and time again, keep up to date with all the impending battles to grace the Octagon and follow the sport almost religiously. But for the casual and pedestrian fan, it can be daunting.
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