Dana White doesn’t want a percentage of fans attending. He wants packed, sold out arenas.
While live sports and events are mostly operating with fans at partial capacity, Dana White says he wants to have fully packed arenas soon. Almost a year since he had full sold out arenas in the UFC, White says he plans to put events filled with fans in a few months.
“I’m not doing a percentage. I want a sell out,” White said at the UFC 258 post-fight press conference. “I’ve got plans too.
“I’m optimistic that this summer, by this summer, we could be doing it either in Florida or here (in Las Vegas).”
A lot can change in a few months, but there are still a lot of COVID-19 restrictions in both Florida and Nevada that prevent White’s goal of fully packed arenas.
The Las Vegas Golden Knights are sending proposals, looking to host events at the T-Mobile Arena as early as March. Due to COVID-19 restrictions though, the typical 17,500 capacity configuration (for hockey) will be limited to 20%, at just around 3500 fans.
Florida is less strict than Nevada, but they also still currently have a 25% capacity rule.
Daily cases seem to be dropping a little in the US as COVID-19 vaccines roll out, but it remains at a very high number — especially compared to the rest of the world — and the high death rates are still holding steady. In the last five days, there were averages of around 83,000 new cases and over 2100 deaths per day.
As for those two states White mentioned, Florida has the third most coronavirus cases among states in the country. They have over 1.8 million cases and almost 29,000 deaths. Nevada has significantly less people, but it has higher percentage of positive cases with almost 94,000 cases per million of population, compared to Florida’s 85,000.