Photo by Getty Images via UFC.com
Just how big is the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Brazil? Well according to UFC President Dana White, early polling indicates that Saturday night’s UFC 134 broadcast was beamed into 30 million homes in Brazil, taking a 20% share of the ratings for August 27.
UFC 134: Silva vs. Okami took place at the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, featuring a twelve-bout card which included prelim fights on Facebook and Spike TV, and culminating with a five bout pay-per-view broadcast.
Speaking at last nights post fight press conference, White talked about the success of the promotions first Brazilian event after a thirteen year hiatus (transcribed by MMAjunkie.com).
“I’ve been doing events all over the world for the last 10 years,” White said. “Brazil wins for the loudest crowd ever. The cool thing about this show, too, was the place was packed from the first fight of the night. The first fight of the night sounded like the title fight.
“We might be here every weekend.”
“We’re getting early polling back from TV in Brazil that we did a 20 percent share tonight, which could be almost 30 million homes… ”
“We’re probably real close to setting up an office down here,” White said. “This is a huge market for us, and we’re just getting started.
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but when you do business in other countries, there’s a lot of things you’ve got figure out. But it absolutely, positively makes sense for us to have an office down here.”