Perhaps more importantly, UFC 182’s buyrate represents the most successful showing in Jon Jones‘s career. Previously, the light-heavyweight champion’s best number was the 700k buys hauled in by UFC 145, where Jones faced off against training-partner-turned-rival Rashad Evans. So yeah, it helps when the fighters hate each other.
(There is nothing wrong with your monitor. Jon Jones is actually grabbing Daniel Cormier’s shoulder from like eight feet away. Esther Lin/MMAFighting)
Perhaps more importantly, UFC 182′s buyrate represents the most successful showing in Jon Jones‘s career. Previously, the light-heavyweight champion’s best number was the 700k buys hauled in by UFC 145, where Jones faced off against training-partner-turned-rival Rashad Evans. So yeah, it helps when the fighters hate each other.
With Jones’s other recent PPVs producing underwhelming numbers — 300k+ buys for his UFC 165 fight against Alexander Gustafsson, about 350k for his UFC 172 fight against Glover Teixeira — it seemed that UFC fans weren’t embracing him as a star. But a strong number for UFC 182 proves that they’ll still tune in for the right matchup. And with Bones’s reputation firmly in the toilet, maybe the UFC fanbase will keep showing up in the hopes that he’ll get his ass kicked.
The UFC’s 2015 PPV business is off to a fast start, thanks to Jones vs. Cormier. Any guesses on how UFC 183: Silva vs. Diaz will compare to it later this month?
MMA reached its zenith at UFC 182 on Saturday, but if you looked at and listened to the crowd throughout the night you’d have hardly recognized that.
The audience was sparse and half-dead. They’d have done a wave to entertain themselves if the first four fights of the PPV — four decisions featuring unimpressive and sluggish performances — hadn’t already put them to sleep. An incessant stream of “this event sucks” tweets rolled in. This script has played itself out in the past. A card that’s supposed to be the pinnacle of the sport turns out to be a boring, uninteresting, overhyped amalgam of everything wrong with it, only this time we spent an extra $5. It appeared the poor showings, as well as the restless (and partially absent) audience would ruin one of the most anticipated UFC cards in recent memory.
MMA reached its zenith at UFC 182 on Saturday, but if you looked at and listened to the crowd throughout the night you’d have hardly recognized that.
The audience was sparse and half-dead. They’d have done a wave to entertain themselves if the first four fights of the PPV — four decisions featuring unimpressive and sluggish performances — hadn’t already put them to sleep. An incessant stream of “this event sucks” tweets rolled in. This script has played itself out in the past. A card that’s supposed to be the pinnacle of the sport turns out to be a boring, uninteresting, overhyped amalgam of everything wrong with it, only this time we spent an extra $5. It appeared the poor showings, as well as the restless (and partially absent) audience would ruin one of the most anticipated UFC cards in recent memory.
“Domination” and “breaking your opponent” are cliched phrases in MMA, but when fans and pundits originally coined them they had performances like Jon Jones’ in mind. Not only did Jones beat Cormier, he beat Cormier at what he was best at — wrestling…and he made it look easy. Jon Jones took an Olympic wrestler to the mat multiple times just for kicks, broke his will in the later rounds through the same fabled “grind” Cormier was supposed to be the master of, and made him cry at the post-fight press conference.
The in-cage martial artistry isn’t even the best part. That came after the phantasmagoric displays of violence. Jones taunted a dejected Cormier with a “crotch chop” circa late 1990′s WWE. When Joe Rogan conducted a rushed (the PPV was about to hit the end of the allotted time) interview with Jones, the reigning light heavyweight champ chided Cormier’s supporters by telling them to burn their “Break Bones” t-shirts and buy his “Unbroken” t-shirt. Already guffawing (or seething, depending on your alignment) at these antics? There’s MORE. In the post-fight show on Fox Sports 1, Jones continued to bash his defeated foe.
“I hope he’s somewhere crying right now,” Jones said. “I’m sure he is.” He continued on, saying Cormier is the kind of fighter who breaks when fights get tough. Jones also said Cormier is no king of the grind like people thought.
When asked about a possible reconciliation, Jones refused to let up on his verbal onslaught.
“I know if he would have won, he would have been up here, talking all types of trash,” Jones told MMAJunkie. “So I don’t feel sorry for him. This is combat.”
The hashtag #TheTimeIsNow became the butt end of many jokes on MMA Twitter during the last few weeks. The UFC used the hashtag to promote their embarrassing “omg big announcement” press conference where they announced they had no big announcement. People used #TheTimeIsNow to mock the UFC’s recent legal troubles as well as the grim state of their PPV business.
Jon Jones is the best MMA fighter that any of us will ever see in our lifetimes. You can claim Fedor Emelianenko was the GOAT while clutching your Pride VHS collection, but you’d be wrong. Jon Jones is capable of violence and technique on a level we’ve never seen before, nor will we likely ever see again if MMA continues its current descent in popularity.
In addition to his fighting acumen, Jon Jones posses more personality and emotional magnetism than all the other UFC champions combined. Remember how MMA erupted when Ronda Rousey didn’t shake Miesha Tate’s hand after submitting her at UFC 168? What Jones did to Cormier after UFC 182 makes that look like a bro hug by comparison.
The best part is it’s not a gimmick. Jon Jones doesn’t caricature over-the-top professional wrestling promos from yesteryear. Jon Jones doesn’t exclaim that fighters from less fortunate countries mistake public transit for barnyard animals. Jon Jones breaks people. Jon Jones chokes people out and drops them on the canvas, limp and limbs quivering. Jon Jones makes people cry, then says he’s glad about it. Jon Jones is unabashedly himself. A large percentage of fans hate him for it — just look at the comments on any Jones-related article to see that. Hell, someone even tweeted to CagePotato last night saying they hope somebody shoots Jones. But despite the hate, they pay to see him. Estimates already state UFC 182 achieved over 750k buys. In an age where fighters who draw 400k are considered the company’s top stars, this is almost a miracle.
The time for watching the best MMA fighter of all time and the UFC’s current biggest star is right now. Jones is the light in the current dark age of MMA. Every second of watching Jon Jones display his craft is a gift from a Lovecraftian god of violence. Cherish this gift, even if you don’t like Jones as a person.
(Pretending that Mighty Mouse wasn’t headlining the card may have been a brilliant marketing strategy — but it wasn’t enough to make UFC 178 a success.)
Reddit user thisisdanitis passes along the latest UFC pay-per-view buyrate estimates from Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer newsletter, which provide more proof that the UFC’s PPV business just ain’t what it used to be. Here we go…
UFC 181 (Hendricks vs. Lawler, Pettis vs. Melendez): 380,000 (This is an early number and may change somewhat based on late reporting cable systems.)
The UFC 178 estimate is the most surprising to me, because the event was so highly anticipated among hardcore MMA fans as a “stacked” card with Event of the Year potential, and it still barely broke 200k. Of course, casual fans only look at the main event, and Demetrious Johnson is basically the worst PPV draw on the roster.
It’s almost as surprising that UFC 180 performed as well as it did, considering that the card had no stars outside of the main event. And 380,000 buys for UFC 181 is very good, relatively speaking. That’s like the equivalent of 650,000 buys in 2009.
(Pretending that Mighty Mouse wasn’t headlining the card may have been a brilliant marketing strategy — but it wasn’t enough to make UFC 178 a success.)
Reddit user thisisdanitis passes along the latest UFC pay-per-view buyrate estimates from Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer newsletter, which provide more proof that the UFC’s PPV business just ain’t what it used to be. Here we go…
UFC 181 (Hendricks vs. Lawler, Pettis vs. Melendez): 380,000 (This is an early number and may change somewhat based on late reporting cable systems.)
The UFC 178 estimate is the most surprising to me, because the event was so highly anticipated among hardcore MMA fans as a “stacked” card with Event of the Year potential, and it still barely broke 200k. Of course, casual fans only look at the main event, and Demetrious Johnson is basically the worst PPV draw on the roster.
It’s almost as surprising that UFC 180 performed as well as it did, considering that the card had no stars outside of the main event. And 380,000 buys for UFC 181 is very good, relatively speaking. That’s like the equivalent of 650,000 buys in 2009.
The UFC’s next three PPVs should pull the promotion’s buyrates out of the garbage, at least. UFC 182: Jones vs. Cormier and UFC 183: Silva vs. Diaz have massive main events (but thin supporting cards), and UFC 184 features the double title-fight punch of Weidman vs. Belfort and Rousey vs. Zingano. So where will the buyrates for those cards end up? And if more than one of them falls below 500k, will the UFC just give up and focus its business on novelty barbecue equipment?
(“PPV buys are higher than ever, dummies. These goofy Internet fucks know NOTHING. Everything is fine.”—Dana White doing his best impersonation of this guy. / Photo via Getty)
Cain Velasquez became another victim (again) of the UFC’s so-called “injury bug,” pulling out of UFC 180 with a knee injury. This is great news for people who want to see a weirdo holding a UFC heavyweight title as Mark Hunt stepped in to fight original challenger Fabricio Werdum. This is bad news for fans who want to watch the greatest heavyweight talent in the sport since Fedor Emelianenko. It’s horrible news for the UFC, who set up this event in Mexico City to both help cultivate the Mexican market and provide a similar atmosphere for Velasquez that Conor McGregor received in Ireland earlier this year.
It’s another blow to the UFC’s pay-per-view business. UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told Sports Business Daily that “about 80 percent” of fights they wanted to put on have been cancelled. That’s probably an exaggeration (at least if we’re looking at the entirety of the UFC’s matchmaking), but the reality isn’t much better. Of the 14 events including and between UFC 168 and UFC 181 (including the cancelled UFC 176), only five have escaped an injury to a fighter in either the main or co-main event. That is, 64% of UFC PPVs within that timeframe have had alterations or cancellations to one of the featured bouts at the top of the card.
Combined with the loss of Georges St-Pierre (quasi-retirement) and Anderson Silva (wishboned leg), the injuries at the top of marquee events have led the UFC to its worst year on pay-per-view since 2005. In 2005, the UFC ran six pay-per-view events for a total of 950,000 buys and an average of 158,000 per event. This year hasn’t been that bad (2.22M total buys/277,500 per event), but that’s far below the “down years” of 2011-13. (It should be noted that those “down years” are in line with the total PPV business the UFC did prior to the 2009-10 Lesnar Era.)
(“PPV buys are higher than ever, dummies. These goofy Internet fucks know NOTHING. Everything is fine.”—Dana White doing his best impersonation of this guy. / Photo via Getty)
Cain Velasquez became another victim (again) of the UFC’s so-called “injury bug,” pulling out of UFC 180 with a knee injury. This is great news for people who want to see a weirdo holding a UFC heavyweight title as Mark Hunt stepped in to fight original challenger Fabricio Werdum. This is bad news for fans who want to watch the greatest heavyweight talent in the sport since Fedor Emelianenko. It’s horrible news for the UFC, who set up this event in Mexico City to both help cultivate the Mexican market and provide a similar atmosphere for Velasquez that Conor McGregor received in Ireland earlier this year.
It’s another blow to the UFC’s pay-per-view business. UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told Sports Business Daily that “about 80 percent” of fights they wanted to put on have been cancelled. That’s probably an exaggeration (at least if we’re looking at the entirety of the UFC’s matchmaking), but the reality isn’t much better. Of the 14 events including and between UFC 168 and UFC 181 (including the cancelled UFC 176), only five have escaped an injury to a fighter in either the main or co-main event. That is, 64% of UFC PPVs within that timeframe have had alterations or cancellations to one of the featured bouts at the top of the card.
Combined with the loss of Georges St-Pierre (quasi-retirement) and Anderson Silva (wishboned leg), the injuries at the top of marquee events have led the UFC to its worst year on pay-per-view since 2005. In 2005, the UFC ran six pay-per-view events for a total of 950,000 buys and an average of 158,000 per event. This year hasn’t been that bad (2.22M total buys/277,500 per event), but that’s far below the “down years” of 2011-13. (It should be noted that those “down years” are in line with the total PPV business the UFC did prior to the 2009-10 Lesnar Era.)
The blame is often cast at “UFC oversaturation,” the idea that the UFC is flooding the market with too much content for their consumers. You can trace the oversaturation argument all the way back to 2010, when television ratings started to fall, and it’s only picked up steam as the UFC has expanded their product from 24 events in 2010 to 45 in 2014.
That comparison is a bit misleading, however. When you add in Strikeforce (15 events) and the WEC (8 events), you wind up with 47 shows between the three promotions in 2010. It seems only natural that the UFC would fill the void after assimilating the WEC and Strikeforce and inflating their roster. It was easier for Joe Casual to follow the UFC in 2010 because the promotional landscape helped delineate the sport. You had an A-show in the UFC and two solid B-products (with different niches) in Strikeforce and the WEC.
The problem isn’t that there is too many UFC events. The problem is that the UFC has done a bad job differentiating their products. There is, at times, little separating a pay-per-view event like UFC 177 (even before the Renan Barao fiasco) from one of the better Fox Sports 1 cards. This naturally leads people to ask questions like, “Why am I paying $54.95 to watch Beneil Dariush and Carlos Diego Ferreira?”
Fortunately, it’s a problem the UFC is aware of. As Lorenzo Fertitta told Sports Business Daily:
It’s about segmentation of the product, and quite honestly, I don’t think we did a good job of it when we went into the deal with Fox. We didn’t take a deep breath and say, ‘OK, how are we going to do this?’ It wasn’t until two or three months later when we said, ‘We gotta think about this differently.’ We had to segment the product and package it differently.
Progress has been made on this front. The first few UFC on Fox cards felt like promotion and network were closing their eyes and throwing darts at the wall. Those cards are starting to gain an identity: meaningful fight on top, action fights on the undercard. They seemed to have figured out their Fight Pass strategy as well: feature a regionally relevant fighter and pack the card with other locals. The Fox Sports 1 (formerly FX) shows have largely continued where they left off at Spike.
It’s on the success of their television deals, both domestic and international, that the UFC has buoyed itself. As Dave Meltzer notes at MMA Fighting, pay-per-view and ticket sale revenue now accounts for only 30 percent of the UFC’s revenues, down from 75 percent “[n]ot all that many years ago.” And revenues “have grown 50 percent in the past five years.”
While oversaturation seems nebulous and overall business seems healthy, the UFC’s pay-per-view strategy is in need of fine tuning. Despite their awful year, Meltzer notes that the UFC will continue on a “one per month” schedule in 2015, per Dana White. On one hand, you have to admire White and co. for their commitment to process over results. On the other, you have to wonder what the hell they’re thinking.
Simply put, the current roster cannot support 13 pay-per-views. They have few consistent draws. Jon Jones is the guy they can most rely on over the next few years, but has yet to transcend like Georges St-Pierre or Anderson Silva. Silva will headline UFC 183 in 2015, but is on Retirement Watch. Ronda Rousey, Dana White-proclaimed biggest star in MMA history, was just scheduled for her third supporting-role duty at UFC 182. Chris Weidman and Johny Hendricks are unproven. Sub-170 has sold tepidly at best post-B.J. Penn.
In addition, the pace of the UFC’s schedule makes it difficult for the company to fill pay-per-view undercards with appropriate talent. Fighters like Michael Bisping and Urijah Faber, long mainstays of PPV undercards, are now being relegated to Fight Pass main events and free TV PPV lead-ins. This isn’t all bad – being able to watch “name” talent for free or on the cheap is great, but it detracts from the value of a pay-per-view. Dana White once admonished boxing promoters for stuffing club fighters and also-rans underneath Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. But the UFC quietly started to do the same thing with their biggest draws (Lesnar and St-Pierre), and it’s now become their norm.
The remedy is obvious: scale back pay-per-views to what the roster can support. Be dynamic. That’s what boxing’s done over the last decade. In 2006, HBO and Showtime put on 10 pay-per-view events drawing 3.7M buys for $179.5M in revenue. That number dropped to 8 for 2012 and 2013 combined. Thanks to two events a piece from Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, plus the emergence of Canelo Alvarez, boxing will end 2014 with seven pay-per-view events, none doing worse than 300,000 buys. Low-balling the final boxing PPV – headlined by Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri – for 600,000 buys, boxing will end up drawing somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.1-4.3M buys this year, which, barring a miracle, will outperform the UFC.
It’s obvious the UFC has noticed the problem. They stacked the UFC 178 undercard (which saved them from another atrocious buyrate when Jones went down), and they appear to be doing the same thing for UFC 182. And while they should bounce back some in 2015 (regression to the mean, y’all), they’re still playing a dangerous game with a full calendar of pay-per-view events.
Yesterday, MMAFighting’s Dave Meltzer reported that UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw pulled an estimated 200,000-215,000 pay-per-view buys. While that number is certainly on the low end of UFC buyrates, it’s not a disaster by any means. Keep in mind that UFC 169 — a card that featured a Renan Barao vs. Urijah Faber rematch, Jose Aldo defending his featherweight belt against Ricardo Lamas, and a high-profile heavyweight bout between Alistair Overeem and Frank Mir — only earned an estimated 230,000 buys back in February. On paper, UFC 173 was arguably a weaker offering, but the buyrate wasn’t that far off. Basically, it could have been a lot worse.
“It’s too early to get accurate numbers, but every indication we’ve gotten was very bad, and that it showed a steep decline from UFC 173, which was among the lower numbers of the last eight years. UFC PPV shows usually range from 200,000 to 500,000 Google searches after the event, and are usually in the top few searched for items in the country. A bad show may only do 100,000. Bellator’s show last month hit 100,000. A big show can top 500,000, with the shows that hover around 1 million buys usually doing anywhere from 1 million to 5 million searches. This show did less than 20,000, unheard of for a PPV…
(*crickets* / Photo via Getty)
Yesterday, MMAFighting’s Dave Meltzer reported that UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw pulled an estimated 200,000-215,000 pay-per-view buys. While that number is certainly on the low end of UFC buyrates, it’s not a disaster by any means. Keep in mind that UFC 169 — a card that featured a Renan Barao vs. Urijah Faber rematch, Jose Aldo defending his featherweight belt against Ricardo Lamas, and a high-profile heavyweight bout between Alistair Overeem and Frank Mir — only earned an estimated 230,000 buys back in February. On paper, UFC 173 was arguably a weaker offering, but the buyrate wasn’t that far off. Basically, it could have been a lot worse.
“It’s too early to get accurate numbers, but every indication we’ve gotten was very bad, and that it showed a steep decline from UFC 173, which was among the lower numbers of the last eight years. UFC PPV shows usually range from 200,000 to 500,000 Google searches after the event, and are usually in the top few searched for items in the country. A bad show may only do 100,000. Bellator’s show last month hit 100,000. A big show can top 500,000, with the shows that hover around 1 million buys usually doing anywhere from 1 million to 5 million searches. This show did less than 20,000, unheard of for a PPV.
Unlike UFC 173, which looked weak on paper and everyone knew wasn’t going to draw much, it still had Dan Henderson and Daniel Cormier in the No. 2 spot. They brought some star power in what was really the main event. It also had a lot to talk about after, due to T.J. Dillashaw’s upset win over Renan Barao.
This show didn’t have much interest going in. But most of the time, those type of shows deliver good action. This had none of that. It wasn’t terrible, but there was no fight you needed to see. As a likely sign of how the show went, Dana White didn’t even attend the post-fight press conference.”
In response to Meltzer’s story, our twitter friend @Niko138 added some inside information that suggests the UFC 174 buyrate was beyond dismal. Treat this as a rumor for now, but holy crap:
I’ve heard from a couple of people who would know, that early estimates of 174 buys have it just a bit under 100k. The sole reason I am posting about this (I normally try not to be one of those ratings/buys posters who everyone hates) is because if the show truly did this bad, it will be a good thing for us fans who complain about watered down cards. The UFC’s core audience was really being tested with this card, to see how much they could get away with buys wise, for a card with absolutely no drawing power to the casual viewer.
If this is the case, it sends a strong message to the UFC that the watered down cards are no longer going over with fans. For me, considering the cards are $60 and there is 14 a year…this is great news.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the number that comes out in the press is just above that, like 125…If you see the number come out around that area, then trust me, it did under 100k. This has to piss Dana off to no end considering the Bellator show did do a legit 100k
This is really interesting stuff to me, because like I said.. if true, the UFC is going to realize they can’t keep putting on shows like this as a numbered PPV, and expect its fans to continuously just blindly shell out the cash.
That’s a step in the right direction.. they know they are losing PPV buys, and hopefully they step their game up to fix it, by putting on more big fights per card. We can hope anyway.
So, a couple things. MMAPayout’s PPV Blue Book only dates back to UFC 57 in February 2006, and doesn’t show any UFC pay-per-view doing less than 140k buys. But according to Wikipedia (I know, I know), the last UFC PPV that did under 100k buys was UFC 53: Heavy Hitters, which took in just 90,000 buys in June 2005. In other words, you have to go back nine years to find a UFC PPV that performed as terribly as UFC 174 allegedly did.
My other thought is this: “Putting on more big fights per card” is not necessarily the answer. After years of seeing these UFC buyrates ebb and flow, my totally non-scientific conclusion is that 1) casual UFC fans only care about who’s fighting in the main event, and 2) nobody cares about little flyweights. Seriously. Non-Rousey bantamweight and featherweight title fights have always underperformed on pay-per-view, and it should come as no surprise that the first time the UFC tried to put a flyweight title fight in a pay-per-view main event, it would pull record-low numbers.
So, if the 100k buyrate is accurate — or even close to accurate — it’ll get the UFC’s attention. But don’t expect the promotion to start putting together more stacked PPVs in response; remember they have like 50 events/year to fill out, and they simply don’t have the manpower for it. Instead, the UFC’s major takeaway will probably be this: If we have to put a flyweight title fight on a pay-per-view card, there had better be a bigger fight on top of it.
(“Alright fellas, now let’s go eat!” — Matt Serra, pretty much any time of day. / Photo via MMAFighting.com)
It’s been over three years since the UFC produced a pay-per-view that earned more than one million buys, but it appears that UFC 168: Weidman vs. Silva 2 has ended the drought. According to Dave Meltzer, UFC 168 broke the seven-figure threshold, selling up to 1.1 million PPVs.
A small handful of UFC shows have crept into 900k+ territory since July 2010 — all headlined by superstars like Lesnar, St-Pierre, and Anderson Silva — but no others managed to score an even million until UFC 168, which could go down as the second-most-successful UFC PPV of all time. I guess MMA fans didn’t mind paying that extra five bucks after all.
(“Alright fellas, now let’s go eat!” — Matt Serra, pretty much any time of day. / Photo via MMAFighting.com)
It’s been over three years since the UFC produced a pay-per-view that earned more than one million buys, but it appears that UFC 168: Weidman vs. Silva 2 has ended the drought. According to Dave Meltzer, UFC 168 broke the seven-figure threshold, selling up to 1.1 million PPVs.
A small handful of UFC shows have crept into 900k+ territory since July 2010 — all headlined by superstars like Lesnar, St-Pierre, and Anderson Silva — but no others managed to score an even million until UFC 168, which could go down as the second-most-successful UFC PPV of all time. I guess MMA fans didn’t mind paying that extra five bucks after all.
