UFC PPV sales 2017 *updated for UFC 214*

If they can Squeeze McGregor onto a card before the years end they will do alright.
 
lol why do you guys watch something you hate? Yall are more like WWE fans then you think.
 
maybe the UFC should try promoting their other fighters rather than just pray and promote the 1 guy that promotes himself!
 
Ppv model is dead. Pageantry is the only thing that sells
 
One MMA Fan said:
Are you comparing and event card like UFC 205 first time ever in NY at the Garden to this leftovers cards ?
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Well, how about comparing to UFC events in general? These sales look pretty piss poor, especially considering we are more than half way through the year. I think we are looking at a trend here. Back in the day with guys like GSP, Anderson, Chuck, Randy, Brock (Blech!!), and others, we had consistently higher sales. Let's not pretend the UFC isn't down on its luck in a big way in events without Conor (with Ronda pretty much gone).

Edit: SHOCKER ALERT- people don't want to pay $60 for these paper thin cards in this diluted UFC that has way more events than they have the talent to fill.
 
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Levi_ said:
Well, how about comparing to UFC events in general? These sales look pretty piss poor, especially considering we are more than half way through the year. I think we are looking at a trend here. Back in the day with guys like GSP, Anderson, Chuck, Randy, Brock (Blech!!), and others, we had consistently higher sales. Let's not pretend the UFC isn't down on its luck in a big way in events without Conor (with Ronda pretty much gone).
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More then half way into the year and a total shit show.

We had 1 real card UFC 211 that's it and it got 300-350k buys around that.

Now things are starting to look up we get UFC 214 I suspect 750-850k buys for that one then we will have NY and end of the year event cards those should be stacked. (GSP should come back by then.. who knows what Brock is doing maybe end of the year or he is just using it to negotiate with WWE)

Khabib vs Tony, Stipe vs Cain are also good fights and maybe Conor does come back in December after Floyd sends him packing to MMA.
 
PPV system is dying and they need to get rid of it. There are probably better ways to earn money like going more on FOX or other big TV channels.

Also the fucking pace is not helping. No casual is going to watch 3 hours main card (4 if you have 2 title fight all going 5 rounds). Cut that shit short to 2 hours or less.
 
HI SCOTT NEWMAN said:
UFC 208 PPV buys: 200,000 (2017)
UFC 209 PPV buys: 250,000 (2017)
UFC 210 PPV buys: 300,000 (2017)
UFC 211 PPV buys: 300,000 (2017)

Now lets compare to very old UFC events, to see how much UFC has "grown" o_Oo_Oo_O

UFC 2 PPV buys: 300,000 (1994)
UFC 5 PPV buys: 260,000 (1995)
UFC 6 PPV buys: 250,000 (1995)
UFC 8 PPV buys: 300,000 (1996)

Yes granted there was no streaming back in 1995, so people had to buy the PPV to watch it , its still not moved forward enough. I think in 2007, 2008, 2009 it was moving forward hugely and bigger than ever, but last 5 years its getting less popular.

A lot of the people I work with they still ask does that Chuck guy fight these days. And many of them know Tank Abbott and also Shamrock. If I asked them about Nunes or Garbrandt or Woodley or guys like that they wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about
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Streaming may have been non-existent, but PPV theft was still a real thing back in those days thanks to the infamous "black boxes";

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/21/sports/tv-sports-black-box-art-of-steal-per-view.html

"Although there are no precise pay-per-view theft figures, a survey by the National Cable Television Association estimated that basic and premium cable services suffered a $4.7 billion plundering in 1991."

"Arum insists that every major pay-per-view card would have performed better if not for piracy. "Foreman-Morrison did 600,000 buys and should have done a million," he said, denying any hyperbole. "Any fight that does 300,000 buys should do 600,000. When we had 16 million addressable pay-per-view homes in 1991 for the Foreman-Holyfield fight, it did 1.4 million buys. But now, with 50 percent more addressable homes, we don't approach that.""

Those were quite prominent back in those days. I knew people who had them and you probably did too if you were around.

The end of Arum's quote there also gives you the idea on how limited the available PPV audience was in 1995 with it being around 25 million households. And at a time when PPV wasn't just a push of the button away. You had to drive down to your local cable company in those days, rent a cable box for the weekend, and then return it the day after the PPV showing. Unless you had one of those black market boxes, that was the only way to watch PPV then. According to Marc Taffet when he was still at HBO and working as the head of their PPV department in 2015, the availability of PPV nowadays is about 100 million households. Four times the size as it was back in those days. While the absolute numbers may be the same, I'd say getting 1.2% of the available market to buy your product is better than only getting 0.3% of them to do so.
 
TatooNU said:
We don't know the exact fox and international tv rights fees. They must be extremely large. I have been to UFC fight nights where there are only 5k people in basketball arenas.
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Here you go;

http://mmajunkie.com/2016/11/ufc-investor-docs-show-how-brazil-eclipsed-canada-as-mma-mecca-reveal

According to this source what they get from Brazil makes up most of what they get in international rights fees with that being $40 million per year and also a further $32 million next year. There's a handful of countries that pay in the $2-$5 million range (Canada, Australia, UK), but nothing close to what they get from Brazil.
 
ArtOfDrowning said:
PPV system is dying and they need to get rid of it. There are probably better ways to earn money like going more on FOX or other big TV channels.

Also the fucking pace is not helping. No casual is going to watch 3 hours main card (4 if you have 2 title fight all going 5 rounds). Cut that shit short to 2 hours or less.
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LOL it wasn't "dying" a year ago when the UFC was setting PPV buy records and at the height of its powers. Now that the UFC is in the shitter, it's "dying". LOL

Face it, UFC is having a horrific time..
 
At this rate, by the end of the year 50k buyrate will be the new normal
 
Two reasons. The UFC hasn't been able to create any new super stars after Rousey and McGregor, and most of this year's PPVs have had 2-3 mediocre fights on the main card. Cynthia Calvillo fought on two of those PPVs - who is Cynthia Calvillo and why should I spend money to watch her fight? Or take the latest PPV as an example: Curtis Blaydes vs Daniel Omielańczuk and Rob Font vs Douglas Silva de Andrade. Do you think anyone except close relatives would pay a cent to watch these guy fight?

When you run an event ever 2-3 weeks that are supported by one or max two decent fights, you will get watered down cards overall. It's time to re-negotiate with Fox and run fewer events and start stacking PPVs with great fights.
 
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