Is Rousey better for ratings? [MMA fighting]

[Malthian]

Per MMA fighting...

Not only did UFC 190's near million pay-per-view buys, which bested the phenomenal sales figure set by 189, take literally all of us by storm inside the hardcore bubble, it also looks like "Rowdy" is able provide a bigger post-event ratings bump to Fox Sports cards otherwise destined for low numbers than the brash talking "Notorious" one - clearly demonstrating that it is Ronda Rousey, not Conor McGregor, who is better for building the UFC brand...

...This is especially significant, as the ratings for the TUF 21 finale that took place one night after UFC 189, fresh in the euphoria of that historic card, did a paltry 691,000 viewers. This was the second lowest rated event this year, behind UFN 62 in March, headlined by Damian Maia vs Ryan LaFlare. The TUF 21 finale, much like the Nashville show, also lacked star power. I spoke with Luke Thomas about the traffic at MMAfighting.com for the event and he reported it was "close to zero". When asked if the fight was merely drowned out in McGregor mania, or if there was a hangover, he suggested that it was the card's lack of star power above all else. Clearly, for that event, McGregor had no carry over.

What makes this even more shocking is the belief that much of Rousey's fanbase comes, largely, from outside the sport's typical audience. While this is obviously true, as no MMA insiders expected her numbers to be close to what they were, the general consensus among many fans this week, despite her PPV success, is that this demographic reality would limit her ability to bring in new long term UFC fans in the way Lesnar, Liddell or the early TUF era did during those boom periods. It seemed like that while Ronda was the novelty that brought TMZ and The Wall Street Journal alike, McGregor had the ability to energize actual fight fans around the sport itself. It seemed like Ronda would create Ronda fans, while McGregor could create fight fans...

This does not appear to be the case, and in fact seems the opposite is true. It seems like McGregor engages fans who are already familiar with the sport, and already know which fights they do and do not want to see, while Rousey is the one bringing in fresh faces who may have not made those types of decisions on OSP or Wonderboy just yet. This gives McGregor less ability to provide a bump in viewership to other events than Rousey(at this time, as he may cross over into a mainstream star himself). UFC 189 was the hardcore UFC fan's dream card, but most people who viewed it were already engaged with the sport to one degree or another. They already had an idea what they're interested in. The people who tuned in for Rousey are comparative virgins and as a result, more likely to decide to sit down and have another, when they otherwise wouldn't have tuned in to the UFC at all.

http://www.mmafighting.com/2015/8/1...ues-to-defy-all-logic-proves-to-have-a-bigger

Interesting article. For a while people have been debating the value of Rousey in terms of her casual fan base converting to regular fans.

The writer posits that because McConor's fan base is more likely to be already existing fight fans (or more educated fight fans), that they're actually LESS likely to convert to regular MMA fans as they would be already aware of MMA and more discerning in their tastes.

Meanwhile, Rousey's fans essentially as new eyeballs to the sport would be much more likely to explore the sport further through mediums like Fight Night as they don't really know what they like yet.

In other words, Rousey's fans are new to the sport, everything is shiny, they're not highly educated in the technicalities of MMA, so they're more likely to consume other UFC content regardless of card quality or previous conceptions of "star power".

Is the generation of Rousey fans the new TUF wave? Or are they going to be more like the Brock wave in that they're tuning in for Brock but mostly moving on? Or are they going to be like niche combat sports fans that are just following a specific fighter that loses complete interest should they fail or depart ala Boxers?

Some stuff to think about.

 

[Syphilis]

UFC 189 was one of the best MMA cards of all time. It's reasonable to assume that the next (few) UFC card(s) will receive a substantial boost off of the back of this. I can't imagine any first time UFC viewers watching this card and not being hyped for the next one (that's not actually true at all - I can easily see how some people would have found 189 too brutal).

UFC 189 had the champ drop out and still did huge buys regardless.

Many of the people I spoke to, who were excited about the Connor fight prior to 189 here in Scotland, were definitely not existing fight fans, as the author of the article claims. This is of course a very small sample size and doesn't necessarily pertain to the USA.

I'm not saying Connor is a bigger is a bigger draw than Ronda, or vise versa. I just think it's not a simple case of comparing these two pay per views and declaring one a bigger draw than the other.

 

[Toothless King]

Cliff:
UFC 189 = real MMA fan & educated fan
UFC 190 = Ronda's fan & WMMA fan & uneducated fan

Shocking...not