UFC104 PPV Buy Prediction

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 1:35 PM EDT Comment 59 comments

Here is our first attempt at using fan interest/buzz metrics to predict UFC pay per view buy-rates. We'll see how we do.

UFC 104 is live on pay-per-view this Saturday night from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Headlining the card will be undefeated light heavyweight champion Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida, defending his belt against fellow Brazilian Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. While Rua, as well as heavyweight co-headliners Cain Velasquez and Ben Rothwell, offer only limited pay-per-view drawing power among U.S. fans, an increasingly popular Machida may be the key to a healthy buyrate. The Karate expert received a huge amount of buzz when he took the belt by knocking out former champion Rashad Evans. If that casual fan interest can be maintained for UFC 104, Tapology predicts pay-per-view buys in the neighborhood of 730,000 for the event.

To build our predictions, we start with the peak level of fan interest that each UFC 104 main and co-main event fighter has generated in the past year. The key is Lyoto Machida, who pulled in a very strong 4.2% of total MMA fan buzz following his May fight against Rashad Evans. This exceeds the numbers for Shogun Rua, who only generated about a quarter of the buzz following his victory over Chuck Liddell in April. Velasquez and Rothwell each contribute some additional drawing power, but Machida is the critical piece of the puzzle.

Fighter	Peak Fan Buzz	Peak Month
Lyoto Machida	4.23%	May 2009
Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	1.17%	April 2009
Cain Velasquez	0.75%	July 2009
Ben Rothwell	0.44%	September 2009
Total	6.58%

Compared to the four most recent UFC pay per view events we see that UFC 104 stands to generate more interest than UFC 102 or 103, but notably less than UFC 100 or 101. Our expectation for UFC 103 was slightly higher than the actual results, however it is worth noting that it went head to head with a Floyd Mayweather boxing card which may have left some fans having to pick between ordering one event or the other.

Modeled on the rumored pay-per-view performance of those previous events, our prediction for UFC 104 is a respectable 730,000 buys. The driving force will be Machida, and whether or not he can convert all of his UFC 98 buzz into pay-per-view orders on Saturday night.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Fan Buzz	Reported Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	11.1%	1,720,000
UFC 101	8.0%	1,000,000
UFC 102	4.6%	435,000
UFC 103	5.6%	400,000
UFC 104 (predicted)	6.6%	730,000

Source: Tapology.com

The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Bloody Elbow readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bloody Elbow editors or staff.

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Fan buzz?

How do you calculate the fan buzz? The source link is blocked for me here at work.

by MMAWrestling on Oct 21, 2009 1:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

amount of activity for people looking at each of the fighters across different websites, and how those activity levels go up and down.

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 2:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think you’ll need new data sources… and you need to add many more elements but atleast one big one you missed:

UFC interest.

Hardcore Fan Buzz is a very good indicator but not the only one. Just like a political party if you energize the base and captivate the casuals its a homerun. You have one piece. Now you need to find a reliable measurement for casual interest and find the correct correlations.

The results of UFC 103 and your data reflects this missing piece and why the prediction wasnt correct.

by mmalogic on Oct 21, 2009 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

it’s not meant to be a hardcore fan buzz, but it might not be quite casual enough. we’ll see…

what could also be in play is how strong UFC 100 and 101 did. those might be outliers in retrospect, but they have a lot of influence right now over the prediction.

my gut tells me nobody knows who machida is, but for right now i’m not putting any of my own “opinion” into the number. just using what the equation tells me.

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 3:48 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

from their site

Tapology’s buzz rankings are a measure of fan interest and activity. Tapology uses data from Compete, Inc. to directly capture the level of internet users reading about and looking at over 800 of the biggest names in mixed martial arts. Activity is aggregated across multiple websites and represents an actual measurement of millions of consumers. The rankings represent United States fans only; the activity of non-U.S. consumers is not included.

I'm old school hating Lesnar, I've been hating Lesnar since '08

by MicahW on Oct 21, 2009 3:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

the question of course is, does this buzz have any impact on PPV buys…

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 3:52 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i have no idea. my 2 brother in laws are 17 & 18 years old. they play the UFC game, they like coming over to my house and learning an arm bar (mainly they like having their friends over and squeezing the other person till they tap). but really… they dont come over for PPVs, but wouldnt miss it when Lesnar fights. i think thats the fan that generally pushed UFC 100 to so many PPVs, not boxing fans or sports fans who watched for the sport. i think the UFC has 750k fans that they can always count on for a PPV with 0 mega hype (not saying 750k will buy everytime.) but i would say its almost impossible to predict what it will take to get the fringe viewers like my brothers in law.

I'm old school hating Lesnar, I've been hating Lesnar since '08

by MicahW on Oct 21, 2009 3:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I’m thinking it will do around 400Kish. Would be shocked if it was over 650K..

This card seems farily weak to me.

by oasis77 on Oct 21, 2009 2:03 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

wow

don’t know what to say about that… weak? really?

I'm the kind of girl who loves to watch a GOOD fight!
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by funnytiger on Oct 21, 2009 2:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

absolutely. Outside of the main event there is nothing that screams spend $55 on this.

by oasis77 on Oct 21, 2009 2:29 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

Heavyweight bout: Cain Velasquez vs. Ben Rothwell
Lightweight bout: Gleison Tibau vs. Josh Neer
Lightweight bout: Joe Stevenson vs. Spencer Fisher
Welterweight bout: Anthony Johnson vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida

Most of these bouts are fight night material IMO. And that’s the MAIN card..

by oasis77 on Oct 21, 2009 2:31 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

Yea

I disagree, but to each their own.

I'm the kind of girl who loves to watch a GOOD fight!
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Join the DC Area UFC Meetup Group
http://www.meetup.com/DCUFCGroup

by funnytiger on Oct 21, 2009 3:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I’m not that hyped for this card either , the main event is definitely decent but the rest…? If I had to choose I’d get UFC 105 for sure over this one. It’s much better than UFC 103 though I’ll give you that

by JoelMan on Oct 21, 2009 3:47 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

you could be right. the premise here is that the main event and to a lesser extent the co-main event are all that really matter for generating PPV sales. the rest of the fights have little to no impact on whether or not people order.

that said, if the undercard fights consistently suck, people will order but then not enjoy the show as much. if this keeps happening bit by bit it will erode people’s confidence in the product, and you start going down the boxing path.

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 2:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think the method will have to change, there is no way this thing does close to this number. Not because of the lower fights, but because Shogun is meaningless to casuals and his “fan interest” on the internet is disproportionate to his drawing ability because hardcores love him.

I think it will do 400.

by Michael Rome on Oct 21, 2009 2:31 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

maybe. not doing any voodoo here, just using what the numbers suggest.

over the next few events we’ll see if it works at all, or not. if not, we’ll stop doing it ;)

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 2:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah I’m thinking it will probably come well under that number but this is a really interesting way to try to predict the buys. I’m really interested to see how your model does.

by Chadsac on Oct 21, 2009 3:12 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yup

400-500K.

by MMASuPreMaCy on Oct 21, 2009 3:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

370k – 410k

Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.

by Brent Brookhouse on Oct 21, 2009 3:15 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I'll take the over

Walla walla walla I'm an idiot.

by ufc4 on Oct 21, 2009 7:17 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions 0 recs

A reasoned decision. It’s 2009. The UFC’s low water mark is 400k in the US, and about 375k for European shows. I believe the fact that there is a championship match on this show would push this fairly substantially past the buy rate of UFC 103, especially since it is a Light Heavyweight Championship match.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 21, 2009 8:05 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Very interesting. Since your statistical model is still fairly new I’m sure you will need to tweak it over the next few events to get it more accurate, that is if the correlation between buys and buzz is even significant. I will be interested to see what happens, good idea here.

by Sliup on Oct 21, 2009 3:47 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

really not sure how it will do

basically, the UFC 104 prediction is being cranked way up because it’s reacting to all the “buzz” that Machida got after UFC 98.

i too am suspicious but for now i’ll just go with the buzz data and see if it actually works.

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 3:50 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

It would be nice if you could back test your formula.

by mmalogic on Oct 21, 2009 4:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

did it for a few. it nailed 101 and 102 pretty well, but over-estimated 103

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 4:45 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

if your data sources have historical cache/records you can back test for way more.

by mmalogic on Oct 21, 2009 4:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Here’s my prediction:

This card will show how much of a draw Lyoto Machida is.

by mmalogic on Oct 21, 2009 4:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

logic FTW

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 4:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That’s not exactly going out on a limb, he’s the headliner and champion.

Walla walla walla I'm an idiot.

by ufc4 on Oct 21, 2009 7:19 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions 0 recs

UFC 104 Buy Rate Predicition

730k seems high to me.

Not that I’ve ever developed an algorithm to calculate buy rates, but just looking at the data presented in this post, Machida’s peak “buzz” was in May of 2009. Not only was that five months ago, but the fact that Machida’s buzz is not currently at it’s peak indicates strongly that there is less buzz for him now than there was then. Ben Rothwell’s peak buzz is, at least, within a month from Saturday’s show, but sadly he is the least popular of the sample set by a significant margin.

Taking that into consideration, I look at the numbers for the most recent UFC pay-per-view events. UFC 100 and 101 had the most buzz and it follows that they too had the higher buy rates. However, the buy rate decreased from UFC 102 to UFC 103 while the buzz increased a full percentage point. Why, then, are we to believe that the percentage point increase from UFC 103 to UFC 104 should indicate a gain in buy rate at all, let alone such a large gain?

My understanding, based off of the buy rates for UFC 102 and 103, is that Randy Couture is a bit more popular than Rich Franklin. My only conclusion, based on the buy rate estimate for UFC 104, is that the prevailing assumption is that Lyoto Machida as Light Heavyweight champion is more popular than Randy Couture by nearly a two-to-one margin. You might counter that other matches on the card affect buyrates, and that is true in the case of shows with multiple, big-time main events (i.e. UFC 100 & UFC 101), but let’s be honest: UFC 102, 103, and 104 are strictly about the main event, and more specifically about one particular fighter in each main event in the context of who is drawing buys.

Now, is Lyoto Machida more popular today than Randy Couture was going into UFC 102? My gut says no, though I should qualify that by noting that I have not seen the UFC 104 countdown special. My sense is that, from a mainstream perspective, Couture is clearly a bigger draw that Lyoto Machida. However, Lyoto Machida is currently the champion of the most storied division in the UFC. My sense, and this is a total “captain obvious” statement, is that the championship adds a certain amount of drawing power to any fighter. But is Lyoto more popular, even as champion, than Randy was before being clobbered by Nogueira? I think that’s possible, but certainly not to the degree that you would suspect if you buy into the notion that UFC 104 will do 730k buys. Admittedly, my gut instinct is hardly as scientific as the system used to predict the forthcoming buy rate, regardless of how scientific it is or is not, but I don’t feel like I’m totally off base on this.

Additionally, I’m not sure how good of a sign it is that, as Dave Meltzer has pointed out, they are advertising that free tickets can be had to UFC 104 if only you have access to Dana White on twitter, which isn’t exactly a rarity. Maybe the lack of local interest in the show won’t affect the buy rate adversely, but I also don’t imagine it’s supporting the theory of the buzz being about halfway between that of UFC 103 and UFC 101.

My prediction, based on all of this meandering nonsense, is 525k buys. A solid number to be sure, but not approaching 730k, which I believe is a buy rate that’s been reached fewer than ten times in the company’s history. Though, the UFC is more popular today than at any previous point in its history (prior to UFC 100, anyhow), so maybe I’m underestimating this show.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 21, 2009 4:54 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

peak buzz usually happens after an event so you have to compare pre-event buzz rates. Also Machida is new so obviously the “buzz” about him will be inflated initially as its a “novelty” whereas Randy has been talked about for years.

by mmalogic on Oct 21, 2009 5:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Well, I agree that buzz is highest immediately after a show, but I would think that a fighter’s buzz would increase, if he’s truly a draw, immediately prior to his next fight. My point is that Machida has not, as I understand it, gained any “buzz” since beating Rashad Evans. Unless the buyrate is at or near the Tapology prediction of 730k, I suspect he won’t gain much buzz even if he defeats Shogun in an impressive fashion.

Also, are you suggesting that a novelty act generates more buys than a long-time star? Maybe it’s an argument of semantics, but I feel like novelty acts generate more buzz than the average schmo but not as much as the true stars. But like I said, it might just be semantics, because I suspect some folks would consider, or may have previously considered Brock Lesnar a “novelty.” Then again, he drew more fans after his initial loss to Frank Mir, and I feel that a novelty would lose his drawing power after a loss.

Additionally, Shogun means nothing to the audience at large. Machida against any other Light Heavyweight under the UFC’s employ would do as many, if not more, buys. Conversely, while Nogueira isn’t exactly a household name himself, he did have the benefit of appearing as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter, so that alone makes him a bigger draw than Shogun to the UFC audience by and large.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 21, 2009 6:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Machida’s non spike Google trends rating has increased a lot since his last fight.

A man should never waste an opportunity to keep his mouth shut.

by iiowyn on Oct 21, 2009 8:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Are the google trends factored in to the buzz rating Tapology is using?

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 8:50 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

No idea.

A man should never waste an opportunity to keep his mouth shut.

by iiowyn on Oct 22, 2009 9:14 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

No, Im saying because Machida is a new “character” his initial buzz after a fight will spike higher than a randy couture because he’s new to the seen. Thats what I mean by “novelty”. Its new.

by mmalogic on Oct 22, 2009 4:41 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Machida and Randy trends data for this year is interesting, after winning the title Lyoto’s line is very similar to the Randy’s line when they both are not fighting.

A man should never waste an opportunity to keep his mouth shut.

by iiowyn on Oct 22, 2009 9:17 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Then I would be inclined to conclude that UFC 104 will do about the same buy rate as UFC 102.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 9:25 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

good post!

www.tapology.com | twitter.com/tapology

by GregS123 on Oct 21, 2009 5:19 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think Dana’s given away tickets to a lot of recent events, including 100, so I don’t know if that means anything at all either. Interested to see what correlation there is between the event’s ticket sales vs. the pay-per-view buy. Is the local marketing for the event a completely different animal than the pay-per-view marketing, i.e. the Countdown show, Dana’s Vlogs, or whatever else they’re doing on the internet to draw buys, or do the two go hand in hand…

by Kwisatz Haderach on Oct 21, 2009 8:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think Dana’s given away tickets to a lot of recent events, including 100

I don’t really feel it makes much sense to compare UFC 104 to UFC 100.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 8:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It doesn’t, except to say that they gave away tickets to both, so why would this be an indicator of poor ticket sales? There are more useful indicators, as you point out, such as the fighters on the cards.

by Kwisatz Haderach on Oct 22, 2009 9:32 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Dana gives free tix away to all the fights now and he notifies people where to meet him to get them via his Twitter so don’t read too much into that.

Walla walla walla I'm an idiot.

by ufc4 on Oct 21, 2009 8:44 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions 0 recs

You know, I didn’t read to much into it initially, but then I heard and read Dave Meltzer pointing out what that might mean regarding ticket sales, and if he’s citing that as an example of a less-than-stellar interest in this even, who am I to disagree?

He won me over to his side of the argument a bit. I don’t think it’s a doom and gloom situation, but in concert with the other points I’ve made, it’s not in any way a sign that interest is increasing.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 8:47 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Meltzer reported that the Countdown to UFC 104 did about 524k viewers, which he noted was lower than usual. I’m not sure what the typical viewership for these countdowns is (around 700k or so, but I can’t honestly recall), but it seems unlikely that more than 100% of the Countdown audience would be willing to pay to watch the PPV event that it was hyping.

I say “unlikely” because it’s not impossible. I’m certain there are people on this very site that didn’t watch the Countdown to UFC 104 who plan to purchase the PPV. How widespread is that? It’s probably not that great a number, a couple ten thousand or so, I’d suppose. But then that puts a lot of pressure on the UFC to convert the viewers of the Countdown show to buyers of the PPV.

I’ll stick with 525k just because I’m optimistic, but I think it’s realistic to think this will do just anywhere between 400k to 500k buys. 730k seems like an even greater stretch to me at this point.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 9:00 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

MMA Payout answered my question. UFC Countdown specials for 2009 have averaged 676k viewers. A little less than the 700k I predicted, but not so far off.

Interestingly, UFC 102 did 523k viewers for the countdown special and, as referenced in the original post, 435k buys. That’s a difference of nearly 100k viewers, but still, that’s a conversion rate of 83% of the free audience to the paying audience, which is a good rate by any measure.

I still think UFC 104 will do better than 102, but I’m less and less convinced that 525k is realistic, let alone 730k. Though let me just say that if UFC 104 does 730k buys, it will be a tremendous sign of the health of the UFC brand. Not that 400k is a sign of weakness by any means; it’s unquestionably a good buy rate, but 730k for Lyoto Machida against essentially a no-name to the casual audience would be remarkable.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 9:30 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don’t think that they are that strong of an indicator because they come on at various different times of night and various different days of the week. There is never a set time slot for it.

by Zack Gobie on Oct 22, 2009 2:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Annoys the crap out of me.

A man should never waste an opportunity to keep his mouth shut.

by iiowyn on Oct 22, 2009 6:53 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I’m guessing 600k. 450-500k normally, but I suspect there might be a good amount of pent-up demand given the Kimbo TUF and the long time since 103.

by Michaelthebox on Oct 21, 2009 4:59 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The pent up demand point is relevant, shows with over a month off before them tend to do well.

Maybe 450-500. 600 I think is completely unrealistic, the April show had a huge Canada boost because of all the press there, Chuck Liddell, and more and ended up doing 625. This won’t come close I don’t think.

by Michael Rome on Oct 21, 2009 5:34 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The April show was before Undisputed, UFC 100, and TUF 10. I think between them those three have brought the buyer base up to a new level.

We still haven’t seen the TUF 10 effect on the buyership rates. I think it will be worth at least 50k buys for a show of this size.

by Michaelthebox on Oct 22, 2009 1:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

TUF

104 should exceed 102 and 103 purely from TUF. 5 million people were watching the kimbo fight. they’ve been pumping out machida ads for that and every other episode for a month. ought to be worth a couple hundred thousand buys.

what has been will be again; what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

by Jeremy S. on Oct 21, 2009 7:08 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

This is a bit different, granted, but more than five million people watched Kimbo fight James Thompson on CBS, a card which featured a great match between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith.

Then, when Scott Smith fought Robbie Lawler in a rematch on CBS without the benefit of Kimbo fighting on the card, the rating dipped substantially.

My point is that interest in Kimbo does not necessarily mean an increased interest in the organization as a whole. Is there really a cross over appeal between Kimbo Slice and Lyoto Machida amongst the casual fans? I suspect not.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 21, 2009 7:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

This is a good point, but I still think there will be some positive effect because of Kimbo and TUF.

People tuned in to watch Kimbo on CBS, they saw Smith and Lawler, but the Kimbo fans didn’t know about the rematch.

This time around, the Kimbo fans have been bombarded with commercials about 104. It’s not going to be huge, but it’s going to have some effect.

by Phildo on Oct 21, 2009 8:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

So your argument is that the Kimbo fans that watched the first CBS fight didn’t watch CBS at all leading up to the Lawler/Smith rematch? I’m pretty sure that CBS ran commercials promoting the rematch, but it’s been a while so I don’t remember just how good their promotion was. Of course, not remembering the promotion may be my answer right there.

...Behold, a pale horse. The man that sat upon it was Wieters, and hell followed with him.

"BJ on the BE" - Kierkegaard

by Brett Jones on Oct 22, 2009 8:50 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It doesn’t matter if they watched CBS at all (but less people did, it’s summer there’s less on TV) it’s that they weren’t making the connections in their head.

The Kimbo fans are watching UFC and seeing commercials for a UFC event this weekend, it’s going to be a lot easier to get them to watch the PPV than the people who watched the fight on CBS, then had to be watching CBS again 2 months later to catch a commercial.

It’s the one thing that Zuffa has figured out that seems so simple, yet the other people trying to move in on them can’t figure out. Every UFC show is a commercial for at least the next one, if not the next two or three. You have a captive audience who is interested in your product, let them know how/when/where they can get more.

by Phildo on Oct 22, 2009 9:52 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The other thing that should be mentioned about this, is the “kimbo fans” have never paid for mma before. Yes, he filled up arenas a few times, but there is a difference between watching on CBS or Spike and ordering a PPV, but I still think the UFC has done a better job of telling people that just tune in for Kimbo about 104 than Elite ever did for their other cards.

by Phildo on Oct 22, 2009 3:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The problem with this system is that it doesn’t take into account a lot of outside factors that effect buyrates. As noted in the post, there’s no way to quantify the effect the Maywather/Marquez had on UFC 103, and there’s no way to calculate the effect the TUF commercials will have either.

Considering (1) the UFC’s base number of about 350k buys, (2) the hype currently surrounding Machida, (3) the ever-growing fanbase, (4) the buys of the last shows Machida and Shogun appeared on, and (5) the plethora of commercials running during TUF, I’d say this show will hit in the 600k-700k range, with 730k not being all that ridiculous, as some have stated.

by dropkick101 on Oct 22, 2009 3:42 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs