UFC 107 Pay Per View Prediction: Late Surge in Interest May Help Numbers

http://www.tapology.com/2009/12/ufc-107-pay-per-view-prediction/

A late spike in online interest for Diego Sanchez may signify a more promising pay per view performance than initially expected for UFC 107, live this Saturday night from Memphis, Tennessee. While lightweight champion BJ Penn has the more highly-regarded skills among long-time followers of the sport, it is Diego Sanchez and his larger casual fanbase from his Ultimate Fighter Season 1 stint that may make or break the pay per view performance for the event. Respectable if not overwhelming online interest in Penn, plus increasingly stronger online interest for Sanchez is leading our latest model of pay per view buys to 540,000 for the event.

For the past two events we have slightly updated our method of making predictions, and are now using an absolute “buzz score” rather than a percentage “buzz share” for the forecast. The higher each fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Diego Sanchez leads the UFC 107 main and co-main event participants in online buzz, generating over 50% more activity than champion BJ Penn. Frank Mir and Cheick Kongo help bring more casual fan interest in any co-main event bout since UFC 101 when Forrest Griffin squared off against Anderson Silva. While Mir is receiving nowhere near the level of attention surrounding his UFC 100 bout with Brock Lesnar, there appears to be a fair amount of lasting recognition at play.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Diego Sanchez	16.7
BJ Penn	10.3
Frank Mir	8.1
Cheick Kongo	6.9
Total	42.0

 

Tapology’s pay per view predictions for the past two UFC events ended up being significant overestimates, which gives us some pause in predicting yet another healthy buy rate. At the time, Lyoto Machida’s immense online following led to a bold UFC 104 prediction of 730,000. While the event failed to approach such a lofty level, it did end up coming in above many other pre-fight predictions at around 500,000 buys. While the scale was off, this directionally correct result gives us some ongoing confidence in the online fan buzz indicator for predicting pay per view results. The extremely low figures for UFC 106, meanwhile, resulted in our pre-event prediction of 510,000 buys being a complete dud.

The UFC 100 and UFC 101 mega-events are now having less and less influence in our model, with the poorer performing UFC 102, 103, and 106 events having greater say. Despite concern that we may once again be overstating the importance of online buzz, we are sticking with the model which is predicting 540,000 buys for Saturday night’s UFC 107 event.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	98.3	1,720,000
UFC 101	53.1	850,000
UFC 102	30.7	435,000
UFC 103	35.0	375,000
UFC 104	44.7	500,000
UFC 106	38.0	360,000 (preliminary)
UFC 107	42.0	540,000 (pre-fight forecast)

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found atMMAPayout.com, which in turn frequently source the reporting of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

Tapology’s buzz rankings are a measure of fan interest and activity. Tapology uses data from Compete Inc to measure the level of internet users checking out over 800 of the biggest names in MMA. Activity is aggregated across multiple websites and represents United States fans only.