UFC 102 and WEC 43: Bad Economy, Bad Luck, Or Just Bad Planning?

UFC 102 and WEC 43: Blame it On The Economy Or Just Bad Decision Making?

 It is pretty easy to finally start blaming the bad economy for the struggles that UC 102 and WEC 43 have been facing, but that is only part of the problem. Lets start to consider some of the decisions made by Zuffa for their upcoming events. First, hosting UFC 102 in Portland via MMAPayout:

A story that’s seemingly flown right under the radar the last couple weeks is the fact that the UFC is having trouble selling tickets for its 102 event to be held at the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. The venue holds nearly 20,000 people for an MMA event, but has sold just over 9,000 tickets to date.

It’s surprising news for a number of reasons: Randy Couture is an Oregon boy, MMA is fairly popular in the state, and the UFC has built up a tremendous amount of momentum in recent months. When you look deeper, however, it’s not so surprising at all that UFC 102 is struggling to fill its arena.

The UFC was actually slated to bring their show to Portland back in November of 2008, but it is believed that the organization cancelled those plans and chose Las Vegas instead due to a combination of the poor economy in Oregon and exhoribidant event taxation in Portland.

Adding to the problem is the combination of both the Oregon's State Athletic Commission and the city of Portland each taxing 6% from Zuffa:

Exacerbating the problem even further are the 6% gross receipt taxes levied by both the Oregon State Athletic Commission and the City of Portland for MMA events held in the city – ie., 12%.

The UFC subsequently set ticket levels at $600, $400, $300, $200, $100, and $50 ostensibly to recover some of the bottom line that will be taxed away. This has obviously left some UFC fans quite reluctant to pony up their hard earned cash in a very drab-looking economy.

More after the jump...

How bad is Portlands economy, here is a quote from Oregon Live, titled Oregon's economy heading 'into a pit':

Oregon’s economy, bad as it is, will get even worse over the coming months, threatening double-digit unemployment and early school closures while sucking billions of dollars from the state budget, according to a forecast released Friday.

...
According to Potiowsky’s forecast, which is used to set state spending levels, the current state budget will come up short by $855 million. For the 2009-11 budget, the gap between projected revenue and the rising cost of state services grows to $3 billion.

...
"The perfect storm is here," Potiowsky said. "And Oregon is feeling the recession stronger than many other states."

Here is what an MMA fan from Oregon had to say about what is currently going on with the UFC 102:

They’ll be lucky to have the Rose Garden here in Portland 3/4 full even if they spend the rest of the week giving away tickets which is the only way they’re going to move them. There is zero ‘buzz’ here in Portland for what should be a huge event. The top story on our local sports radio station today was about the UFC’s inability to sell tickets with local hero Randy Couture headlining. Right now they’ve got 9,000 tickets sold in the 20,000+ seat Rose Garden. Matt Lindland’s local promotion has drawn better crowds than that. They’ve done a shoddy job of promoting the event here–presumably they thought they could just slap ‘UFC’ on the marquee and watch the tickets fly out the box office.

... As far as Moishe’s comment, the Indoor Lacrosse team or the Junior Hockey team here in Portland don’t draw much less than 9000. Our local soccer team draws better than that.

When the clueless mainstream sports media starts to notice that the UFC is having problems selling tickets, there’s a problem. Here in Portland, they’ve got the tickets priced way to high for the market and the card plus they picked a bad weekend to schedule the event (lots of other things going on, including the Oregon State Fair) and they’ve done a horrendous job marketing. Simply stated–there’s no "buzz" here about the event. The only local advertising I’ve seen is a beer display at the convenience store. The UFC will blame the economy, but caller after caller said that it wasn’t the reason–basically everyone said that they’d rather watch it on TV and not pay $200-$400 a ticket, they’d rather watch it in a local bar for a $20 cover or whatever, or that they were doing something else. A surprising number of **MMA fans** didn’t even *know* that they’re having UFC 102 here in Portland. If your core audience doesn’t know about an event, its the fault of the promotion. If I didn’t follow the sport closely, I’d have found out about it two days ago when I went into the local 7-11 for a Big Gulp.

The WEC is facing similar problems, when they decided to host WEC 43 in Youngstown, Ohio. Forbes recently listed Youngstown among the 10 cities "with the longest road to recovery" from the national economic recession.

The latest, released Wednesday on forbes.com, the magazine’s Web site, lists "Youngstown-Warren-Boardman" among the 10 cities "with the longest road to recovery" from the national economic recession.

The list of 10 also includes the New York City area, Detroit and Flint, Mich., and six areas in California including Los Angeles.

"Youngstown and the entire Mahoning Valley is suffering from an economic decline," said Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams. "That’s not news; it’s been going on for 30 years. The recent economic downturn has made it a little tougher. Things are difficult and challenging. We have a long way to go. But we have had plenty of positive press."

Hosting WEC 43 in Youngstown on a week-day wasn't the only problem that the WEC would be facing. Issues between Direct TV and Versus started to be reported, as well as lack of ticket sales from Dave Meltzer, and the same day weigh-ins (which were somehow waived for the UFC but not the WEC?) as reported by Steve Cofield, as was reported on BE:

Dave Meltzer: "No, I don’t either. Plus, it’s September 2nd and September 1st is when at this point they may go off DirecTV so you know that seems to add up and plus the other one is is that there, the show isn’t going to be in Youngstown when they do the remake of the show on October the 10th, so to me that also seems to indicate that they sold no tickets in Youngstown plus the Versus thing, so I’m thinking there’s both of those things, I mean I don’t know what the advance was in Youngstown, no one ever told me. And the fact that no one ever told me, probably means it was poor or wasn’t great, if it was great I would have heard."

Here is what Steve Cofield said on the weigh-in matter:

The Ohio Athletic Commission has done a nice job of hosting some big MMA events in the past, but the news that WEC 43 would be administered under a different set of weigh-in rules was a bit troubling. It also reeked of disorganization. Dann Stupp from MMA Junkie reported:

  "Unlike some regulatory bodies, the Ohio commission does two sets of weigh-ins – one on the eve of the show, and one on the day of the event – and fighters (in all weight classes) can't gain more than 13 pounds between the two times."

  ...
  The reason listed for the WEC 43 cancellation was an injury to main event fighter Ben Henderson. That's pretty unusual for a Zuffa event to be scrapped on the basis of one fighter going down. Seems like there's more to the story.

So, the WEC has postponed the Event until October 10. Some people may be asking why couldn't the WEC still hold their next event in Youngstown, and it appears that WKR may have found a partial answer.

When the WEC postponed their Youngstown event it left many questions for Ohio MMA fans. First among these was "will WEC 43 still take place in Ohio?"

Unfortunately it seems that the answer to that question is a definitive no.

Yesterday WEC VP Peter Dropic told MMA Fanhouse's Michael David Smith that the Covelli Centre was unavailable on the rescheduled day. WKR checked the Covelli Centre's official website and the new date, of October 10th was free.

So what was event was taking place on October 10th in the Covelli Centre? Vindy.com, Youngstown's official newspaper, talked to the Covelli Centre's executive Eric Ryan:

Further complicating the issue is that the Covelli Centre is already booked for Oct. 10. According to Ryan, there is a motorcycle ice racing event scheduled for that date.

"We're under contract [for the ice racing]," confirmed Ryan, who added he will begin work today in an attempt to move that show to accommodate the WEC.

After everything that the WEC has gone through, could the cherry on the top be that a Morcycle On Ice event prevented them from hosting the show in Ohio or does it just make too much sense that they moved the entire event into a more economic friendly area.  After all is said and done, there are still those that question what the WEC PR machine is now saying, which is that everything was and continues to be fine.

Whether this is just bad luck, the economy finally taking some effect on Zuffa, or  just bad scheduling and planning prior to the unmatched success of UFC 100 and UFC 101, a few bumps on the road were bound to be hit on the way. Being the UFC has its perks, and the WEC knows too well what happens when a promotion outside of the UFC has a hiccup. Whether fair or not, they will have to answer tons of merge and folding questions in the near future.

Is there any talk at all about folding the WEC into the UFC?
No.

That's definitely not happening?
No, I think the only talk of that was from the media. I'm not sure where that came from, but no.