Will The UFC Be Up or Down on Pay-Per-View in 2012?

Just depends on the cards. They need some big name fights. We need some mega-fights. Also if SOPA passes and becomes law, UFC buy rates will skyrocket.

I’m sure it’ll be better but probably not as glorious as 2010.

Just so many events, and unless its special its not worth it to lay the money for a PPV. And what is this debt that is going to cause it to sell? Didn’t they just sign a deal approaching a billing dollars total? How could they not pay the debt off?

I was just having this conversation with my MMA guru Double-A. I personally believe that the PPV model needs to go back to 6-10 per year. With the new Fox deal, if ratings maintain, the ad buys can only increase in value. But one fight per show can never happen again. It’s not fair to the advertisers. Just check the ratings drop-off after the Valasquez KO. The economy is only going to get worse unless the outsourcing of jobs ends, and I’ve been hearing grumblings from long time UFC fans for a while. Pay per views don’t have a special feeling anymore, even when the top guys are involved. Myself, I would go with only four BIG events a year, and use the networks to bring up the new talent. Either way, UFC will need to get much more aggressive in advertising to ‘outsider’ markets. Zuffa will have to remove the stick from their butt concerning Youtube, as well. If people can’t research a fighters past, and the only oppurtunity to see a fighter is to buy the UFC Channel or a PPV, they will never expand their market. Have A Nice Day!

Especially Zuffa selling a share of the UFC even further.

The first year of the Fox deal will tell us a lot I think. Fox / FX offer up a fresh audience who may not necessarily have been a Spike TV audience, but none the less may provide a good percentage of new fans who get hooked to the sport. Plus, Fox is going to pimp UFC for all its worth and make sure it’s cross promoted with their other sports, something Spike TV could never have done.

16 PPV’s is too much, drop it to 12 and have one once a month.

UFC 142 has no draws and might not even break 200k buys, 143 could probably do about 350-400k, and 144 has a non-draw headlining with an opponent whose last fight was on Facebook.

So….down. No GSP, no Lesnar, it’s up to a Silva vs. Sonnen super-resubmission and Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans for the UFC to even have a chance at being up.

No Brock. No GSP. No BJ Penn. It doesn’t look good.

or hate, but i couldnt give 2 shits about these two things:

thing 1)how many ppvs sold
thing 2)what new fans might think of mma

as far as thing 1, im surprised anyone buys an event for 55-65 dollars, especially in this jacked-up economy. i certainly cant afford to, and thank god for bars that offer the fights for free.

as far as thing 2, i can never comprehend why anyone cares what comes out of DFWs mouth, or what crap some idiot fighter tweeted, or anything having to do with mmas going ‘mainstream.’ i love mma but could give 2 fucks how popular it is.

if you eat a burger, you kill a cow, wast like 100 gallons of water, kill some rainforest, brutalize soil and give a big middle finger to starving people around the world. but lots of people eat burgers anyway. should i really be that worried about yakuza?

• The novelty has worn off. Casual fans probably made up a huge portion of the PPV audience for a while, but they probably recognized that there is little to distinguish a paid card from a free card.
• The free fights on Fox network channels will dilute consumer demand for paid events. There’s a limit to what the non-hardcore base really wants or needs.
• Facebook streams and free prelims on cable mean that would-be viewers can get their fight fix and save the money they would have spent on the PPV.
• After-effect of disappointing PPV cards. It’s the burn me once, shame on you scenario. When you pay a significant amount for something that fails to meet expectations, how likely are you to pay again to risk similar disappointment?
• Plenty of alternatives out there, with Bellator, HD Net, and others providing quality fights at no cost other than perhaps a small increase in monthly cable costs.
• Tons of “illegal” streams available for watching PPVs. (I realize we’re supposed to pretend no one watches online streams, sacrificing quality in terms of high def for economy in terms of money that could be put to rent, food, clothes, other forms of entertainment, etc.)

I agree with the other comments about PPV buy rates not being a measure of success for Zuffa. They have adequate other sources of revenue, particularly the Fox deal and international broadcast rights income, to more than offset any dropoff in their PPV gravy train.

It’s not rocket science.

PPV is a limited model. What’s on PPV? Only the biggest of the boxing fights, some wrestling, and 90% of it is porn.

What we’re going to see is the same thing that boxing is doing if the UFC is smart. Use television to build up stars, but guys on co-main events with big superstars, and have only the biggest fights be on PPV. The buyrates will go up if they’re less PPVs and the quality of the PPV increases. Now that they have a huge platform like Fox to expose themselves to a new audience, I think the UFC will be fine.

Even though PPV is historically the barometer for success regarding the UFC, that is going to be less and less the case. We live in a new generation where entertainment is essentially free on the internet, and sports is becoming biggest commodity in live television. PPV meaning less can only help the fans. It means that we’ll probably get more good fights on free television, and ultimately get more stacked PPVs.

Even in an atmosphere with subpar UFC PPV cards, average UFC PPVs are far superior to boxing PPVs. Think about how many great UFC events there were this year.

Nate. There will be an emergence of new stars but long term I think the UFC will go public.

I just want to clarify to all MMA writers that Zuffa having massive amounts of debt doesn’t mean they couldn’t immediately pay it all off. Companies purposefully keep large debts on the books for tax purposes.

That fight NEEDED to be aired. Getting that fight aired somehow should have been a priority. Everyone could see from a mile away that it was going to be a barnburner. And not only that, but a barnburner for a title shot. I’m not even saying that it had to be on FOX, but put casual fans in position to watch it. A Facebook stream just isn’t god enough. Sure, us hardcores were treated to a fight that was every bit as good as we were expecting it to be, but we’re going to watch all the fights we can anyway, and don’t need to be sold on watching a card or not. (Holy rambling sentence Batman!)

I have to think that casual fans who would have watched it would’ve been much more inclined to find the UFC: Japan PPV in Feb.

Anecdotal evidence here…

My friends that are “casual UFC fans” are less interested in UFC now than they were 2 or 3 years ago. One friend is now so bored w/ UFC he only cares when Anderson Silva or Brock is fighting, so do the math there. Other people I know who used to catch alot of events at BW3 (sports bar restaurant) rarely go at all anymore.

UFC may have peaked much like World Series of Poker peaked in 2006 or 2007. There’s still a market for it, there just needs to be a new way to drive fans to the sport. Maybe UFC on FOX will be that shot in the arm the UFC brand needs.

The TV commercials for UFC pay per views seem pretty generic now, and they could use a new format. The UFC 142 Aldo/Mendes commerical is just a bunch of guys celebrating with their arms after winning a fight, wtf?