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False Narrative

By Michael Rome

Over at Yahoo, Dave Meltzer warns:

There is a business lesson from pro wrestling over the past few years that UFC should heed. WWE increased from 12 to 16 pay-per-view events, and the results of the overexposure were such that they are cutting back to 14 this year. UFC's current schedule (running major events Dec. 29, Jan. 19 and Feb. 2) is the type of schedule that caused the WWE base audience to begin to pick and choose between events. It's a slippery slope that becomes a difficult rebound. This is not as much a factor to boxing, because few boxing fans buy every show, with most picking and choosing only the big-name fights. UFC, like WWE, sells almost as much on the brand name as the main events, drawing a regular monthly crowd.

I'm not buying this one.  The Ultimate Finale, without any marquee fights and coming off a poor season with poor ratings, did a very good rating opposite Mayweather and Hatton.  Fight Nights also continue to do well.  The only bit of this that indirectly holds water is that by doing more and more shows, UFC is sacraficing overall show quality.  

However, consider this perspective:  I think UFC 81 with Brock Lesnar will do somewhere in the range of 500-600,000 buys, whereas UFC 80 with BJ Penn will probably do 300,000.  If, on the other hand, UFC 80 was scrapped, and Penn/Stevenson was added to 81, I think it would barely make any difference, maybe 50,000 buys at most.  There are diminishing returns.  

The UFC's real problem is its lack of weekly meaningful TV.  Instead of countless reruns of Unleashed where fans can see all main events for free, which is really stupid for business, a weekly fight show out of The Pearl in Vegas with 2 new undercard-ish fights and a bunch of hype for all the upcoming fights on a PPV card would be great for business.  Hopefully that is what they have in mind for 2010, but I wish it was coming sooner.

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