It's one thing for fans to salivate in anticipation of the card Affliction is putting on in July. It's another for the people in charge of that company to mark out so hard for the fights they have that they ignore the reality of their situation.
In this week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported Affliction's internal expectations:
The promotion internally believes it can break even, even with a $4 million fighter payroll off a combination of a sellout live gate and 250,000 to 300,000 PPV buys.
On the live gate issue, a sellout is extremely unlikely, as they are way behind where UFC 76 was the same time out last September, and that show did not sell out, even with a massive TV push in the final week and Chuck Liddell on top.
As far as PPV buys, they are completely delusional. MMA is hotter now than it was when Fedor did 12,000 buys for Bodog, and they have a stronger overall card, but this show has zero chance of topping 100,000 buys, and a high likelihood of doing less than 40,000, especially now with UFC running on the same night for free.
It's also worth noting that they believe they can break even with $5-6 million in PPV revenue, and an additional $2 million or so in live gate revenue. This helps give us an idea of their projected costs.
Of course, with Trump involved, it's possible they are very willing to lose money in order to get the ball rolling. Still, I would be more comfortable if the people making decisions at Affliction had a better grasp of the reality of the MMA business in 2008. If they were expecting losses and running the show anyway, that would inspire confidence. This does the opposite.
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