Early data on UFC 110 PPV Buy Rate is Bad, WKR might know why...
by Zak Woods on Mar 11, 2010 9:45 AM EST
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Dave Meltzer brings us his early (and I stress the early) trending data for UFC 110 and it is not good (subscription only):
I don't have a number of buys, but based on trending data which has historically been pretty accurate, it could be in the 215,000 to 240,000 range, basically along the lines of the tape-delayed foreign shows. This was foreign, but wasn't tape delayed. One cable industry source gave an estimate of 215,000.
For those not familiar with Dave Meltzer he is the go to source for pay-per view data and if his early numbers point to a 250,000 buy rate then it will certainly lead to questions about what happened.
UFC 110 was scheduled on Sunday to fit the North American pay-per view audience and featured several meaningful bouts with several big name fighters. So why are the numbers worse than UFC 108? Perhaps fans aren't interested in seeing aging legends fight like Wanderlei Silva and Mirko Cro Cop? Maybe fans weren't sold on Cain Velasquez or George Sotiropoulos? It could be that there was no real meaning attached to any of the fights as the winner of Nogueira-Velasquez would be, at best, an "on deck" challenger in the heavyweight division.
The nightmare scenario is that the core audience is shrinking. However with the UFC's recent injury blight it is far more likely that the audience is being more selective. Ultimately, we will need to see how UFC 111, 112, 113 and 114 do as these cards represent the return of many top-tier fighters and draws.
However, It could be something else.
As UFC 110 was located in Australia, there were serious geographic and time barriers that prevented the typical credentialed MMA media from attending. This prevented the typical information dump that has become typical at major UFC events. Perhaps the lack of on-site reporting, which in turns disseminates through blogs and forums, affected the perception of the card, or, rather, failed to create any perception of the card, which in turn caused a poor showing. In other words the lack of MMA media coverage resulted in less hype for a good card thus a bad pay-per view showing.
For more on this listen to our podcast with Jonathan Snowden.
In all reality it was probably all of these issues working in congruence (though to what degree?), which caused the early data to be so poor.
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I think many fans are being more selective these days, for several reasons.
One, I think the initial boom of MMA is pretty much over… I don’t think the audience is declining (at least not yet), but the dramatic growth that we saw a year or two ago just wasn’t sustainable, and now we’re kinda leveling off to a much more modest but steady climb.
Two, the recession has made people more picky about what events they’re willing to pay for.
Three, the “gypsy curse” of 2009 (and some perhaps not-so-great matchmaking and event planning in general) resulted in quite a few “meh” events in recent months that only the hardcores would be interested in.
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