Mike Chiapetta of MMA Fighting reports the attendance for UFC 154 being 17,249 for a gate of $3.143 million gate. In addition, GSP, Condit, Ivan Menjivar and Johny Hendrick earned the respective bonuses.
The Bell Centre capacity is listed between 16K to 19K for an MMA event. Compared with GSP-Koscheck in 2010 in the same venue, that event did 23,152 for a $4.6 million gate.
The bonuses were $70K and are as follows:
FOTN: GSP-Condit
KO: Johny Hendricks
Sub: Ivan Menjivar
All were clear cut winners for their bonuses.
Payout Perspective:
A little surprising that the gate and attendance were not stronger considering the return of GSP. The bonuses were well-deserved as the GSP-Condit fight could be considered a candidate for the fight of the year. Hendricks could be lying in wait for the middleweight title with another first round KO. MMA Payout will have more on UFC 154 in its Payout Perspective.
“23,152 for a $4.6 million gate”
Must be expensive tickets.
I might be guessing but it seems logical to seem a likely gsp 5 round was the likely outcome. There hasn’t been a five rounder that I think is a good fightt. There is no reason why two grown men can fight for 25 minutes and not have a clear cut winner. Byno clear cut winner I mean both competitors are both capable of still standing. At this point think the UFC needs to expand its ruleset to include soccer kicks to a downed opponent and knees. Downward elbows too. You will see many more finishes and people will be attracted to the spectacle aqain rather than a five round sporting event.
Agree’d 100% Juice on the Kicks an Knees. Guaranteed, GSP would be finishing a helluva lot of fights. And Im of the mind, the ruleset change is what led to Fedor’s losing tbh. When you can’t use your whole arsenal, you tend to hesitate, and Hesitation kills in any sport.
As for the Spectacle, spot on as well, as that aspect of teh UFC seems to be fading rather fast unfort.
Also Hendricks is a Welterweight, not Middleweight (although with the amount of weigh he cuts, probably should be fighting at MW) I can also see Hendricks giving GSP BIIIIG trouble, if and when they meet. The Dude has some insane power in his hands, with some awesome wrestling to go with it. He’s come along way last year or two and always enjoy watching Johnny throw down!!
the fans are getting tired of watered down cards . thats all there is to it
Economy
Tickets priced too high.
UFC event:
1. Tickets overpriced–even in the nosebleeds.
2. Tickets are not open to the public until all the good ones are gone. UFC fight club (paid membership) only may buy tickets first, then the next day, the UFC newsletter subscribers. then finally the public.
So what happens? Scalpers, who are fight club members buy up all the good seats–then mark up the price–and resell on Kijiji or StubHub or wherever. The UFC doesn’t care if scalpers buy up the tickets–they only care they sold the tickets.
Sometimes scalpers get stuck with a lot of tickets–because fans refuse to be scalped–and also because some are selling fake tickets–so there is a risk in buying scalped tickets.
The bottom line: Tickets too expensive–ticket sales unfair–buying from scalpers is risky and sleazy. I’ll go the that bar over there and watch it in HD.
codemaster is pretty much right. I’ve been to the last 3 UFC’s in Montreal and this has been the case each time.
I always thought there was a limit for fanclub members? I have used it before a few years back and i thought there was a 6 ticket limit.
Just looked it up in the terms and conditions.
“***There is a purchase limit of six (6) tickets per UFC Fight Club membership, and there may be only one (1) membership per household. The ticket limit is subject to change and may vary by show.”
At $65 and $75 for membership to get 6 tickets i dont see how there is much reward to a scalper. That is of course if the UFC enforces this limit on this specific event. But i think the bigger con artist is stub hub/ticket master. They are hording all the best tickets and resaling them above face value and UFC customers have no chance to buy them at face value as they are never offered. The events i have been to which were in big events. Even as a fan club member only the cheap seats were available. That was minutes after they went on sale. Not possible all the best seats are gone 4 events in a row that i used it.
There is also only so many people willing to pay $400 a piece for bleeders to see GSP once a year in Montreal. French Canadians are fickle, once they have seen him great, you keep force feeding them boring GSP fights… you arent giving them anything new.
The UFC can only patronize a local market so many times before people say…ok… been there done that.
As aggressive as they are as a company… they sure suck at coming up with new ways to build the brand and stem the tide of attrition. They go to the well WAAAAAAY too much.
there ppv sales have gone down alot from three years ago, casual fans are losing interest. even casual fans i know that used to watch all the shows do not watch most of them now.. ufc has drifted away from what makes mma great, they run to many shows now, and running ppvs every two to three weeks sometimes at 55 a pop gets expensive .
It’s the business model of the fight game.
You never know when your star is doneski so squeeze out as much as you can while they are around