Bob Harig of ESPN is reporting that Tiger Woods will make his return to golf, and what is likely to be the biggest sports story of the year, on April 8th just two days before UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi.
Tiger Woods will make his highly anticipated return to competitive golf at the Masters, ending a four-month hiatus brought on by a sex scandal.
The world’s No. 1-ranked player, who has never missed the year’s first major as a professional, announced in a statement Tuesday that Augusta National Golf Club will be the site of his comeback.
Payout Perspective:
The UFC has faced tremendous challenges in selling its foreign events within North America; whether they’re held in the UK, Ireland, Germany, or Australia the domestic PPV response has been poor relative to domestic events. UFC 112 is looking to change that, but will now face a little more adversity.
Just about every media outlet in the world is going to be focused on the Master’s from April 8th to 11th, which means that the UFC’s first event in Abu Dhabi and first ever outdoor event will be fighting for casual sports press table scraps. Tiger is also likely to dominate the news in the days leading up to his event, which happens to be the crucial promotional period of fight week for the UFC.
How harmful might this competition be? There are two things to consider:
1.) The core demographics of golf and MMA don’t exactly overlap a great deal, but it’s when the UFC is looking to traverse that 700k mark that it starts to enter the casual fan territory, and that’s likely where its message is going to have some difficulty getting through come April 10th.
2.) This is the new reality for the UFC: it’s reached the point in its popularity where it’s drawing from the casual sports pool, and thus it’s going to be competing with one event or another virtually every weekend (e.g., March Madness, Tiger Woods, World Series, NHL Playoffs, etc.). The ability of the UFC to withstand this type of competition is one of its key success factors moving forward.
I agree with the article that Tiger is going to garner the main stream press attention. However, I believe the UFC will still get alot of attention from media. Here’s why. 1) I believe the partnership with Flash Media will really pay dividends here. 2) BJ Penn and Anderson Silva on the same card. 3) The novelty of the first outdoor UFC. 4) The momentum that UFC has generated amongst it’s core demographic. 5) The fact that all the injures that caused problems the past few months have finally passed, and the UFC 112 fight card is stacked. 6) The news yesterday of the Directv and Versus agreement will alow for extra promotion. Now, Spike and Versus will be able to air commercials to promote UFC 112. 7) The recent international television deals will provide more international press coverage than before. And finally 8) The agreement with Kerasotes Theatres will help the UFC promote upcoming events. Now, The UFC isn’t paying for all the advertising costs. Kersotes has a vested interest in advertising the UFC events. While I agree that most press will cover Tiger, I think the UFC will hold their own.
Wouldn’t it be great if it turns out that Scott Coker paid Tiger to come back on that day… “oh yeah? counter program THIS…”.
But seriously, I wonder if Dana’s going to be wearing his Tiger hat at the post-fight press conference 😉
Bill Hardiek
Most of those points are not going to help draw in viewers. Silva has always been a horrible draw. HE is better recnetly after the UFC pushed him for a long time but he has always been the worst draw of all the UFC headliners. Penn is now a draw but to what extent we really dont know as he has always had help on the successful PPVs he fought on. The UFC;s injuries wont have any effect because mainstrean are unware of injuries and only know they havent heard about the UFC in along time because lack of buzz. The appeal of an outdoor UFC is great for MMA fans to see a big production pull it off. But mainstream could careless as boxing and every other sport do this all the time. They wont notice or wont even care. Also this isn tthe first MMA event to do an out door event. KOTC did one years ago and it didnt work out well because it rained and fighters couldnt stand up. Also Flash Media i dont see really help PPV buys. What can they do? They cant take attentiion away from Tiger. The UFC will benifit from Flash by getting different working relationships in other countries to help them get their foot in the door. Flash will not have much to do with North American PPV buys.
I look for the UFC to get some momentium back but the first few events on their strong string of event swill start much smaller than what would have been efected last year. Basically UFC 111 and 112 will get in the 500K buys. If these go well and the UFC can finally get some media attention out of James Toney and their remaining events we might see some huge numbers by the time Brock comes back.