Dana White announced that the WEC’s debut on PPV broke the organization’s best marks for attendance and live gate receipts when it brought Aldo vs. Faber to Sacramento, California on Saturday, April 24th. The show drew 14, 144 people to the ARCO Arena and generated a live gate of over $1 million.
Payout Perspective:
No surprise that this event shattered attendance and gate records for the organization. Zuffa put a ton of marketing muscle behind this fight and Reed Harris had been reporting for weeks that the show was selling very well. Greg Saks at Tapology reported that the google trending patterns for the main event fighters was also remarkably high for a WEC show.
Now, we’ll all just have to sit tight and wait for this PPV number…
Here’s a list of the WEC’s top five in both gates and attendance (courtesy of our Blue Book):
Attendance
1. WEC 48: Aldo vs. Faber (14,144)
2. WEC 41: Faber vs. Brown II (13,027)
3. WEC 34: Faber vs. Pulver (12,682 )
4. WEC 38: Faber vs. Pulver II (10,201)
5. WEC 46: Varner vs. Henderson (10,207)
Gate
1. WEC 48: Aldo vs. Faber ($1,000,000+)
2. WEC 41: Faber vs. Brown II ($815,000)
3. WEC 34: Faber vs. Pulver ($739,000)
4. WEC 36: Faber vs. Brown ($564,000)
5. WEC 46: Varner vs. Henderson ($550,000)
Can’t say I’m too surprised. If you look at the top attendance numbers for WEC, most of them are shows from Sacramento.
California has always been a hotbed for MMA. I believe Strikeforce out in San Jose still holds the record for largest paid attendance to a show in North America. That was accomplished before they were “big time” too.
If you put on a good card in California you will see some very nice numbers. California is one of the largest MMA markets in North America, if not the largest.
Just double checked the numbers. 4 of the top 5 events for WEC were in Sacramento. One of them was in San Diego. So all top 5 events for WEC have been in California, and the #1 attended event ever in North America was also in California (strikeforce).
Go California! We know how to come out and support MMA 🙂
good for them im glad
Good numbers.
By the way did I miss them or why haven’t we seen the gate and attendance for the last Strikeforce show?
What those numbers tell you is that mma does not sell faber sells. Mma faces the same challenges as everybody else including the ufc. You need a marque guy to sell tickets and the rest if the guys are just undercard fighters just filling up slots on a show.
Outside of faber in Cali who else is gonna fill up a spot as big as arco? Nobody right now, maybe if ufc comes to town they def will, but believe me they don’t break the bank after the commission sticks there hands in ufc pockets to get there end, or else ufc would do more shows out here.
There will be more high profile boxing matches in norcal than mma for some time now here in norcal now that Andre ward is winning super six tournament. So the shoe is on the other foot all of a sudden. Is mma dying? Makes for great debate amongst people who know nothing about the fight bizz
Won’t draw like this again if Faber fights. He will either fight a bum that will not draw or he will fight somone good and everyone knows that Faber will get dominated so why would they pay good money for it. Faber done, WEC done in Sac town.
Isn’t ironic the 5 biggest gates in WEC history have involved Faber? 4 of the 5 have been in Sacramento, the other in San Diego.