Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be looking at UFC 113: Machida vs. Shogun II held in Montreal, Quebec on Saturday, May 8th, 2010. The event featured the heavily anticipated rematch between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Shogun Rua, but also included a co-main event between Josh Koscheck and Paul Daley in which the winner received a title shot and chance to coach against Georges St-Pierre on TUF 12.
Shogun stuns Machida early, settles debate and opens LHW division
Shogun’s impressive KO of Machida was exactly what he needed to turn the page on the prior controversial decision and cement himself as the top light heavyweight in the world. It was a fight that may very well put him on the path to significant following (provided, of course, that he can follow up with one or two more convincing victories).
It would seem pretty logical that if Evans vs. Rampage draws well at the end of the month, Shogun will face the winner in his first title defense in September or October. Those are really the only two guys in the picture; Anderson Silva has drawn the ire of UFC brass and fights in early August; Forrest Griffin is hurt and still a win away from re-entering the title picture; Jon Jones isn’t ready yet and fights in August; and Randy Couture is almost set to face James Toney in late August.
The only other guy that might get a shot is Rogerio Nogueira, and that would largely be contingent on a monster performance against Jason Brilz at UFC 114 (followed by a disaster in the main event that same night).
Koscheck exposes Daley in more ways than one
Josh Koscheck exposed Paul Daley’s absent takedown defense in the one-sided wrestling affair most thought this fight would become once Koscheck realized he didn’t want to stand and trade. After the fight, a frustrated Daley attempted to exact revenge upon Koscheck for the three-round smothering with a cheap shot (and got booted from the UFC for his effort).
It wasn’t the first time that Daley’s been handled by a wicked ground game – both Jake Shields and Nick Thompson did much the same thing. If he could just add some takedown defense (or the ability to get back to his feet more quickly), he’d be a very dangerous opponent.
Koscheck will now take the head coaching position opposite Georges St-Pierre on the next season of TUF – a role in which he’ll almost certainly play the villain and try to get under St-Pierre’s skin. However, I’m not confident that Koscheck has the personality or the trash-talking skills to interest the casual fan (especially considering he lost the first fight and St-Pierre has been dominating everyone since).
Mitrione kicks Slice out of the UFC
Kimbo Slice was signed by the UFC to breathe new life into the TUF series and accomplished just that, helping TUF 10 to earn a series high average household rating of 2.2. But then he inexplicably managed to defeat Houston Alexander during the Finale and prolong his stay in the organization. That gave the UFC an excuse to use him on a PPV and cash in a little further.
Now the ride has come to an end. Mitrione picked Slice a part with devastating leg kicks that took away his base and ability to defend the takedown. It wasn’t long before he succumbed to a barrage of punches on the ground.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Slice moves to Strikeforce and fights the likes of a Herschel Walker in some sort of gimmick fight; although I suppose his appearance on TUF wasn’t much more than a ratings grab to begin with.
MMA Live Debuts on ESPN2
In April, it was announced that ESPN had agreed to air MMA Live on ESPN2 on a trial basis for the month of May to gauge public interest in a permanent move to the television channel. In addition to weekly episodes, Jon Anik and crew were also on scene at UFC 113 to provide a host of UFC 113 coverage including pre and post event broadcast coverage.
The UFC provided ESPN with footage of the Machida-Rua stoppage to use on MMA Live and Sportscentre. It’s not often that happens and there are generally two schools of thought here: one is that ESPN’s importance cannot be underestimated and the UFC needs to make some short term sacrifices to incentivize the network to retain MMA Live on ESPN2; the other is that once you give away your main event product, it’s hard to take it back.
I tend to believe the UFC needs ESPN if it wants to jump the chasm and reach that next segment of casual sports consumers – having UFC footage on Sportscentre Top 10 or ESPN2 is a likely precursor to further coverage (if not live events).
The real question in my mind is whether you believe that giving away the main event ending is going to hurt PPV sales; in other words, will people forgo buying the PPV if they can just see the ending on ESPN 30 minutes after the event? It depends. While events largely sell on the basis of their headliners, the value proposition of a UFC event very much includes the other fights on the card – especially for hardcore fans. The trick for the UFC will be to cultivate that sort of all-encompassing interest in a larger group of people (the ESPN demo) to justify these sacrifices.
Sponsorship Watch
UFC 113 saw the introduction of Allegiant Air as a broadcast sponsor (the airline brought us the fight clock for every fight). I’ve long thought that an airline would be a good partner for the UFC, but the industry has been in such rough shape over the last few years that very little sponsorship and advertising was being done.
Allegiant’s reach isn’t huge, but it is growing and currently offers 40 destinations to and from Las Vegas alone. The partnership has a lot of potential for both companies and seems like a good fit. In Allegiant, the UFC adds another sponsor with growth potential to its list of endorsing companies. In the UFC, Allegiant should gain from the exposure to that young 18-34 demographic. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of added activation they put into place, but I’d imagine they’ll be teaming up to create travel packages for UFC fans via Allegiant Air.
MMAPayout.com speculated a few months ago that MusclePharm was beefing up its sponsorships and increasing brand awareness amongst UFC and WEC fans in advance of an IPO. The company began trading on April 27th and several fighters on Saturday’s card used their banners to advertise the stock ticker MSLP. If any of you are interested, take a peak at their SEC filings – some interesting things going on there.
Lastly, the Blue Book has been updated.
Speaking on the UFC giving the headline ending to ESPN. The way i look at this from a UFC perspective is the UFC didnt put much effort into promoting this event tobegin with. There was some but the build up was changed it seems to preserve mainstream mype for UFC 114. Maybe the UFC took one for the team on this event to increase awareness of Shogun. I think Rua already has some popularity in Canada. He was doing seminars there like 2 years ago. So being able to get his name out to the mainsteam through ESPN. Knowing the Blockbuster event QJ vs Evans is going to be it would be wise to promote Shogun and build him up so the winner of QJ/Evans goes into another blockbuster fight for the title with a ton of momentium.
Its worth a small hit to 113 buys which everyone expects to be around 500K buys anyway. Especially if QJ was to win and the fight with Evans was a big as most expect it to be. Now imagine QJ going into a rematch with Shogun off the back of 114 success. The UFC has the rematch angle. They have a very charismatic QJ talking up the fight. A title fight. A higher rated Best of Pride on Spike to show the first meeting. Add in a higher interest in Shogun because the use of ESPN. If the UFC lost 50K PPV buys on 113 it would be worth it if QJ/Evans and QJ/Shogun hit 800K+ PPV buys each.
Meltzer is reporting that MMA Live will continue during May on a weekly basis and include a 1/2 hour live post show after 114, no pre show due to softball coverage. After that the future will depend on the ratings
On the business side of things from mmajunkie
Crowd of 17,647 attendees according to UFC president Dana White released the figure at the evening’s post-event press conference, while also reporting a live gate of $3.27 million.
The UFC’s first two events in Montreal, 2009’s UFC 97 and 2008’s UFC 84, each drew more than 21,000 ticket holders to the home of the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens.
UFC 97 holds the North American attendance record for a mixed martial arts event with 21,451 attendees and a reported $4.9 million gate. UFC 84 ranks just behind it with 21,390 attendees generating an impressive $5.1 million gate.
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Pretty big drop in revenue. Appears the novelty is wearing off in Montreal. If they are going to come back they should really have GSP headline.
Guru
I disagree with your conclusions. The gate wasn’t as high as in previous years but keep in mind the ticket sold out very fast. The gate wasn’t as high because the UFC charges less for tickets. To draw the conclusions you have about the “novelty wearing off”. You either need this event to not sell out and struggle to sell tickets at a cheaper price or have proof higher prices tickets wouldn’t have sold. Which is impossible to know.
Im not saying this event could compare to the first UFC event in Canada. First events always do well. But there was no lack of interest in this event and a higher gate could have been achieved.
I think with the pressure on Canadian providence’s to sanction MMA. It was important for the UFC to make a good impression. The UFC more than likely felt that without GSP on the card it would be best to not take chances and lower tickets to assure the event sells out and assure there is a lot of buzz. Something that wouldnt happen if you accidently over price the event and no one is going to attend and no one is talking about it.
I was in Manila on business for the fight and it was shown (tape delayed with commercials) on the Balls network (tagline: “We’ve got them”). The main sponsor was Colt 45 – of Billy D Williams “Works every time” fame. Colt’s tagline is: “The strong beer for real men”. It’s a 7.2% alcohol brew and they sponsor all sorts of meathead events like national 4×4 competitions and such. Apparently Balls is the Spike of the Philippines. They show all the UFC products (PPVs, Unleashed, TUF), all sponsored by Colt 45. Colt runs a promotion where they flash their logo on the lower left of the screen during the fight, and if you write in saying at what time you saw the logo you can win a trip to UFC 114, a weekend getaway with a Philippina supermodel (very hot) or UFC fight gear.
It was interesting to see how the UFC is promoted outside the US.
The UFC has been providing MMA Live with better fight clips for a few weeks now. I was quite surprised and pleased to see lengthy, RELEVANT clips being used to recap key fights in recent shows. They ended a second or two before the fight-ending move, but there was plenty to clearly illustrate the analysis being offered. It was refreshing after years of watching (and tuning out) the worthless and endlessly repetition of walk-ins and hands-raised montages previously used. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t presage a stronger relationship with ESPN.
HB
Hi Brian,
I don’t believe the ticket’s were any less than their first two ventures into Montreal. I was at the first event and purchased tickets for around $500. The highest priced tickets then and now were around $600 (at least I’m pretty sure).
I have a few friends that were at the event last week and they all say that there were empty seats. It was also confirmed somewhat on sherdog radio as they were moving fans down to the lower bowls that were sitting in the higher sections.
There was no sellout for this UFC event. Tickets could have been purchased up until the day of the event. I know, because I considered making the trip up but decided against it as the tickets that were remaining were in the higher price range and I was not looking to spend as much as the first time I went.
With all that said, you make a good point and I’m not suggesting that they didn’t do well, just not as well. I think they would expect to get this level of sales going forward for their Montreal shows instead of the higher end gates (unless GSP is headlining)
Correct mmaguru:
And a good theory may be what we talked about before, which was the scalpers buying up all the tickets and trying to sell them for 2x’s as much and then trying to unload all their unsold tixs close to the event, when most thought it was a sold out event, which it turned out it wasn’t.
Like you said though, the gate drop-off is pretty interesting.
It’s hard to get a good feel for what’s going on event by event. There is a lot of variability in attendance based on a number of factors. It sounds to me like the UFC did well. Maybe not as well as they have done in the past, but still a very solid showing. I imagine they will go back next year.
Was this a sold out event or not? I heard many say they couldnt get tickets because they were sold out. Just because everyone didnt show at the event dont mean all the tickets werent bought from the UFC. Just because a scalper buys there and cant sell them dont mean it didnt sell out. If ticket master didnt have tickets for sell then it was sold out.
Brain:
It was not a sold out event. The pre-sale sold out, not the event, I believe.