Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be taking a look at the highly anticipated UFC 116: Lesnar vs. Carwin that was held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, July 3rd. The event featured a heavyweight title fight between Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin, but also showcased the talents of several UFC veterans such as Chris Leben, Stephan Bonnar, and Kendall Grove.
Humble Lesnar weathers the storm, submits Carwin
In the first round, Carwin did what many thought he would: stuff Lesnar’s takedowns, close the gap, and put enough pressure on the big man to drop him. He just couldn’t finish. More importantly, Carwin probably punched himself out. Lesnar took full advantage of a cramping Carwin in the second round where he once again demonstrated his quickness and power to take Carwin down and pass into side control with the choke.
If you thought Lesnar was a star before, just wait until his next fight. He was perhaps the most polarizing force in the sport, but the combination of his perseverance, submission skills, and post-fight class has endeared him to a whole new group of people. He went from being a heel that most people resented – some WWE castoff that didn’t respect MMA – to being “one of us” in 8 minutes.
The UFC will need Lesnar, too. The news broke this week that Shogun Rua will be out until next March, which means the LHW title is sidelined until then, and that leaves the UFC with few title fights between September and December. Silva fights in early August, Edgar fights at the end of August, and GSP is booked for December. Only Lesnar is available.
Good matchmaking, good asset management
UFC 116 was not only an incredible fight card, but also an example of smart matchmaking and asset management. The event wasn’t extremely attractive on paper, but it didn’t need to be with Lesnar on top. Joe Silva used that as an opportunity to fill the card with potentially entertaining bouts that had some meaning, but also conserve some of the UFC’s bigger names for future cards. Again, this is even more important given what I’ve mentioned above about the lack of title fights in the Fall.
In turn, because the event wasn’t extremely attractive below Lesnar, the expectations for this event as a whole weren’t tremendously high. I think that played a large role in many of the claims we’re seeing around the MMA community that UFC 116 was the greatest UFC card ever. No one expected to see what we all saw on Saturday, and that made a great night of fights even better.
The performance of the event is even more significant considering the stage. UFC 116 should prove to be the biggest or second biggest UFC event of the year, and there was literally no better moment for the UFC to have an outstanding event than with so many casual fans tuning in to watch Brock Lesnar fight. Those that were expecting just a heavyweight tilt got much, much more, and I’m inclined to think a whole new group of avid UFC fans was born on July 3rd, 2010.
This event reminded me a lot of WEC 34 that aired on Versus and generated more than one million viewers. I’d always wondered what might have happened to the popularity of MMA or the WEC had that show been on CBS (like EliteXC had been the night before). In the case of UFC 116, MMA finally has a standout performance when a lot of people are watching. It’s going to take many more before the sport finally breaks through, but this is definitely a “told you so” moment for MMA and all of its fans.
ESPN doesn’t send MMA Live for a pre- or post-fight show
ESPN moved MMA Live from the internet to a Thursday slot on ESPN2 in May for a four-week trial that even provided for special live programming to accompany UFC events (113 and 114). The show fared well in its television debut and drew ratings on par with what ESPN would normally garner in the Thursday slot. Thus, ESPN announced in Late May that it would be extending its commitment to MMA Live on ESPN2 through to the end of August.
The extension signaled a couple of different things: 1.) MMA Live had done well on ESPN2, but not well enough that ESPN was ready to sign on for a full year, and 2.) ESPN wanted an extra few months to kick MMA’s tires and this summer line-up of fights provided the perfect opportunity to do so (Lesnar vs. Carwin, Silva vs. Sonnen, Edgar vs. Penn II, Couture vs. Toney, etc.).
It was my expectation that ESPN would throw a lot support behind MMA Live in the next few months to give the program an honest look, but that may not be the case. MMA Live has been absent from the last two UFC events – the second of which, UFC 116, was a monster of an event that garnered a host of mainstream interest.
I do not want to speculate as to why MMA Live wasn’t at 116, but I do think it was a mistake.
The success of MMA Live is largely predicated on being able to deliver timely, unique and valuable content that users cannot get anywhere else. However, that’s difficult for a television show that only airs once per week. MMA Live is often in the difficult position of reporting news 3-4 days after its happened, which in the MMA world is enough time for new news to become old news.
In skipping the live event coverage related to UFC 115 and 116 – especially 116 – MMA Live is truly missing an opportunity to fill a void in the MMA marketplace for pre- and post-fight banter that really isn’t available to the fans. There’s really no pre-fight coverage of any kind and few fans have the capability or the patience to sit through the post-fight press conference. However, ESPN has the resources and distribution necessary to provide unique and relevant fight coverage to fans in a very timely manner.
MMA Live is the perfect complement to many “fight night” themes that households or local establishments put together for fight fans on a Saturday evening. It helps build last minute excitement prior to the fight and then puts a stamp on the evening by reviewing the best moments.
MMA Live’s audience is not the hardcore fan, but instead the casual viewer that doesn’t have time to keep up with every bit of news and can appreciate a week’s worth of information condensed into 40 minutes of programming. If MMA Live can build its reputation through live coverage of events, that should carry over to its weekly segments.
Perhaps this is something ESPN has already tried or thought about, but it would be interesting to see the network leverage the UFC’s relationship with the thousands of sports bars that show UFC events by tacking on information about MMA Live to the information distributions that are sent to bar managers about up-coming events. It’s safe to assume that just about every sports bar is going to have ESPN2, so it might help to highlight the partnership between ESPN and UFC in the distribution; and, even suggest that MMA Live is a way to improve the fight night experience of patrons.
ESPN does increase day-to-day coverage of UFC 116
Despite not sending Jon Anik and the MMA Live crew to Las Vegas for UFC 116, ESPN did noticeably increase its day-to-day coverage of the UFC during fight week and even after the event. In addition to extending the MMA Live segment on Thursday, the network also did several interviews with UFC personalities throughout the week, Lesnar was the main story on ESPN.com on Saturday night, and since the fight Lesnar has been on the network for several interviews.
It could be the network feels this is a much more cost-effective way of building its MMA audience. Certainly it’s hitting the proper target market – the casual fan – with this type of quick hit coverage. However, I’m still inclined to think that it live event coverage is necessary – especially for the big events like 116 (or the forthcoming 118).
Sponsorship Watch
This is always the segment that I look forward to the most, because I think the domain touches every aspect of the organization. Sponsorship literally has the potential to bring revenue to the UFC, put money in the pockets of the fighters, market and promote the fights to the masses, and even help educate people about the sport. It’s an extremely powerful tool.
With that said, there isn’t a whole lot to report from UFC 116 on the sponsorship side. I may have commented on this before, but for those that didn’t notice, Brock was sponsored by Jimmie John’s QSR. Shane Carwin was also sponsored by Bud Light, which should come as no surprise there considering what Brock said about Bud Light last year.
The only really interesting thing I noticed was more of a media buy than a sponsorship deal. In the UFC’s four page pull-out in the USA Today on Friday, Musclepharm had a very strong presence with ads displaying its new stock symbol. I’m not sure that I would characterize Musclepharm as having done an excellent job with its MMA marketing, but it’s certainly done well (and far better than BSN).
great job Kelsey… really good work/writing.
wasn’t StubHub a sponsor? I kept seeing their name everywhere.
StubHub has been an official sponsor of a few events already. I’m tempted to say the company started with 108 just after New Years, but I could be mistaken.
But you’re right. They were all over the place, too.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for some time now – why has the UFC embraced the secondary market? – and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably because the UFC believes market forces will prevail and not hurt event attendance.
It’s funny, because these scalpers have almost become a pricing hedge for the UFC. If the UFC makes a mistake in pricing the tickets, the scalpers are generally the ones taking the hit because they buy and then can’t unload to get their money back.
However, generally, any time in the last few years that tickets have been way over-priced by scalpers, they’ve slowly reduced their prices back to fair market value and the tickets are bought last minute. This relates to the nature of the fight game as a whole in the sense that much of the casual consumer’s purchase decision is impulsive (and this is why fight week is so important).
Kelsey,
Many pro teams have embraced secondary marketing of tickets, some like the Cubs have even set up companies that are basically puppets of the ball club. Basically it allows them to make more money off premium games and even ones who don’t own the secondary market, as you pointed out, want the tickets gobbled up as fast as they can like have happened with many UFC, and like you said, then they get the initial money, get to taut sell outs and eventually there will be an ass in the seat buying beer, etc…
Kelsey is there a chance you can do a run down of the status of the UFC and their credit rating form their loans a while back. Is that information still available? I know it used to be followed regularly then it just went away. I was wondering if anything has chanced with their recent success of UFC 114 and 116.
Stan,
I agree. Although unfortunately the Cubs embrace of the secondary market didn’t help me on the 4th. The cheapest ticket we could find (for a group of eight…I know, stupid) was $50 and that was outside the game, two innings in.
I think for the longest time some of these teams thought they were leaving money on the table. So instead of letting the scalpers pick up the premiums, they jumped in. I know the Rangers in the NHL are an example of a team that’s worked with Ticketmaster to create their own official secondary market.
This, of course, has led to a lot of innovation in ticket pricing as well. You’ve now got teams like the Portland Trailblazers running variable ticket pricing schemes and others like the San Francisco Giants running dynamic pricing (I had the chance to speak with them a couple months ago and it’s something I think a lot of teams are going to start doing). Variable pricing will give you different prices depending on opponent, time of year, and day of the week, but dynamic pricing actually goes one step further in the sense that it factors time into the equation (so it creates an incentive for people to buy early).
Brain,
It didn’t necessarily go away so much as we just haven’t seen a new report release in something close to a year. You can bet that if/when a new one comes out, you’ll see it here first. 😉
Kelsey
ya now that i think about it, this was the perfect even for espn. kinda ridiculous that they weren’t there.
Trending reports say possibly over a million buys which is huge. Next up is Cain, I believe it’s signed for 119. Quick turnaround and will most definitely guarantee UFC does more buys this year than last year after a lack luster start to the year.
UFC 121 is now the event confirmed for Cain vs Lesnar
sounds like 2 shows over a million in a little bit over a month, another huge show and they’ll likely beat last years PPV buys although with a few bombs and a few mega shows making up the difference.