The Staff at MMAJunkie are reporting that UFC 117 drew 12,971 to the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California on Saturday for an approximate live gate of $1.56 million.
MMAPayout.com has also learned that Countdown to UFC 117 garnered just 409,000 viewers in its debut last Monday at 11PM ET/PT (Updated).
Payout Perspective:
The Countdown to UFC 117 number has been revised to 409,000 viewers, because I was originally given the viewership from a replay that happened later in the week. This is more in-line with what I would have expected.
The gate figure still seems a little low. I would have figured at least $2.0 million at the gate in a market like Oakland, especially considering all the press the UFC had done in the market (and California as a whole) over the last month.
However, Dana White was quoted as saying the “trending was insane” for UFC 117, and he suggests they did a big number.
We’ll have to wait for some early trending figures from Meltzer before we make any judgements and start to ponder the reasons for any would-be disappointment.
The gate and attend numbers here are more like a successful Ultimate Fight Night than they are of a full UFC PPV event, they have to hope the PPV numbers do well here, but then again, going to Cali outside of Sacramento has never really produced great numbers for the UFC.
“Countdown to UFC” now airs on a variety of channels, so is this jsut the number from the SpikeTV broadcast? It also airs on Versus, Comcast SportsNet, and Fox SportsNet, both in standard and high definition. Put together all the numbers (I have been watching them on Versus and Comcast SportsNet as Spike HD just came to Comcast Sacramento last week) from all the broadcasts, otherwise this information is flawed.
Everyone,
Note the number update above.
MV,
The information is not flawed. The point has never been to aggregate the total viewership for the program, but instead to use the debut as a gauge for how interested the public is in a particular card compared to the average card.
KP
Thank you for the clarification. It makes sense to me now and is a good indication of interest in comparison to other cards if viewed this way.
That said, it would be interesting to know how the Spike TV debut viewership numbers compares with the “debut” of the show on other networks.
I gave up trying to catch the debut of the UFC Countdown shows. If the debut episode came on at the same time and same day every time there was a PPV for that week then I would probably catch it but as it stands there seems to be no consistency with it. One time it will debut on a Monday night then the next time it won’t debut till Tuesday night. I always just wait and catch one of the replays on what ever network I find it on when it’s convenient for me. So because of my own experience with watching the Countdown show I can’t put much stock in using it’s viewership to base anything on.
Matt C. makes a good point. Why would fans make sure to catch the debut of the show these days when there are a host of replays throughout the week (and on several channels, as well as on several websites)? This was not the case in the past, where the Countdown shows would play in their debut time slot and MAYBE there would be a replay. This MUST have changed the way a lot of people decide to watch the program, and makes the numbers misleading, even from a comparitive point of view. The fact that the weekly position and airtimes are in flux from event to event makes it even more likely to muck up the relevance of the “debut” numbers. Unless the AGGREGATE numbers are used, then compared on an event-to-event basis, a single set of Countdown show numbers will no longer be useful to gage interest. If there were 656,000 viewers from the debut SpikeTV show and the replay on Spike alone, I have to wonder what the total number of viewers was on other networks, as the nature of the Countdown shows would suggest that almost every viewer is unique (as in number wise), and the aggregate number would be a good indication of TOTAL interest in the fight, not just the amount of interest reflected at 11 p.m. on a Monday night.
Kelsey,
Do you know what “trending” Dana is talking about? What kinds of metrics does the UFC use? I’m guessing you probably don’t know since Zuffa keeps all that information secret, I’m just wondering what data they look at.
“Trending” is information the UFC receives from cable and satellite TV companies (maybe from their online PPV partners as well, not sure) as to how the buyrate (total number of PPVs sold) is developing (it takes awhile for some reason to put together a complete PPV buyrate number). They can often estimate what the final buyrate will be based on how the event is “trending.” I’m pretty sure this is what it means, but maybe Kelsey can elaborate.
Matt C:
Excellent point. I’ve often wondered about this myself. Spike’s strategy is to find the program a good lead-in, but sometimes I think they’d be better off just making the program a fixture on Tuesday nights at 9PM ET/PT and trying to build it through advertising and PR.
Diego, MV
There are two types of PPV buyrate reports: trends and estimates. If a number is trending, it’s often a very early prediction of how the fight will do based upon metrics independent of any cable/satellite provider information. If a number is an estimate, it’s usually a report from one or more providers that has been extrapolated out to a full prediction. It’s sort of confusing. I also had them confused when I started reporting on the PPVs.
When Dana says the fight is trending well, he simply means they’ve got pre-fight indicators similar to ours, but greater in number and more accurate, that they use to predict what they’ll do.
Great clarification. Thank you.
Kelsey,
I assume that includes data like Google hits, Twitter trends and other indicators, correct?
Bryan Alvarez, who works with/for Meltzer, is saying the early indications are around 900k, if it’s anywhere near that it is an impressive number and hopefully Chael gets a huge bonus because Anderson has never been a proven PPV draw, and Dana should ink the rematch immediately because they would have another 1m+ buyrate.
I was really impressed how much play the countdown show for 117 got, between Spike and CSN Chicago (we don’t have FSN in Chicago, the Bulls, Blackhawks, Cubs and White Sox own CSN and they play a lot of the FSN programming) I saw the Countdown show on the guide at least 4 times and I didn’t even look to see if any of the MTVs or Vs. played it, they definitely got a guy in Chael who could sell a fight and put him out there.