Dana White made the PR rounds today and had a stop with Southern California’s Petros and Money show. Of the notable things said during the half-hour interview was the fact that Fox Sports Radio would simulcast the UFC’s first show on Fox.
Other notable mentions during the interview:
- White indicated that the Fox deal came out of nowhere. A relationship with former Direct TV exec Eric Shanks helped foster the deal.
- The ESPN “car wash” was yanked after the Fox deal was announced, but the issues with ESPN have been resolved. The car wash is the media tour within ESPN where White would have been on multiple ESPN shows in one day to promote UFC 134.
- White stated that 40 million Brazilian fans will watch UFC 134.
Payout Perspective:
The radio broadcast is a throwback to the “old days” of boxing when radio announcers described the fights. This is will be interesting to see if this will catch on or whether the radio simulcast will be just a one off to promote the first UFC show on Fox. In today’s world of instant media, will the old fashion use of one’s mind to visualize an event catch on? Obviously radio works in baseball, basketball and football. But its a little harder with sports like golf and boxing where viewing is needed much more to understand what is going on. Play by play will be key for people to follow along with a radio broadcast.
As it relates to the ESPN “car wash” cancellation, White stated that the issue has been “resolved.” It was not clarified what that meant, but perhaps cooler heads have prevailed and ESPN will grant White the opportunity to promote UFC 134.
White’s stated that 40 million viewers would watch UFC 134. With that overstatement, I will give this understatement: 40 million seems like a lot of people. This is merely promoting the card, so I wouldn’t hold White to the number as I doubt there was research done to come up with the number.
It doesn’t seem like they just made the number up, I heard Lorenzo say 30 to 40 million several weeks ago.
30-40 million is a huge number in a nation of 200M. I think maybe the show will be available in 40 million homes, or available to 40 million people, but I can’t believe that anything other than World Cup soccer gets that kind of viewership in Brazil.
I can’t picture myself listening to the fights on the radio. Any situation where I don’t have access to the PPV or to a laptop where I can stream the fights, I probably don’t have access to Fox radio either.
Maybe if was on a long car journey or something. But I don’t even have a car.
I find it very strange they are going the radio route so soon. To be able to do PbP on MMA the fans have to know the lingo to even have a chance to follow along. Many of the casual UFC fans that already exist dont know the names of the moves or positions. All the new listeners and Fox viewers will have no idea what side mount is or North South or guard to even be able to picture what is going on. They dont know what a triangle is or maybe even Muay Thai to even know how the fight ended.
It is always great to have another option to get UFC and MMA coverage but this would be better after the first year of the FOX deal.