MMA Fighting reports that next week’s UFC 144 will be four hours and include seven fights. In addition, the prelim bouts will be shown on FX starting at 5pm PT/8pm ET.
The show will mark the first time Zuffa will hold a card in Japan. The four hour card begins at 7pm PT/10pm ET which means that east coast viewers will have to stay up extra late for the card. Not sure if this will impact buys at all especially when you are talking about receiving an extra hour of fights.
Payout Perspective:
The additional hour and fight will be a bonus for those purchasing the PPV. More for your money? It should accommodate the 5 round championship fight between Edgar and Henderson without concern of running out of time. It will be interesting to see what happens if there are a lot of short fights on the card. How will the UFC compensate for it? We’ve seen in the past when fights run short, the UFC shows fights earlier on in the evening. But, with four hours, there could be a lot of filler time. I am interested to see how the UFC produces this show and if there will be anything different considering its the company’s first visit to Japan.
“It will be interesting to see what happens if there are a lot of short fights on the card. How will the UFC compensate for it?”
Won’t they just air preliminary bouts like they always have in the past? I only remember one event where every bout made it to the 3 hour PPV broadcast (UFC 91).
MV,
Yes, that’s what I think too. But we’ve seen them run out of fights in a 3hr PPV. What happens if its done in 3 hrs total? The PPV is over, I get it but the 4 hour PPV seems a bit odd. I know its the first time the UFC will be in Japan, but there’s nothing special, aside from the title fight, with the fights.
It’s very odd. The only thing I can possibly think of is that they’re trying to make it seem like “more for your money” to try and increase PPV buys for this event, although they aren’t doing much ancillary promotion of the fact if that’s the case. I’d say they don’t to condition fans to start expecting 7 free prelim fights when there are PPVs, but they’ve already done that in the past (most recently with UFC 139 and 140), so that’s definitely not the case. It’s also odd the announcement was made so close to the event (less than 2 weeks, or was it announced before that?).
Now that I think about it, this must have come up as a result of the scheduling logistics for this event. As is, the event will start at 9:30 am in Japan and run until 4 pm. If they had stuck with a 3 hour PPV and still had 12 bouts (which is pretty standard for MMA cards in Japan in general), the event would’ve ran 8:30am-3pm instead. Japanese fans are already being shafted (although this is necessary from a business point of view) by the early start time, perhaps giving them an extra hour of sleep and then giving PPV purchasers “more for their money” was seen as the best move. It will be interesting to see what the turnout is for this event.
Unless they are being sponsored by 5 Hour Energy, I don’t see this paying off. From the Midwest to the East Coast, “big boys” with real responsibilities will probably be falling asleep before the main event(s). Sacrifice for what you love?
Heard that it should be a packed show for the arena configuration they’re using at Saitama. Not quite the days when PRIDE could use the stadium configuration but still pretty good for a foreign promotion. PPV buys might be less than 200,000, though. For whatever reason Frankie still hasn’t shown himself to be a draw on PPV. I suppose it could surprise me, however, with Rampage being on the undercard and given the fact that there will be no more PPV events under late April. Guess we’ll see. Has anyone heard if Zuffa has a television partner in Japan for this event? I know it’s available on WOWOW (which most Japanese homes don’t have) but I figured they might partner with one of the networks to air this tape delayed that night in Japan.