MMA Junkie reports that the attendance announced for UFC 159 was 15,227 fans for a gate of $2.7 million. In addition, bonuses were $65,000 each up from the “standard” $50,000 which were announced earlier this year.
The attendance was second highest at The Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey with UFC 111: GSP v. Hardy ($4 million/$17,000). UFC 159 placed right in front of UFC 128 where Jones won the title against Shogun Rua at UFC 128.
Bonuses were up to $65,000 each and as follows
Fight of the Night: Pat “Bam Bam” Healy vs. Jim Miller
KO of the Night: Roy Nelson
Submission of the Night: Bam Bam Healy
A good debut for the Strikeforce alum Healy as he gets an extra $130K to take home.
Payout Perspective:
Darren Rovell sent out an interesting tweet Sunday about the event and whether the UFC has lost its “edge.” Not surprisingly, it received a return tweet from Dana White. I’ll let you wonder how that went. We’ll discuss this a little later this week. But, a part of the discussion had to do with attendance at events. Based on the announced numbers, it does look like the card did well financially. As for the bonuses, I did not read an explanation for the raise but good for the fighters.
The raise was Brian Caraway at the pre fight fighter meeting haggling Dana, according to Dana in the post fight scrum.
Not sure of Rovelle’s point. Of course fewer than 32 events would increase the quality of each event, but they are committed under contract to Fox for 4 Fox, 6 FX, and 6 Fuel per year and PPV is still a big revenue driver.
NJ will continue to get 2 PPV every 3 years until NY comes on line and maybe 1/yr if Brazil slows down (which I do not see happening yet). It will be interesting to see how far over Jones average of about 500k the PPV does. I bought it reluctantly as I am not that interested in the next card, but am recovering some surgery and could not make it out anywhere else. Does it do 525k or 700k, i have no idea.
More interesting I think is what it does to a potential super-fight with Silva. Seeing how easily Jones took Sonnen down, I can’t imagine Silva having any chance at all. NOt that I thought Silva was ever really interested inf fighting Jones.