UFC 174: Payout Perspective

Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective.  This time we take a look at UFC 174 from Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where Demetrious Johnson showed why he is the pound for pound best fighter in the UFC.

Mighty Mouse outclasses  Bagautinov

Rousey may be the biggest draw, Jones may be the face, Weidman may be the most liked, Cain may be the most devastating but Demetrious Johnson has to be considered the best pound for pound fighter in the UFC.  Johnson showed his technical acumen and lightning quick speed in shutting out Ali Bagautinov in the 5 round main event.  Johnson’s array of moves and speed were too much for the fourth-ranked fighter in the Flyweight division.

Johnson has cleaned out all the proven contenders in his division and maybe a rematch with John Dodson is next for Mighty Mouse.  However, would a move up the 135 be something to look at down the road?  Johnson’s only UFC defeated came at 135 at the hands of Dominick Cruz in October 2011.

MacDonald impressive over Woodley

There are times that Rory MacDonald looks disinterested in his fights, and there are times where he looks like the guy who wants to be champ by 25.  On Saturday MacDonald looked like a contender by dominating Tyron Woodley.  It was a dominating victory over a fighter that had the momentum to be considered for a title shot with an impressive win over the hometown MacDonald.

MacDonald likely will stand in line while waiting for a welterweight title shot behind the winner of the Matt Brown-Robbie Lawler matchup.

Attendance and gate

Although we do not know the exact configurations for Saturday’s UFC event, the Rogers Center holds 18,630.  UFC 174 drew 13,506 for a gate of $1.14 million.  This is noticeably down from UFC 131, the last time the organization came to the Rogers Arena.  That event had 14,685 for a gate of $2.8 million.  Prior to that, in 2010, UFC 115 at GM Place had 17,669 fans for over $4.2 million.  UFC director of Canadian operations Tom Wright was quoted in the Vancover Sun on Sunday that the UFC was happy with coming to Vancouver and would be back.

According to SeatGeek, there was a lack of demand for the event as it saw seats on the secondary market selling below face value.  The average resale for a ticket was $175.

Bonuses

The $50K bonuses were as follows:

Tae Hyun Bang: $100K for Fight of the Night and Performance of the Night

Kiichi Kunimoto: $50K Performance of the Night

Kajan Johnson: $50K Fight of the Night.

Johnson and Bang were awarded FOTN.  Kunimoto pulled off an upset of Daniel Sarafian during the prelims portion of the card.  Arguably, MacDonald and OSP could have been in the running for POTN as well as Letourneau-Phillips for FOTN.

Promotion for the Fight

The UFC Embedded series once again complemented the UFC Countdown show.  The Embedded series is just like the 24/7/All-Access series the UFC had done in the past except this one is shorter and likely cheaper.  While the online series focuses on White and then the featured fighters instead of vice versa, it’s still an interesting look behind the scenes of fight week.

White also spoke to the Vancouver Board of Trade. 

There was coverage of the UFC in the local press.  As well as a post-fight review by a columnist in the Vancouver Sun expressing her displeasure for the sport.  While we try to be unbiased in reading opposing views to this sport, this column does a disservice to its readers by painting a picture with purported evidence which, if you dig into, does not support the writer’s initial thesis.

Since it was close to his hometown, Demetrious Johnson took the UFC belt over to the Seattle Seahawks training facility to meet some other world champions.  He met All-Pro Safety Earl Thomas and it made the Seahawk Facebook page.  He also made appearances in Seattle the week before fight week to promote the fight.

Sponsors

The octagon sponsors included Fram, Las Vegas.com, Xyience, Boston Pizza, XboxOne, EA Sports’ UFC video game, UFC Fit and Bud Light in the center.  EA Sports also had the fighter prep point.  Its interesting to note that some of the usual Octagon sponsors did not have signage in the octagon tonight although most of the usual sponsors had other parts of the PPV (e.g., Harley Davidson, MetroPCS, etc…)

Las Vegas seems to be doing more promotion in lieu of International Fight Week.  Boston Pizza is a UFC sponsor that is big in Canada.  Xbox One is the one and only sponsor of Demetrious Johnson.

The biggest recognition for a sponsor for the night has to go to Tyron Woodley and his sponsor, Dude Wipes.  DudeProducts.com make a wipe that doesn’t make dudes smell.  The good news, the logo was placed directly on Woodley’s rear end and received a lot of response so much so that it was trending on twitter.  The bad news is that Woodley lost.

Odds and Ends

The Prelims were on FX instead of FS1 which adds to the fact that this event might be one of the lowest viewed in a while.

Although this happened a couple weeks ago USA TaeKwonDo had its logo on the Octagon mat at the New Mexico Fight Night.  Benson Henderson has a black belt in TKD which may be one of the reasons for its sponsorship.

Remember when Tim Tebow was a well-liked football player?  Tebow was in attendance to little fan-fare from the Canadian crowd.

Who had the worse looking eye on Saturday night?  Valerie Letourneau or Boxer Chris Algieri.

Feijao had a sponsor blacked out at weigh-ins.  With his performance on Saturday, that sponsor is likely happy it had its name blacked out.

Conclusion

Going into this event, it did not seem like this would be a good viewing weekend.  The last three years, June PPVs have been one of the weakest of the year.  UFC 174 will carry this trend.  While Johnson is one of the best around, he’s not a draw and there was nothing else on the card that would compel a casual viewer to pay to watch this card.  Although not necessarily a correlation of the buy rate, the attendance for this event was lower than in 2011.  A buy rate of 150,000 would not be out of the realm of possibility.