UFC President Dana White announced that UFC 182 drew an estimated attendance of 11,575 for a gate of $3.7M during Saturday night’s post-event press conference. UFC 182: Jones vs Cormier took place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Saturday.
The official numbers for the event will be announced by the Nevada Athletic Commission during the upcoming week.
Top MGM Grand UFC Events:
- UFC 148: Silva vs. Sonnen II: $6,901,655 gate; 15,104 attendance
- UFC 168: Weidman vs. Silva II: $6,238,792 gate; 15,650 attendance
- UFC 167: St-Pierre vs. Hendricks: $5,759,350 gate; 14,856 attendance
- UFC 66: Liddell vs. Ortiz II: $5,397,300 gate; 13,761 attendance
- UFC 162: Silva vs. Weidman: $4,826,450 gate; 14,272 attendance
Payout Perspective:
MMAPayout reported yesterday that UFC 182 was not a sell-out and ticket sales were slower than usual for what can be categorized as one of UFC’s biggest events in years. The estimated announced numbers are proof of just that. When the official numbers are reported later on in the week, we will also see a healthy number of complimentary tickets, most likely in the 30%+ range. In the write-up, we speculate the different reasons as to why the live event ticket sales were not on par with some of the UFC’s other big events that were held in the same venue, but from the UFC’s perspective, they will concentrate on pointing out the great numbers they received from bars, theaters, social trends, and estimated PPV numbers.
There is no doubt that this is the first card since UFC 168 which casuals cared about, the only question is whether it can produce the estimated 1M PPV buys UFC 168 was able to produce on December of 2013.
Jones is not the draw that GSP, Silva, Ortiz or Chuck were. That’s stating the obvious. I think the real question for the UFC is whether a fighter will be able to transcend the brand in order to become a major draw. It was easy for the UFC to bring in fighters like Brock and run record business; as Brock came into the UFC already a common household name. However, they are starting to hit a wall with respect to building stars, if that is even possible when the brand is more important than the product.
2015 is shaping up to be a better year for business than 2014, but I wouldn’t expect anything earth shattering. They still are in recovery mode and I expect the remainder of 2015 to be another build up year for their champs.
I agree with you guru, that the fighters are not bigger than the brand. weather the UFC prevents that is debatable. But I do think it is good for the ufc. Currently if a fighter becomes bigger than the UFC they can go to aany promotion and single handedly make the UFC #2 in the industry. Even worse is they can self promote their fights like Boxers which isn’t good for anyone.
But I do think the time will come where the UFC can let this happen and not be at risk of destroying their company or the MMA industry. First they have to go global. Once they have a large share of the global market, im talking a sizable presence in most countries. Then a fighter would have value to them even if they were mega stars in the US or another individual country. Once they can monetize fighter across multiple countries, a fighter couldn’t do better on his own. There for would still need the UFC and its structure. As long as the US is still a large percent of the UFC revenue then Superstar fighters will be a threat to the structure of the sport as we know it. I don’t even see boxing as a sport. It is always been a couple fighters who are self promoting for personal gain without any focus on the sport, other figthers, or the future, and has very little structure as they can pick and choose anyone they fight and also avoid fights. This is wwhy the success of FMJ and PAC haven’t trickled down to anyone else in the sport. The number of viewers they get should have been boosting boxings fan base across the board but it hasn’t.
After all the hype hahahahahahaha
mmaguru: I also believe this was the first time Jon Jones headlined an event in Las Vegas.
Agree Jose. His last fight in Vegas was before he won the belt 5 years ago vs Bader. There is a reason they kept him from Vegas when other stars fight there almost exclusively. He wasn’t clicking with that demo yet. So they wisely promoted him to the traditionally tough sell and star starved East coast and waited for the right time and opponent to use him in Vegas.