MMA Junkie reports an 8 city press tour to promote the July 11th fight between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo. The tour is one of a kind considering it features the company’s 145 pound fighters.
The UFC is heavily investing in Conor McGregor once again as he challenges Jose Aldo for the Featherweight title at UFC 189. The tour, dubbed the “UFC 189 World Championship Tour” includes stops in Rio de Janeiro, Los Vegas, Los Angeles, Boston, Toronto, London and Dublin.
The official schedule via Junkie:
- March 20: 2 p.m. news conference, Maracanazinho Arena, Rio de Janeiro. Free and open to the public, streaming on UFC Fight Pass
- March 23: Press tour, Las Vegas
- March 24: Press tour, Los Angeles
- March 25: 5:30 p.m. news conference, The Strand Theater, Boston
- March 26: 5 p.m. news conference, Beacon Theater, New York. Free and open to the public
- March 27: 4 p.m. news conference, Eaton Centre (MAC Court Fountain), Toronto. Free and open to the public
- March 29: McGregor to attend 2016 Qualifying round of UEFA European Championship: Republic of Ireland vs. Poland, Aviva Stadium, Dublin
- March 29: Jose Aldo to attend FIFA International friendly: Brazil vs. Chile, Emirates Stadium, London
- March 30: News conference, TBA, London
- March 31: Fan event, Convention Centre Dublin. Free and open to the public
Payout Perspective:
The UFC has done press tours in the past but none with so many cities and focusing on just a single fight (although certain cities will include promotion of other fights upcoming). As it did with McGregor’s fight in January, the UFC is pulling out all of the stops. I would look for Fox’s involvement once again with shoulder programming to include filming during this tour. It will be interesting to see how these two do for the tour and the reception they will receive in each city. Obviously, McGregor’s persona will carry the tour and we’ll see if Aldo will play along.
Copying boxing. LOL
The UFC needs to do something to get this weight class going. Here we have the champ who’s beaten everyone fighting a guy who has fought no one worth a flying shit! hahaha
They ripped this off of Boxing. I remember in an interview Donna White said he saw the Mayweather Vs Canelo press tour and couldnt believe how many people showed up. He said he was going to start doing it as well.
Donna White quote- “We saw everythibg Boxing did and said we have to do the opposite”.
Some of the many things the fastest growng sports has copied from the dying sport of Boxing
Touring press conferences
Gloves
creating weight classes
having weigh ins and post conferences
having promotional build up shows
If they were copying boxing, they would have them avoid fighting for 12 rds and then have one of the fighters complain after they lost a split decision. Haha.
Boxing trolls getting nervous because they know this will be yet another big ppv this year. Haha. MMA heading for a big year this year!! Boxing’s in its last year! HAHAHA!! Eat that homos!
you forgot
Hyping bums
Fixing refs
fixing judges
I can go on hahaha
FB – boxing ripped off weight classes from wrestling idiot.
Sal, those are good points, boxing does have a long history of those as well. Thanks for the input. HAHAHAHA!!!
D-um no stupid ass. Boxing has had weight classes since the 1930’s at least. I also already told you 800k is the UFC’s ceiling.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You fucking idiot!! Amateur wrestling has had weight classes since 1904. Seriously, the one even close to as retarded as you when it comes to just making shit up is Sal.
I also already proved you dead wrong that the UFC’s ceiling was 1.5m buys. Haha. Idiot.
how so? what fight can do 1.5 million buys right now?
“They ripped this off of Boxing.”
Who cares. Do whatever works. If boxing is doing something right, copy it, if it isn’t change it. And vise versa.
Diego- I care because dana and mma fans are saying Boxings dead. so why are you clearly copying it? Dana also says “we saw everything Boxing did and said we need to do the opposite”. well as a fan of Boxing I have to call out there hypocrisy
HAHAHA!!! Funny how you ran away from the weight class argument. Smart move.
Also, what fight can do 1.5m buys now? Who knows when one will pop up. My point is they have a proven ceiling of 1.5m buys that you conveniently ignore. The truth of the matter is this is going to be a very strong year for ppv in mma. It will be even bigger if the show at MSG goes through in December which will be massive especially if Jones/Weidman are fighting there.
I don’t believe Dana White ever claimed boxing was dead. As a matter of fact, I believe he said he was looking forward to Pacquaio and Mayweather. As for mma fans saying boxing is dead, some do, but many boxing fans also make this claim because of the fact that there hasn’t been a relevant hw fight since Klitschko-Lewis which was over a decade ago. HW boxing has always been the marquee division and has been completely dead for years. Also, most of the stars in boxing are aging and they really don’t have anyone on the horizon to replace Mayweather. Possibly Pacquaio, but no one who will draw like Mayweather.
D- lol. D cant give me an example of his moronic claims. UFC hasnt had a 1 million ppv buy for two years. it supposedely hit 1.5 million ppv buys one fuckin time for ufc 100 with lesnar. lol. thats the only time. bahaha. they owe that ppv to their shrinking white young demo.
another boxing thread lol
UFC 168 in Dec 2013 did a million buys Fight Business, and its actually the last PPV in boxing or MMA to do a million buys.
And are you idiots that stupid you dont realize everyone copies from others, what works. Like boxing hasnt copied from wrestling or even UFC?
Boxing takes from UFC what works and UFC takes from wrestling or boxing, they all copy what works.
You dont think boxing looked at how UFC made their events more than one fight, made people care about prelims and undercard fights. Now networks like Showtime air prelim fights.
Oscar has even said they’ve taken from UFC and UFC has taken from boxing. So what.
Nothing but troll idiots on this site.
Nothing against Jason but holy shit this site has the worst posters on it, even Jason knows how ridiculous it is.
“D- lol. D cant give me an example of his moronic claims. UFC hasnt had a 1 million ppv buy for two years. it supposedely hit 1.5 million ppv buys one fuckin time for ufc 100 with lesnar. lol. thats the only time. bahaha. they owe that ppv to their shrinking white young demo.”
Haha. I embarrassed you once again with actual statistics and you pathetically alter your argument. Idiot. Again, they may have only hit 1.5m 1x, but they outsold boxing in terms of ppv 7 out of the last 8 years and the only reason it didn’t happen all 8 years was because of all the injuries. If the UFC focused on only 4 ppvs and flooded them with huge promotional campaigns like boxing does, they would be doing the numbers boxing is doing. By the way, the last ppv between the two sports to do over a million buys was UFC 168, not boxing and that was less than 2 years ago.
Hahahaha. You are such an idiot. The 18-49 demo is not shrinking for mma. What’s funny is it is basically non existent for boxing though. Their stars and fans are all senior citizens. HAHAHAHAHA!!!
You truly are a dumb creature. i can see why you want to give as little info about yourself as possible online. UFC has 14 fucking ppv’s a year. Boxing has 4. Thats why they outsell it you fuckin dumbass. Boxing has a larger per event viewership by at least 400k views.
All MMA does is hit up the same 1 million fans they have over and over again, thats why they “win” the ppv war. Do you realize Boxing’s last event on NBC had between 400k to 500k more views than UFC’s last event. Its already matching what the UFC does on basic cable (900k average views, which is horrible for both sports) but at least Boxing will grow. The UFC has peaked on TV.
FB you truly are a professional retard which will become your nickname by the end of the year. This is really crazy how much of a liar you are and how frequently you post statistics that are flat out lies. Do you have any shame you pathetic piece of trash? FIrst off, the ufc has 13 ppvs this year. They have never once had 14 ppvs. Boxing had 7 ppvs last year in the US that generated less buys than they did the year before in 2013 with only 4 ppvs. The reason for this is when you spread out your product on ppv, your numbers go down as well as the fact that boxing can’t sell shit without their two biggest stars who are about to retire. Only a total retard would deny this, which is why you are in denial you fucking idiot.
If boxing did the same amount of ppvs as the ufc it would make little difference. The evidence is right there when they attempted to expand last year. Makes sense too because boxing only has 2 stars they can sell with while the ufc has tons and is an evolving and growing sport.
Again, you are resorting back to tv ratings which are again cherry picked stats because the first 2 ufcs on FOX destroyed the PBC debut number on NBC. That explains why boxing had to pay to get on there. HAHAHA!
Boxing’s stars are all in their 30s, when Mayweather retires in the fall, their ppvs are going to take a massive hit. Their tv numbers flopped horribly and they are losing millions. There hasn’t been a hw title fight in almost 12 years that anyone’s given a shit about in boxing. Their fans are desperate so they come on mma websites and troll hardcore in a miserably pathetic attempt to convince themselves the sport will some day come back around. But everyone can see the writing on the wall. MMA is more exciting, more popular, and is only going to continue to grow, while boxing has ancient fighters/fans and no one to replace them with. I don’t think boxing will ever completely disappear, but as for being the premier combat sport, it’s already gone in N.America.
D-“they outsold boxing in terms of ppv 7 out of the last 8 years and the only reason it didn’t happen all 8 years was because of all the injuries.”
No they only reason it didnt happen is because boxing came out and showed you that they could out sell the UFC with ease. 8 boxing ppvs smashed 13 UFC ppvs.
Oops.
D- “If the UFC focused on only 4 ppvs and flooded them with huge promotional campaigns like boxing does, they would be doing the numbers boxing is doing.”
No they wouldnt. They cant even sell out arenas for Jon Jones so called superfights.
Get the fuck outta here you clown.
The UFC has many stars you say. name one that can do 800k consistantly?
HAHAHAHA!!! THE GAYEST CAN’T COUNT!!! HE’S AS DUMB AS ART JIMMERSON!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
ADRIEN BRONER IS HIS SAVIOR!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
You can’t even name more than 1 boxer that can do over 800k buys consistently and name 3 boxers who have sold more than 400k buys as an A. There are about 10 ufc fighters who can draw that figure. HAHAHA!! Boxing has 2 aging stars !!!!
Mayweather & Pac can consistantly do over 800k if they have a good B side so there’s 2 people.
GGG with a good partner can do over 400k consistantly.
Adrian Brroner, Garcia & canelo can do over 400k consistantly with a good partner
I’m still waiting for your examples.
I forgot Cotto as well. If you give him a good B side
With the exception of Mayweather this is all hypothetical, not to mention the only 2 you are expecting to hit 800k are two boxers who will be retired in a year probably.
By your analogy Jones would hit 800k consistently with the right matchup as well.
Cotto had a good B with Martinez and still only did 310k ppv buys.
Broner’s last attempt at a ppv got scrapped, the venue was moved as well do to awful tickets sales. They were anticipating less than 100k ppv buys for that fight and they dropped it off ppv and had to move it from Vegas. Garcia shows no evidence of being able to sell a ppv. Canelo would ONLY if he had Mayweather or Pacquaio.
You’ve got 2 A fighters and they are going to retire shortly.