Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective. This time, we take a look at UFC 220 taking place at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
Miocic handles Ngannou
Stipe Miocic defeated Francis Ngannou via unanimous decision in what was an easy win for the defending champion. Despite Ngannou’s punching power, he did not have any cardio or any type of grappling acumen to defend himself against Miocic. This is confounding since this was the obvious test for the challenger since most of his fights are standing up. Ngannou had no defense to the ground game by Miocic and was visibly exhausted most of the fight.
Truly a disappointing showing for Ngannou who was thought to be ready for his shot. Obviously, he is a one-dimensional fighter at this point. The good news is that he is still a very good one-dimensional fighter. He just needs to extend his grasp of MMA and more cardio.
For Miocic, it truly was a very good game plan. Even when he was not doing anything to Ngannou, he was leaning on him getting him tired.
Dana White indicated that a Daniel Cormier-Miocic fight would be a good matchup although DC confirmed that he would like to see his stablemate, Cain Velasquez get a shot by the end of the year.
For Ngannou? Derrick Lewis, a guy who has had his own trouble with cardio was trolling the man from Cameroon last night and that might be a fun fight to see so long as it lasts just one round.
Cormier outclasses Volkan
Daniel Cormier proved that there are different levels of UFC fighter as he soundly handled Vokan Oezdimir and stopped him in the second round. Cormier, still haunted by the ghosts of Jon Jones, gave a post-fight promo talking about getting his championship back. Regardless of how much he tucks in his shirt to his pants and has a dad bod, he is still one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport. As he says, it’s not easy going against him.
Attendance, Gate and Bonuses
Boston fans came out for UFC 220 as the event was a sellout or close to it with the most fans-ever attending a UFC event at the TD Garden. There were 16,015 fans in attendance with a gate of $2.45 million. The gate was slightly less than UFC 118’s $2.8 million which had a main event of Edgar-Penn II.
The demand was down on the secondary market with the median price for tickets falling as of this past Thursday from $384 per ticket to $368 per ticket. The get-in price on the secondary market was $136. Ticketmaster had seats available although they were close to a sell out as of Friday.
The bonuses went to Cormier, Abdul Razak Alhassan, Calvin Kattar and Shane Burgos. Each earned $50,000. Alhassan and Cormier earned the Performance bonuses while Kattar and Burgos drew Fight of the Night.
Promotion of the Fight
This felt like a big event for the UFC as it tried to kick off 2018 on a high. Embedded was front and center as the tool to promote the event via social media. This time around, there were no sponsors attached to the event. It did show a lot of the promotion (i.e., media obligations, ESPN interviews, appearances) in addition to the training the main camps endured.
One of the more unique opportunities was Daniel Cormier being interviewed for Complex Magazine regarding his shoe game. As someone that is somewhat of a sneakerhead, this was a good way to tie in Cormier with a personal interest with the underlying goal of promoting UFC 220.
Sponsorships
It was the first time that Modelo was a part of a UFC PPV. The beer maker took over for Bud Light as the “Official Beer” of the UFC. It was front and center during the UFC Prelims as the studio shots had the logo prominently displayed. It was also on the canvas and Octagon posts.
BodyArmor also made its first appearance on a UFC PPV with the stools, drinks and towels having the logo.
Although no announcement has yet been made, Wish Shopping may be the next sponsor to fall in line with the UFC. The company, which features online shopping, was one of the sponsors for The Money Fight this past August. It also sponsors the Los Angeles Lakers. During the PPV, it sponsored the Fighter Descriptions.
Gruntstyle.com, MetroPCS, Body Armor, Toyo Tires, Performance Inspired, Modelo, EA’s UFC 3, Monster Energy had the center of the Octagon. 7-11 shared an Octagon post with Monster Energy. The upcoming video game also had the fighter prep point.
MetroPCS offered its Periscope analysis during the event with Forrest Griffin, Demetrious Johnson, Tyron Woodley and Cody Garbrandt.
Performance Inspired also sponsored the UFC bonus announcements.
EA UFC3 offered up the video game versions of the main event participants.
Odds and Ends
As most know, the event went up against Bellator 192 on the reboot of SpikeTV now known as The Paramount Network.
Francis Ngannou, a native of Cameroon, had some choice words for the President. I also wrote about it here.
The weirdest news out of this week was the internet feud between Daniel Cormier and professional wrestlers, The Young Bucks. The two went back and forth before third parties decided to be jerks and both sides decided for cooler heads to prevail.
There were over 1 million google searches for UFC 220 on Saturday. In comparison Bellator 192 had over 200,000.
UFC 220 was $5 more ($64.99) than PPVs last year. If you wanted the 4K version it cost $74.99.
Luke Rockhold, a training partner of Cormier, trained in Florida with Volkan which caused somewhat of a stir but for the fact Rockhold immediately dispelled a myth of a fissure between himself and DC.
Conclusion
The google searches and promotion of the event leads me to believe that we should see a better than normal buy rate for this event. While UFC 219’s mid-300s was a success despite the consensus feel that it was not, look for UFC 220 to do slightly better. Perhaps the 350-375K range.
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