Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective. This time we take a look at UFC 302 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Makachev submits Poirier
Islam Makachev was able to secure a takedown on Dustin Poirier in the fifth round of their championship fight. It led to Makachev securing a D’arce choke on Poirier. After the fight, Makachev set his sights on the welterweight title held by Leon Edwards. This could be the fight because the next 155er up next is Arman Tsarukyan. An interesting fight but probably not a fight that would sell to most fans.
Poirier did a great job of defending the takedowns after the Makachev secured the first one just seconds in the first round. He did not announce his retirement, but it was close to being a concession that it may be it for Poirier. It sounded like he is focused on winning titles and not staying in the fight game just to stay in it. This would be admirable. With the shots of his daughter starting to cry, it was a poignant scene.
Strickland defeats Costa in co-main
As undescriptive as my headline is, the fight was the same. Rather than try to go over what most believed to be a boring fight, and acknowledged by Strickland, the former middleweight champion clearly did enough to win the fight. However, a judge had the fight in favor of Costa. This was a re-occurring issue throughout the night.
Another big night for the company as it drew 17,834 for a gate of $7.25M per the post-fight press conference. The event was the biggest gate in the venue’s history.
The bonuses went to Islam Makachev, Dustin Poirier and Kevin Holland. Makachev earned $100K for his Performance and Fight of the Night bonus with Poirier. Holland had the other $50K bonus.
Sponsorships
The latest UFC sponsor is Aires Tech. I don’t know what purpose this serves but you can check out the web site.
The Octagon included Bud Light, Prime, Monaco, Toyo Tires, Crypto.com, Hart Tools, Cuervo, Draft Kings, Vechain, Anthem, Hudson Shipping, Howler Head, CPI Stem Cells, Rizz Pharma, Stake, the movie Bad Boys: Ride or Die, New Amsterdam Vodka, Budweiser, Black Raffle Coffee Company, Monster and Family Dollar, easypost, Hospital for Special Surgery, Manscaped on the outside skirting, Slate on the opposite end of the top padding facing the crowd and Monster Energy in the middle of the Octagon.
UFC Embedded was presented by crypto.com
KudoSnacks appeared on the telecast.
VeChain sponsored the Tale of the Tape for the main event and co-main events.
Odds and ends
Sportswashing at its best with Donald Trump, the former President convicted of 34 felonies on Friday, appeared at UFC 302 with his own entrance. There was no mention of his convictions and the crowd adored him. Maybe I am too fragile, but it seemed like there was a lot of shots to Trump in the audience. Jon Anik glowingly said of Trump, “45 in all his glory.” Absolutely disgusting. You don’t have to like President Biden to think that all of this was just deplorable to praise a man that broke the law and was convicted by a jury of his peers.
Paulo Costa threw out the first pitch at a Mets game. It did not go well.
TKO Group offered the UFC PPV for $10 off if customers paid for the PPV prior to the event date. A pretty smart move for the company.
Dustin Poirier’s commercial for Toyo Tires was played during the Prelims.
He also was a part of a Bud Light commercial.
The UFC Prelims were on ESPN2 on Saturday and started late due to College Baseball. Despite the delay, it drew 1.103M viewers and 0.48 in the A18-49 demo.
Conclusion
Hard to say what the buy rate for the event would be since we don’t get those number unless it does extraordinarily well. But it would seem that the UFC is unstoppable right now and even though the big event is later this month it likely did between 250K and 400K buys.
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