Dana White: UFC on FOX not tanking, it is bringing in new audience
UFC President Dana White sat down with Lance Pugmire of the LA Times, and took MMA writers to task for declaring that…
UFC President Dana White sat down with Lance Pugmire of the LA Times, and took MMA writers to task for declaring that the ratings of UFC bouts on Fox-owned networks in the first of a seven-year, $100-million deal mean the sport’s future is far from assured.
Lance Pugmire: Your ratings have slipped at times. You’re saying there’s no concern from Fox about this?
Dana White: “None. Listen, before us, the ads sold to television audiences on Saturday nights were Poligrip and [adult] diapers. We’ve brought the 18-34 male crowd that never used to watch TV on Saturday, and when they say our fights on Fuel are slipping, we had double our early audience of the same fights on Fox Deportes. As for TUF on FX, our 2010 prelims on Spike were at 1.4 million, and the last one was at 1.6 million, and growing every prelim.”
LP: Have there been obstacles to your Fox arrangement — having to switch networks for “The Ultimate Fighter,” airing the fights on Friday nights, and the quality of your big Fox bouts?
DFW: “The real story is, what do the Internet reporters know? When they say Fox made a big bet on the UFC, and now it’s tanking . . . it’s not. It’s given Fox an audience it never had before… 3.9 million new viewers to Fox networks in the last three months, new women viewers, and UFC on Fox 1 had a higher composition of Latino viewers than the big four sports leagues.