Iole: Why so many UFC shows makes sense
“The dirty little secret here is that the seeming overload of shows the UFC is staging here, there and everywhere was not designed for the hardcore fan base.”
The hardcore fanbase has been bewailing the large number of UFC shows lately – there are two on Saturday – preferring fewer shows with bigger main events. However, Kevin Iole explains, they aren’t for us.
The dirty little secret here is that the seeming overload of shows the UFC is staging here, there and everywhere was not designed for the hardcore fan base.
The seeming glut of shows the UFC is staging will serve its purpose if it persuades some who watch infrequently or not at all to become casual fans who may, every now and then, buy a pay-per-view.
The success of a pay-per-view show is rarely due to hardcore fans. Promoters in both boxing and mixed martial arts can count upon a reliably consistent number of serious fans to purchase every pay-per-view show. But the difference in one show selling 150,000 pay-per-views and another doing 500,000 is the amount of casual fans it’s able to reel in.
White and UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta are not stupid. They know they’d sell significantly more pay-per-views if the main card was Chris Weidman-Lyoto Machida, Ronda Rousey-Alexis Davis, Penn-Edgar III, Swanson-Stephens and James Tehuna-Nate Marquardt. But they’re doing the right thing and making the long-term play.
They lose nothing if they ultimately determine that the market can’t bear so many shows. They simply can cut the fat, so to speak, and have fewer shows, in the process adding more star power to the pay-per-view offerings.
If they’re right, though, and all that people need to become fans is exposure to the sport on a regular basis, then this is the way to go.
Consumers have choices when spending their entertainment dollars. The guy who buys every single pay-per-view has a complaint, because he’s the only person the high number of shows really impacts.
But if the tradeoff is more growth and better quality MMA down the road, it’s one that most true fans would gladly make.
