Jon Jones is a star: 700,000 PPV Buys for UFC 145

The idea that Jon Jones is going to be the next Anderson Silva or Georges St. Pierre level star in UFC gained a lot of steam at UFC 145.

With his balance, speed, size and in particular, the reach of a 7-footer in a light heavyweight body, Jones has been unchallenged in his rise to the top.

But there is one rocky aspect of Jones being established as MMA’s version of Tiger Woods, the mainstream star, and that is he is struggling at maintaining popularity with the fans. Even though Evans is a natural heel, and was the instigator of much of the talk in promoting the fight, Jones has continued to lose popularity consistently since he became UFC’s youngest champion in its history one year ago. Evans’ story, how his coach double-crossed him and how his training partner broke a vow, led to this fight.

The build-up and personalities resulted in a unique situation where a sold out crowd booed both competitors as they came out. At weigh-ins, the hardcore crowd was mixed for Evans and almost completely negative for Jones. But in the building on fight night, it was reversed. Jones got a mixed reaction, maybe 60% boos, from the sold out crowd of 15,545 fans at Phillips Arena in Atlanta that paid almost $2.3 million and Evans was booed by 90-95% of the crowd.

But even with no crowd favorite, the story was strong enough that early estimates of PPV numbers have topped 700,000 buys, by far the largest of Jones’ career. The number was big for UFC, because they had not established a new young star who was a major consistent draw since the rise of Brock Lesnar, now retired, and Georges St. Pierre, out for most of the year. While the draw was in good part due to the storyline, the number was big enough to where it, combined with WrestleMania a few weeks ago, seems to contradict a lot of people’s views of PPV as a dying industry. The big events, like this and WrestleMania, have done better than most expectations going in.

Ratings for the two-hour prelim show on FX was a 1.03 rating and 1.6 million viewers, the highest for any prelims since the move to FX and now above what the shows had usually been doing on Spike. The show did a 1.59 in Males 18-34 and 1.27 in Males 35-49.

From a business standpoint, the show was good because you had a main event that delivered numbers, and the key players on the undercard, 22-year-old welterweight Rory MacDonald and 21-year-old bantamweight Michael McDonald both came through with not only impressive wins, but came across very likeable in their post-fight interviews.

Jones got $400,000 for the win and Evans got $300,000 for the loss, but with PPV points, both will be well into the seven figures.

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