Rousey delivers: UFC 157 PPV buys expected to exceed 400,000
Dana White told the media that Ronda Rousey had garnered more attention from main stream media than other UFC fighter, ever,…
Dana White told the media that Ronda Rousey had garnered more attention from main stream media than other UFC fighter, ever, including Brock Lesnar. The question remained whether or not that would translate to a viable PPV draw for the company. White was confident, but some felt as though people wouldn’t pay to watch a women’s main event. Dave Meltzer often speculates on these PPV numbers and UFC President Dana White has said in the past that Meltzer is often fairly accurate.
That being said, it looks like Rousey is indeed a viable PPV draw:
Over 400,000….they’re absolutely thrilled. The show, it was…they had predicted 250. Budgeted 250, I shouldn’t say predicted. But I mean, the predictions internally were 250-300. So they blew away their predictions, big time. It’s..uh..yeah..it’s not as big as I’ve seen some numbers floating around, it wasn’t THAT big, but if you think about what all things considered it was enormous. It was a huge success.
Actually, the reality is that it was probably … there was a very good chance that the promotion of Rousey was TOO successful because she’s been offered a role in the next…whatever it is…the next Hunger Games movie that they’re going to film. And once that happens it’s like…you know, who knows? She’s making a lot of money fighting, I don’t know what those numbers are going to be when they come out when they’re released. But she’s making a ton of money. They signed her to a hell of a contract because they really did believe…not necessarily that she’d be this giant PPV draw, but in other ways she’d be incredibly valuable to the company. And so far she has turned out to be more valuable than they expected.