UFC Rio likely seen in 30,000,000 homes in Brazil
Following the UFC’s sold-out event at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena, White said the country’s passion for the sport inside…
Following the UFC’s sold-out event at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena, White said the country’s passion for the sport inside the arena – not to mention the apparent 30 million or so homes that watched on TV – ensured that the UFC is going to rapidly expand in Brazil.
“I’ve been doing events all over the world for the last 10 years,” White said. “Brazil wins for the loudest crowd ever. The cool thing about this show, too, was the place was packed from the first fight of the night. The first fight of the night sounded like the title fight.
“We might be here every weekend,” Whjite quipped.
“We’re getting early polling back from TV in Brazil that we did a 20 percent share tonight, which could be almost 30 million homes. Huge.”
“This was a successful event before it even happened. The reality is that we came in, and a lot of people were looking for tickets for this event.
“We could have sold more tickets. We could have done some big, huge, major events out in the streets, including the weigh-ins and everything else. We wanted this one to go smooth, get it behind us and move on to the next one.”
“How the ticket situation works down here is completely different than anywhere else. It’s something that’s going to have to be worked out in the future.
“Trust me, people aren’t going to have triuble getting tickets to the next one. I guarantee you that. We’re jumping big next time. We’re going big. We’re not playing around next time.”
“We’re probably real close to setting up an office down here. This is a huge market for us, and we’re just getting started.
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but when you do business in other countries, there’s a lot of things you’ve got figure out. But it absolutely, positively makes sense for us to have an office down here.”
Unlike most U.S. shows, White was not aware of exactly how many seats were sold and how much revenue was generated at the gate. Instead, he only noted that the HSBC Arena was “sold-out.” The venue held about 14,000 fans last night.
