2006: I have them at 5.2 million buys roughly.

2007: The only 4 numbers I’ve seen are: Feb/375k, Mar/750k, May/1mil, Aug/750k. If you put April & July at 300,000 each conservatively (low mark last year), put the ireland show at 200,000, put 76 at 400,000 (should do atleast as Good as liddell-sobral), give franklin-silva 2 350k (although franklin drew the 3 lowest buyrates in the last 2 years assuming 72 sucked), give them 200,000 in november (i am anxious to see what they come up with), and 1 million in december (don’t forget about Chuck v. Wandy), that puts them at roughly 5.6 million buys this year. But they are running an extra show this year.

2. If you flip the Gonzaga-Cro Cop fight with Cro Cop winning by head kick, I think they could have done great things in marketing the fight using the Pride tape library. Ofcourse I apparently have a much great confidence in the UFC hype machine with its Countdown and all access specials than you do . For what its worth I think I recall Meltzer saying he thinks that conservatively it cost them $10 million.

3. We agree completely on Unleashed. The way it is now its a negative overall from my point of view because I think they’re just oversaturing. The ratings for the show bare out that others are starting to fell the same way.

4.I don’t think the UFC is mainstream yet. Its on the fringe. The biggest fights/stars are mainstream and get treated like big events (see Chuck-Rampage II). Other than that its off the radar.

It wouldn’t be interesting to see if there’s any correlation between ratings for the countdown/all-access shows on the buyrates.

I still debate this, but its been done.

Through this time last year they had 2.9 million buys. This year they have about 3.5 million.

The amazing part is that they did most of their business only after Gracie/Hughes. Couture/Liddell III would be a monster fight in this climate. That says something IMO about some of their lower ranking PPVs in 2007.

For the rest of 2006 they did 400,000 in September, 300,000 in October, 500,000 in November, 1,000,000 in December. So another 2.2 million. So they only need to avg. a little better than 500,000 for the rest of the year to equal last year. It’s going to tough, but I’d say conservatively they can get 300,000 for sept. and oct., November is a mess, and they’re already talking about 1,000,000 for Dec (Hughes-Serra and Chuck-Wandy). That would put them at 1.6 plus whatever the November show does. Not bad, considering they lost two huge matches this year (hughes-GSP and Couture-Cro Cop).

I think Couture/Cro-Cop wouldn’t have done much differently than Gonzaga. Cro Cop as a draw in the states is beyond undetermined. Hughes/GSP is a blow, however. Matter of fact, I have a feeling Hughes/Serra isn’t going to be the golden goose they want.

3.Regarding Unleashed, finally something we can agree on. I think they’ve killed unleashed. Its endless replays of the same fights, despite having a massive unaired tape library. It doesn’t really have any direction, sometimes I think they randomly draw which fights to show. The best unleashed I saw was the one where they took the first half hour and showed the Liddell-Horn countdown interviews, then showed the fight the second half hour. It actually gave the fight context and made it mean something.

Exactly. Its a total crap shoot, a la watching IFL’s show on MNTV. The problem with the UFC On Demand thing is that it makes it so that they have no reason to attempt showing many of the better prelims from PPV undercards. And that sucks for fans because, hey, who is seriously spending money on UFC prelims on their On Demand site? Hell, at least get it set up with Comcast or Time Warner or something.

4.Ofcourse live fights get better ratings than UFC inside did. Ofcourse UFC inside was on after midnight with little promotion, and even with its modest ratings most people think it helped move ppvs.

I don’t know how many people feel it helped move PPVs. Certainly in a world post MMA boom when the sport is supposedly “mainstream” and bigger than boxing, their world title fights should be doing significantly better than the 300,000 who atypically will buy any major boxing PPV, right? I mean, the .5 and .6 ratings it got weren’t far off from the viewership of the PPVs. They’re speaking to the hardcores with that.

2.Regarding PPV numbers – It would nice if we could get the numbers for every UFC show, but we can’t. Let’s look at we know:

Feb – 2006 did 400,000 (Liddell-Couture), 2007 did around 400,000

March – 2006 did 300,000, 2007 did 750,000 (Couture-Sylvia)

April – 400,000 (Ortiz v. Forrest), I think they I read that they did around 300,000 this year but I could be mistaken.

May – 600,000 (Hughes-Gracie), 1,000,000 (Liddell-Jackson)

June – No ppv in 2006, We only know the 2007 show did bad largely because it was aired live in the afternoon with no primetime replay and the card sucked. Let’s just leave it out for comparison sake.

July – 750,000 (Shamrock-Ortiz), I haven’t heard an estimate but as you alluded to, let’s call it 300,000.

August – 500,000 (Liddell-Sobral), early estimates 750,000 for Randy-Gonzaga

Through this time last year they had 2.9 million buys. This year they have about 3.5 million. For the rest of 2006 they did 400,000 in September, 300,000 in October, 500,000 in November, 1,000,000 in December. So another 2.2 million. So they only need to avg. a little better than 500,000 for the rest of the year to equal last year. It’s going to tough, but I’d say conservatively they can get 300,000 for sept. and oct., November is a mess, and they’re already talking about 1,000,000 for Dec (Hughes-Serra and Chuck-Wandy). That would put them at 1.6 plus whatever the November show does. Not bad, considering they lost two huge matches this year (hughes-GSP and Couture-Cro Cop).

3.Regarding Unleashed, finally something we can agree on. I think they’ve killed unleashed. Its endless replays of the same fights, despite having a massive unaired tape library. It doesn’t really have any direction, sometimes I think they randomly draw which fights to show. The best unleashed I saw was the one where they took the first half hour and showed the Liddell-Horn countdown interviews, then showed the fight the second half hour. It actually gave the fight context and made it mean something.

4.Ofcourse live fights get better ratings than UFC inside did. Ofcourse UFC inside was on after midnight with little promotion, and even with its modest ratings most people think it helped move ppvs.

In spite of this, tons of people were watching UFC 70 and 75. Tons and tons of them. Much more than watch an episode of TUF. Interesting that the live fights draw better than the reality show. How does that work exactly when the DRAMA is the draw for so many?

UFC already runs a show on spike that has an hour of fights. It’s called UFC Unleashed. It’s pretty good, you should check it out.

Its decent because you occasionally get to see prelims, but there’s no real structure to what’s shown and its prototypically an excuse to make money with old fights featuring headliners from 4 or 5 years ago. Its also not a realistic replacement for a live show. We all know even the worst performing UFNs do twice the viewers that UFC’s news magazine show did, and they’ve always, always beaten UFC Unleashed. People aren’t as dumb as some make them out to be.

UFC already runs a show on spike that has an hour of fights. It’s called UFC Unleashed. It’s pretty good, you should check it out.

They’ve put down a lot of money in the UK/european market. The 3 european shows are big money losers as a result. This is not a result of the ppv business weakening. They’re going to have two million plus buy ppvs this year, and at least one 750,000. They did somewhere between 250,000-300,000 for the Super Bowl show on the weakest lineup of the year.

Two of the events from across the pond had guaranteed money from Spike and advertisers. The event that didn’t would surprise me if it did 300,000 buys. Again: Note the lack of hard numbers in recent months. Aside from that, what events are going to be “million plus buys”? Are you assuming that Hughes/Serra will have the same impact as Tito/Liddell II? That fight was the two biggest stars in the company fighting. TUF might help elevate that show, but it should show you how much faith UFC has in that vehicle that they put Penn/Pulver on free TV. Other than that, I see several PPVs in the coming months that will probably top out at 500,000 if they’re lucky. I have the sinking suspicion that UFC 77 and 78 probably aren’t going to live up to a lot of the expectations people have for them buywise.

Ummm…my understanding is that this is due to them sinking a lot of money into the UK events and blowing $40M on PRIDE. If they really were paying attention to “crap cards = crap numbers = crap financal outlooks”, they wouldn’t be putting Liddell-Jardine or Tito-Evans as main events.

It pretty clearly states that what they expected to take in for revenue earlier this year didn’t appear. I don’t know why that would be a surprise for anyone. I mean, when was the last time buyrates were released for UFC PPVs? UFC 67 in January? That’s likely both from live show revenue (the first event at the Palms didn’t look on TV to be a rousing success in terms of bringing people in, for instance) and from PPV revenue. Outside of Couture and Liddell’s headlining shows, how realistic are 500,000 plus buyrates? Particularly in the case of UFC 72, which everyone agreed was a very, very weak card.

If the UFC continues to expand, its inevitable. What are you talking about?

Do you think TUF/UFC would be where they are now without the star coachs?

You’re not getting it.

With just a straight hour of fights?

Initially, perhaps not, though its impossible to tell and any claims to the contrary are nothing but speculation. What isn’t is the likelihood that as a sport, the UFC will have to move beyond reality shows to push their agenda in coming years, unless you assume that this is the maximum level of success they envision.

The reality show component was the biggest part in TUF working.

The reality show existed because it was the only way they could get on the air. It was a concession by Dana to the media conglomerates. You remove the fight from TUF and its UFC’s Contender and no one watches, just like Contender.

Do you honestly think Vince would have given Spike his blessing for TUF if he knew then what he knows today?

Do you think it ultimately would have mattered?

TV ratings aren’t where UFC hurts WWE, its ppv where there are finite dollars to be spent on what sometimes looks like an endless array of ppv fighting/wrestling options.

And, as I’ve stated before, WWE PPV buyrates were falling before the MMA explosion. They continued to falter this year while UFC buyrates were comparatively weak. You talk about there being a strong correlation, then start actually looking at the numbers. You’d be surprised.

The model is basically the same: exclusively contracted fighters, market the brand above the fighters, ppv as the biggest revenue source, tv geared to build the monthly ppv show.

So you think its comparable to pro wrestling on this basis? Because PPV is its main revenue stream? You do understand why that is, right?

I agree completely. The difference of opinion seems to be on how to attract them to the product. I think we both agree that its by building stars which takes a combo of seeing that person fight and becoming emotionally invested in the outcome of that fighter’s fights. The difference of opinion seems to be on how best to accomplish that. You think seeing other people fight every week is the answer. I think its making people feel like they know the fighter, have a connection to him, and want to see him win or get his ass kicked.

You can do both. But the key here is and has been that people want to see fights. Its a sport. People want to see the sport. If they can’t see the sport, then as far as they know, it doesn’t exist. Continued exposure is the most important aspect.

Obviously it wouldn’t be as big as the first fight because theres no star (de la hoya). But hatton-mayweather with a 24/7 push would almost certainly do better, if not significantly better, than hatton-mayweather with no 24/7 push and merely the usual hype during other boxing matches.

24/7 and boxing PPV buyrates aren’t cause and effect. HBO has done preshows hyping fights televised right after major fight cards for years. The people buying boxing PPVs are going to either buy it or they won’t, and there’s no hard link to such hype shows selling PPVs. Mayweather/De La Hoya could have done a daily reality show and it wouldn’t have mattered if mainstream media didn’t pick up the story from day 1.

Does ESPN work with the same promoter/promotion each week?

They certainly have in the past. I believe that in 2004 the contract was with Sugar Ray Leonard’s company to produce the fights. They no longer do because they are paying next to nothing for the bouts. In fact, they may actually be paying nothing.

I think the ideal UFC event schedule would be 2 per month, one on PPV, one on Spike or HBO, the rest of the TV programming geared towards promoting those shows. I don’t think we’re close to someone paying enough money to warrant canceling ppvs.

I doubt we are either, unless HBO steps into the picture. HBO isn’t going to accept Din Thomas/Kenny Florian.

Ummm…my understanding is that this is due to them sinking a lot of money into the UK events and blowing $40M on PRIDE. If they really were paying attention to “crap cards = crap numbers = crap financal outlooks”, they wouldn’t be putting Liddell-Jardine or Tito-Evans as main events.

And if you’re trying to “talk down” to me, you can fuckin blow me.