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UFC’s “boxing” movement continues

By Zach Arnold | May 6, 2006

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By Zach Arnold

Most people, by now, know that Dana White takes a lot of cues from boxing. It’s a positive on some levels, but unfortunately Zuffa’s latest move is not such a positive step if you’re an MMA fan. Boxing has, for the most part, relegated itself to a PPV-only product with exorbitant PPV prices of $40-50 a pop. Ivan Trembow reports that UFC’s PPVs will now be $40.

It’s one thing to strike while the market is hot, but it’s another thing to box your company into a position of being boxing lite on PPV. UFC shows are fun to watch, but is every show worth $40? We’ll find out, soon enough.

Topics: All Topics, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

3 Responses to “UFC’s “boxing” movement continues”

  1. Tomer says:

    I guess we’ll see how inelastic the demand for UFC & PRIDE PPVs are as they continue jacking up the prices. Boxing PPVs recently (minus big name fighters like Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, etc.) have been doing poorly because promoters like Don King & Bob Arum have been making every freaking semi decent looking card into PPV rather than free tv. Now, however, HBO & Showtime seemed to have lowered the free tv to PPV ratio so that may help them a bit more than last year’s PPV-rama where Marco Antonio Barrera vs. Mzonke Fana of all fights was placed on PPV. Yeah, MAB may be an attraction of sorts, but he only really draws PPV buyrates when matched against the likes of Erik Morales or Manny Pacquiao. His lack of eloquent english skills prevents him (and Manny) from really became a big PPV attraction like Oscar De La Hoya.

  2. Mr.Roadblock says:

    This is 100% true. UFC is getting over on fans with the price. Bob Arum at least stacks his undercards with good young Latino fighters who throw leather.

    Look at UFC 60. Here is the card per UFC.tv
    http://www.ufc.com/index.cfm?fa=EventDetail.FightCard&eid=163

    To me there are 2 half interesting fights on the show: Royce/Hughes and Vera/Silva. The rest of this card belongs on a Spike TV special. How can you even begin to compare this card to Pride’s GP Opening round?

    Prepare for Royce/Hughes to be a boring snoozefest and a total let down. There is a rumored Alessio Sakara v Dean Lister fight for UFC 60. That makes 3 undercard level fights. $40 for this?

    I think UFC is going to lose the hardcore fans and bore the new fans with its watered down, over exposed product. Right now Rich Franklin and GSP are the only young up and coming stars in UFC. They need to develop more talent and should be using the Spike specials to do that. TUF doesn’t count because those guys are by and large also-rans and will never be dominate at the top levels of the sport.

  3. I think this is a terrible comparison to make.

    UFC shows are, from top to bottom, FAR more interesting than boxing PPVs for the simple reason you can look at any major boxing show and if you know anything about the sport, pick at the very LEAST 80% of the fights accurately. UFC have a much better proportion of pick em fights.

    Boxing PPVs are, and always have been about one or two fights. UFC give WAY more depth than that because they have never adopted the same kind of main event model as boxing and no matter what Dana White publicly claims, they aren’t about to. They lean that way but aren’t quite there.

    And I don’t understand why $34.99 is OK but $39.99 is some kind of horrifying border that should not be crossed. None of them are cheap and as Ivan Trembow said in that piece, the reason for doing it is so your product doesn’t look cheap in comparison.

    In fact, I’m almost amazed there isn’t loads of doom and gloom about Pride increasing their prices in line with this. Or is the whole ‘DSE DEath Spiral’ stuff played out for this week?

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