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Skepticism about UFC heading to Germany
By Zach Arnold | November 24, 2008
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 23 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
This would be news to Lorenzo who has been to Germany planning the event upwards of 5 times in the past few months. Not to mention members of the European office working all the time to plan the event with the venue in Cologne.
It’s possible the event could be cancelled due to poor sales, but the idea that there are no plans to go there is just wrong.
Of course, he could be right about predicting failure.
oh snap.
Although I agree, it doesn’t seem like they’ve paved a really solid path. Perhaps this is a test to see how a ‘dry run’ into new areas would fare?
“This rumor makes no sense at all and I‘m willing to bet on it.”
Is he willing to bet that the rumor makes no sense or that there won’t be a UFC in Germany in 2009?
I have no idea about this UFC Germany rumor, but I AM willing to bet on one thing about that article: either the author has never really watched the Ali G show or he really doesn’t understand that Austria and Germany are two different countries.
“Does Couture really doesn’t speak fluent German?”
g-day mate!
the writer of that article is a little bit misinformed.
first, the ufc has been on german ppv before but they didn’t continue the deal because the ufc treated the german ppv distributor like they treated jon fitch. result: the germans told them to go f themselves. currently the ufc is in negotiations with a huge german free tv station.
second, the time and location for the show are official. the contract between the ufc and the german promoter has been signed during the ufc 91 weekend.
the ufc will be spending a huge amount of dollars to market the show in germany. randy couture, who was stationed here, is said to appear on german tv shows. plus, the ufc videogame will be published in germany in spring 09.
germany is in the center of europe. cologne has one of the best airports of this continent, with direct access to all the major airports throughout europe. cologne is near the dutch and french border, so expect many of our friendly neighbors to come over. small mma shows in germany get roughly 2000 or sometimes even up to 4000 viewers, so i wouldn’t be surprised when there’ll be more than 15000 people at the show.
Europe is probably at the same level the us was pre TUF when it comes to mainstream recognition of the sport or ufc (perhaps even further behind). The only exeptions would be the UK and perhaps sweden where ufc programming has aired on one of the larger networks the last year. Sadly you won’t see any ufc events there in a long time since the beacon of hope for socialism has decided to ban elbows.
Without a doubt ufc will sell out this event, they would probably do it with very little advertising aswell, especially since loads of swedes will come to this event. Ofc it is smart to build for the future by having big advertising campaigns in germany and if they get a big network deal ufc in germany could be a future success, not just right now.
As far as Holland is concerned, MMA is really not as big there as many americans seem to belive, it is basicly a sideshow for kickboxing. Don’t expect anything exept afew hardcore fans from Hollan or France.
This is what i posted over at Fightlinkers earlier today concerning that blogpost:
Who the hell at Fightticker thought that it’d be a good idea to give that Robert K guy a forum to voice his opinion? To say the man doesn’t have a clue would be quite an understatement. He speaks german fluently and used to live here for some time. Well, i speak english fluently and used to live in Ireland and the US “for some time”, does that make me an expert on those countries? Certainly not.
Saying that Germany isn’t prepare to host an MMA show is laughable. The guy’s pretending to know Germany, yet says it doesn’t have what it takes to stage such an event? Umm, usually i don’t tend to piss on other peoples parades, but this guy is just screaming for a golden shower.
i mean, just this sentence alone shows how a complete and utter idiot he is: “No German TV station has ever broadcast a single UFC fight let alone an entire event.” Whoa, i always thought that i was straight edge, but if there never was an entire UFC event shown on german television, i must’ve surely been on drugs a few years back. Hell, not only me, but all the people that gathered at my house, when i ordered the UFC on PPV! Fact is, Premiere, Germany’s biggest Pay TV-Station (and only PPV Provider) broadcast a bunch of UFC Events during 2003 and 2004. Yeah, it’s been a while, but still, it totally contradicts the statements Robert K made. Hell, the announcers that Premiere used have been going to all the UFC events since then, recording live commentary for the german UFC DVD releases (which, by the way, used to come out earlier than in the states!).
He claims that Dennis Siver is the best known german MMA-fighter. The best known german UFC-fighter yes, but that’s no wonder, given that he’s THE ONLY german fighting in the UFC. There’s a bunch of fighters that are much better known in Germany, such as Mario Stapel, who’s fought for KOTC, Cage Warriors, EVT, Ring of Fire… Hell, there’s dozens of good and well know fighters over here, they only didn’t have the chance to fight on a more prominent international stage like the Brits or the Dutch – yet.
But let’s get into the meaty part of it all:
He says Germany doesn’t have what it takes to stage a successful UFC show.
Why?
Seriously, why, i ask.
Germany is the most heavily populated country in the European Union, with almost 90 million people living here. Hell, the Ruhrgebiet area alone has more people living there than most european countries. When it comes to infrastructure, Germany also kicks every other countries ass, with modern highways that are connected to every of it’s neighboring countries, and the same goes for the railway system. It has more airports than every other european country, with most of the small airports working with so-called “discount-airlines” such as Ryan-Air, Air Berlin, German Wings etc. It has more venues that are suited for MMA than other countries. In Cologne we’ve got the Cologne Arena, in Oberhausen the König Pilsener-Arena, in Dortmund the Westfalenhallen etc etc. And that’s not even counting football arenas, of which we’ve got a bunch with a retractable roof (such as the Arena auf Schalke, or the new Allianz Arena in Munich).
So we’ve got a country in central europe, that’s easily accessible from every other european country, that has all the necessary requirements in venues, parking, transportation, tv-crews (hell, Cologne alone has more tv- and film-companies than many smaller countries!), hotels etc – but the guy thinks that germany wouldn’t be able to do such an event? Yeah, right.
Fact is, the audience wouldn’t be made up entirely of germany, but of people from all around europe, just like it is right now. Go to a show in the netherlands, and you’ll find germans, belgians, french, polish, austrian people. Go to Poland and you’ll encounter the same thing. Europeans travel a lot, that’s a fact, and fans, be it of a sport or a band or music even more. Fans of a 4th league football club will travel 4000km to support their team, fans of a certain hardcore band will drive all the way from Portugal to Germany, just to see that band play. So you can bet your ass, that people would come for the UFC.
No brand recognition? Weird, if you ask people in the relevant age group (18-35) if they’ve heard of or know what Ultimate Fighting is, they’ll say yes. They might not know what MMA stands for, but they know what the UFC is.
And seriously, why does the guy think if it matters if Randy speaks fluent german, or german at all? Sorry, but we’re not in the states, where people bust a nut, if some foreigner “speaks sum american”. Is it nice if someone speaks our language? Sure, it is, but if someone doesn’t we’re not getting the torches and chase them out of town. Hell, most of the well-known russian/belarussian/ukrainian boxers are fighting out of Germany, or for german promoters, Valuev is very, very popular, but he speaks about as much german as i speak ki-suaheli. It’s not a requirement to have a german speaking fighter to crack the german market, as it’s not a requirement to have a german fighter. Americans give too much thought to the whole “hometown hero” thing. Look at the WWE – they don’t have a german wrestler on their roster, not even one who speaks german (Mick Foley’s gone), but still they sell out every tour, and the people cheer like crazy. You go for the sport, for the spectacle.
But let’s get back to the topic of TV – yes, right now the UFC’s not on TV in Germany, but hey, that could change every minute if ZUFFA wants it to. Let’s take Premiere for example, their relationship with the UFC ended only because of one thing: money. Premiere charges 15€ for a PPV (such as WWE and TNA PPV’s), and while the UFC was comfortably with that at first, as soon as TUF came around and they were starting to draw better numbers in the states, they wanted more money. That’s natural, but 15€ is about as much as you can charge over here, the concept of PPV ist still very, very new over here, and to be able to even order a PPV you already have to be a subscriber to Premiere… which means that you’re already shilling out between 30 and 60€ a month just for them. If the UFC would be willing to take the cut, they could be back on Premiere in an instant. And Premiere’s not the only option that the UFC would have, hell, we’ve got more TV-stations than you can shake your stick at, and you can bet your ass, and if the price is right, there would be a station that’d take the UFC. ZUFFA would just have to get off it’s high horse and be willing to take less money than they’re used to. But that’s the price you have to pay, if you want to break into a market…
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t Randy have a degree in German? I would think he could speak the language.
Even if he can speak the language, I doubt that alone is gonna sell the fight to the folks in Germany.
Last time I was in Germany was roughly a year ago. MMA had no mainstream recognition whatsoever. There was an event in Cologne one weekend that I ended up skipping on that took place in a small arena intended for professional basketball. Place doesn’t even seat 3000, and there were plenty of tickets available online. If they had 6000 tickets sold at Kolnarena at the prices I would expect them to try to sell at, I’d be shocked.
They’ll easily sell at least 10,000. Even Dublin is sold out way early. Cologne is actually a cheap flight from the UK, which is a good reason to put it there instead of somewhere like Berlin. They’ll have fans from all over mainland Europe for Randy-Chuck.
“Austria and Germany are two different countries.”
Yes they’re and they speak the same language German…
The economy is the major factor. Germany’s economy was one of the first major western economics to fall into recession this quarter after the global credit crunch . A total 1.00% GDP fall in the last two quarters!
put couple of turkish, croatian and polish fighters and the event will be sold out.
bring cro cop back and you’ll fill entire hall in a couple of hours.
Ireland has Setanta as a TV partner for the UFC. There are no TV partners for the UFC in Germany at the moment. The point about them being on PPV is wonderful from the above poster; equally wonderful is that Sherdog discussed how the UFC never exceeded 5,000 (!) buys in Germany when their contract was pulled. They haven’t been on TV since.
Seriously, why are we comparing them to small clubstyle shows? UFC tickets will be 5-6 times what they were in an arena 10 times the size of what they typically played. And they’re going to hope for, what, Croatians showing up en masse for Reljic?
Like i wrote before, D.Cap, PPV is relatively new in Germany, hell, when Premiere started to offer the UFC, the company had just introduced the concept of PPV over here. Before that, everything, from Tyson or Klitschko boxing, WCW or WWE wrestling – it was all either on Free TV, or included in Premiere’s monthly subscription fee. UFC on PPV was just suddenly “there” – no announcement, no advertising. You had to go to Premiere’s website, to know if they’d even broadcast the show the same day! So given all that, 5000 buys aren’t too shabby (though my sources tell me that it was closer to 8000 – hey, only 12k away from Zachs estimated Affliction 2 buyrate 😉 )
And like Jan wrote – there are a few tv-stations interested in the UFC right now. No matter to worry.
And in parts you sound like the guy who wrote the blog, D.Cap. Been here from time to time, thinking that you know about the market. But obviously you don’t. You don’t know anything about the market, you don’t know anything about the people. People WILL come from far away to see the UFC. You quote Sherdog, hell, there are already people from Belgium or France posting that they’re coming to the show, and surfing through dutch, belgian or french messageboards, you’d find that they’re all abuzz about this announcement. People do travel to see “their” sport, no matter how far the trip. I’ve been with friends at the “It’s Showtime”-shows in the Netherlands, K-1 Events in Paris, EVT shows up in Scandinavia, small MMA-shows in Poland – and i’ve always met up with people that i first met at other foreign shows.
To paraphrase a quote from “Field of Dreams” – “If you stage it – they will come!”
And having Marek Lieberberg as a partner is the best thing that could happen to the UFC. That man’s the Don King of event promoting…
I didn’t write the blog, but I agree with many of his sentiments based on my personal experiences there. Boxing matches televised nationally to huge audiences on German TV often don’t fill 10,000 seat arenas. Betting on droves of polish fans flying into Cologne and paying 200-300 USD for a mid tier seat for some guy who has never sold more than 900 or 1000 tickets in his life in his own country is quite the strange bet.
“Build it and they will come” is a strategy played out by god knows how many promotions in the past that has failed. Unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat with a big TV deal soon (and I’m betting they won’t), I don’t see this being some monster event.
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I live in Sweden and I’m going to this UFC event if it’s held in Cologne.
They will have no trouble selling out this event if it happens. Germans are crazy for sports.
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? It doesn’t matter as long as you get at least one exist first and eventually you’ll get both.
The UFC is going into Germany knowing that they will lose money on it. However, that’s how you build an audience. Nobody thought MMA could thrive in the United States either. Now the UFC is so dominant nobody could compete with them.
Think long term, not short term.
“David’s” take on a possible UFC Germany has got to be one of the dumbest and most unnecessary blogs I’ve read in a while. First of all, “David” has absolutely no reason to assert that Couture doesn’t know German or wouldn’t be comfortable conversing in German. Even if he only knows “Guten Morgen”, it would be a selling point for a UFC show over there. However, since Couture lived over there for years and immersed himself in the culture, I’m sure he can converse in complete sentences. No one expects him to wax poetic in Hoch Deutsch like Goethe.
Second of all, a UFC show in Germany promises to be a success whether Couture were a part of it or not. Do Germans not like fights all of a sudden? Is there any reason to think that the 18 – 34 y.o. demographic in Germany wouldn’t be as interested in MMA as the same demographic in America? Of course not. German males like fighting just like every other nationality of guys across the planet. Also, most Germans take English as a supplemental language, so most of them will be able to understand what is going on in English.
The UFC has always had the goal of putting on fights everywhere on the planet. This is just another step, just like England, Ireland, Canada, and possibly the Philippines in the near future. Every nation on earth has some indigenous form of fighting art, so it’s a safe bet that MMA would be popular anywhere the UFC puts on a show. They will have to market those shows carefully; but there is no reason to think that a show, in time, can’t be as profitable in Germany as it would be anywhere in the U.S.
It’s irritating when idiots start new blogs just to ramble about nothing. “David” didn’t express a single point in that rant that made any sense. Obviously, he and his ilk are not obligated to hop a plane to Deutschland to view the fight, so it costs him nothing extra if the UFC puts on a show there. The whole article was diarrhea of the keyboard.
According to the same David they signed a big TV deal there as of this week.