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Talk Radio: Can UFC 115 draw 400,000 PPV buys?
By Zach Arnold | June 4, 2010
Card line-up for UFC 115 in Vancouver, British Columbia on Saturday, June 12th
The Chuck Liddell/Rich Franklin fight is next week. I know. It’s one of those cards that would have been on Spike TV, but I think it’s going to have a tough time in terms of fan interest (on PPV). Locally, in Canada, it will be a huge story and I expect the media blitz to be crazy hot.
The setup for this passage from Wednesday’s Observer radio show is this — with an audience that is burned out, can this show draw 400,000 PPV buys or more given that people spent money to buy UFC 114 and may be saving up to buy the July event with Brock Lesnar?
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “And Rich Franklin is in as the coach. He’ll be fighting Chuck Liddell on June 12th.”
DAVE MELTZER: “And there’s a mystery coach that’s going to be announced on next week’s show. Next week is a two hour show so I guess it’s the last two episodes.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Yeah.”
DAVE MELTZER: “So, in actuality, you’re really only getting one week, because I mean Franklin showed up literally at the last minute of the show this week. He shows up. So, you’re really… if next week is the final two episodes where they’re going to show both semi-finals, you really only have one week of Rich Franklin on television which is… When you think about it, it’s kind of silly.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Yeah.”
DAVE MELTZER: “What was the point of replacing him?”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Well, you had to get…”
DAVE MELTZER: “I mean it was three or four weeks of television that you could get out of those five days, that’s one thing. But when you’re talking about one week of television?”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Well at least Rich is on TV for a week because otherwise it would be Chuck and Tito continuing to build up a fight that’s not going to happen and then just…”
DAVE MELTZER: “You know what? It may very well happen at the end of this year.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “But it’s not happening June 12th.”
DAVE MELTZER: “And people have already seen with (Matt) Hughes and (Matt) Serra which was 17 months later and with Quinton (Jackson) and Rashad (Evans) which was, you know, six months later, that as long as you end up doing the fight you’re still going to make the money.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Sure, but you may as well get Rich on TV for a week as opposed to not getting on TV at all.”
DAVE MELTZER: “A week? I mean, yeah, I kind of understand. You know, a week is better than nothing but I would have thought that they would have least tried to get like you know tried to get three weeks out of it.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Yeah, well that’s Tito’s fault.”
DAVE MELTZER: “It really is a fight with almost no build-up. I mean, it’s… you know it’s like the coaches’ fight that really hardly is.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Yeah.”
For the record, on a separate note, I am flabbergasted at anyone thinking that the business UFC 114 did was somehow below expectations. There’s somehow, for some reason, spin that because it was Memorial Day weekend that this prevented people from buying the UFC 114 show. The UFC 114 show did just fine, thank you very much.
Topics: Canada, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I think maybe 450K tops, but because this is sandwiched between two huge PPVs it can’t possibly hit 500K. But even without much of a build it will still do better than what Ortiz-Liddell 3 would have done because at least it’s a fresh match up. But I think UFC fans showed they aren’t going to be nostalgic when Couture-Coleman bombed, Ortiz-Griffin bombed, and even the Randy fight with Vera did disappointing ratings. UFC fans are foreword thinking and want relevance. Maybe in 10 years somebody can do a “Legends of MMA” show with the guys who were stars in 2006 and headline with Bonnar-Griffin III or something, but 4 years isn’t enough time to really miss an era in sports. UFC fans want to know what’s going to happen to the title pictures, and even if Rich beats Chuck it’s not like there’s going to be a push for him to fight the winner of Shogun-Rashad or anything.
Although it is kind of amusing to see Chuck get the “Foreman ’94” treatment when he’s only on a 2 year lay off. The world of MMA moves so fast.
Anyone saying that UFC 114 was below expectations is clearly delusional but as to the burn out myth it’s just that. At the start of the year the buyrates weren’t lower because of burn out it was because of injuries and the fact that there weren’t major fights that appealed to alot of casual fans. The success of this fight will be on how much interest the more casual fan has to still see Liddell or Franklin. If they are still draws with them it’ll do great if not it’ll do average numbers but this burnout stuff is silly to me.
There’s been a history of UFC events following big hype cards doing better than they normally would, just because casual fans are more connected with the product than they normally are. How it all turns out we’ll have to wait and see, but I bet we’ll see 115’s numbers boosted because 114 did so well.
I’ll be a little surprised if its below 400k, actually. Not hugely surprised, but I think this is one fight where hardcore interest may be way below casual interest. Liddell and Franklin are still two of the best-known fighters to casual fans, and we haven’t seen Liddell’s drawing power fall off yet. His loss to Shogun could have thrashed his drawing power, but extended delays between fights tend to mitigate the effect of a loss.