UFC President Dana White

By Michael Hatamoto

UFC President Dana White started the UFC 150 press conference by announcing 15,000 fans attended the event, generating a rather disappointing $650,000 live gate.

Here is what MMAJunkie learned from White:

“It was the worst gate since 2007 for a pay-per-view, without a doubt.  We’ve been talking about it – the shootings here, the fires – it’s been a really bad summer for this place.  Once all that stuff was going down, we thought, ‘It’s not going to be a good here.’”

Mr. White, I’m sorry – I don’t buy that at all.

The fight card delivered last night, but without seeing PPV numbers, it seems that casual consumers weren’t fully into it.   Without a strong marketing push – which seems to be lost with the
Olympics and next weekend’s Strikeforce event – the UFC likely won’t be happy will the live gate or PPV buys.

Even if the majority of MMA media want to give him a pass, White and UFC executives must be concerned regarding PPV buy-rates and live gate numbers.

The MMA market, obviously controlled by the UFC, is becoming
oversaturated with a number of live UFC events.
The days of the UFC being able to charge whatever it deemed appropriate are over – in a down economy, consumers are going to pick and choose which events they attend live.

This isn’t the only problem that White must handle in the immediate future
regarding money.  Instead of introducing a pay-scale depending on fight card, the UFC continues to push subpar fight cards on PPV, and fans clearly aren’t interested in paying for them.

As the UFC looks ahead to Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson at UFC 151, questions and concerns need to be addressed by the No. 1 MMA organization.