UFC Oversaturation?

[SDM]

I just don't get why they don't offer a short, two or three fight weekly live card done from the TUF house/studio on FightPass. You could do three fights in an hour. It makes too much sense, allowing them to "spike" subscriptions by tossing a name fighter on one of those cards, and gives them a place to expose the new guys instead of putting them on main cards.

[REDDzone]

But that was a regional event w different goal than just any FN card: them trying to make their money at the gate and stimulate interest in a smaller, far-flung market. A FN in, like, Houston has higher, more broadcast-based goals.

They wanted a NZ fighter against a serious name...2 losses or not, TH against Nate meets that standard.

The ufc is spreading themselves too thin and not doing a good job of promoting the guys that they should be promoting imo. Why is it that you personally think that ppv buys are terrible right now and ratings are down across the board? Do you believe that fightpass subscriptions are picking up the slack? Why do you think that the ufc has guys right now like Bones who is probably the best fighter ever and he can't crack 500k ppvs?

I just don't think there is any way that these issues are unrelated to the oversaturation.

[Cammo101]

But that was a regional event w different goal than just any FN card: them trying to make their money at the gate and stimulate interest in a smaller, far-flung market. A FN in, like, Houston has higher, more broadcast-based goals.

They wanted a NZ fighter against a serious name...2 losses or not, TH against Nate meets that standard.

The ufc is spreading themselves too thin and not doing a good job of promoting the guys that they should be promoting imo. Why is it that you personally think that ppv buys are terrible right now and ratings are down across the board? Do you believe that fightpass subscriptions are picking up the slack? Why do you think that the ufc has guys right now like Bones who is probably the best fighter ever and he can't crack 500k ppvs?

I just don't think there is any way that these issues are unrelated to the oversaturation.

To be fair, the PPV decline predates the oversaturation and can be seen in more than just MMA. Boxing and Wrestling are down as well. The PPV model is dying out, and I think putting on all these events was the UFC's strategy to combat this. I think their plan is that Fox, Fight Pass, and more gates would make up for the decline in PPV.

I think the UFC would be smart to move their PPV's to Fight Pass and charge like 20 bucks for them. They would still make profit without the cable middle man bitting into them and it would give people more reason to get Fight Pass.

[REDDzone]

To be fair, the PPV decline predates the oversaturation and can be seen in more than just MMA. Boxing and Wrestling are down as well. The PPV model is dying out, and I think putting on all these events was the UFC's strategy to combat this. I think their plan is that Fox, Fight Pass, and more gates would make up for the decline in PPV.

I think the UFC would be smart to move their PPV's to Fight Pass and charge like 20 bucks for them. They would still make profit without the cable middle man bitting into them and it would give people more reason to get Fight Pass.

Listening to Ariel talk about DJ and the bad showing on ppv, I was just thinking this morning. What would you think about them having lower priced ppvs? I wonder if that could help ease the transition here. Like, cards with DJ or TJ or maybe even Hendricks headlining could be 25 or 35 bucks or whatever. I wonder if that could move the needle. I mean, the gates would theoretically still be big if they do it right, and they would obviously have less fighter payouts if a DJ or TJ was headlining as opposed to a guy like Bones or probably Cain.

Obviously they could do some pretty simple math to figure out how many more they would have to sell, etc. Someone on the mmahour said though that for example DJ has to have a certain number of fights on ppv. Just brainstorming if lower price could be a way to honor that while also selling ppvs and getting him exposure.

[Cammo101]

To be fair, the PPV decline predates the oversaturation and can be seen in more than just MMA. Boxing and Wrestling are down as well. The PPV model is dying out, and I think putting on all these events was the UFC's strategy to combat this. I think their plan is that Fox, Fight Pass, and more gates would make up for the decline in PPV.

I think the UFC would be smart to move their PPV's to Fight Pass and charge like 20 bucks for them. They would still make profit without the cable middle man bitting into them and it would give people more reason to get Fight Pass.

Listening to Ariel talk about DJ and the bad showing on ppv, I was just thinking this morning. What would you think about them having lower priced ppvs? I wonder if that could help ease the transition here. Like, cards with DJ or TJ or maybe even Hendricks headlining could be 25 or 35 bucks or whatever. I wonder if that could move the needle. I mean, the gates would theoretically still be big if they do it right, and they would obviously have less fighter payouts if a DJ or TJ was headlining as opposed to a guy like Bones or probably Cain.

Obviously they could do some pretty simple math to figure out how many more they would have to sell, etc. Someone on the mmahour said though that for example DJ has to have a certain number of fights on ppv. Just brainstorming if lower price could be a way to honor that while also selling ppvs and getting him exposure.

It's possible, but not having a set price could anger consumers when suddenly a PPV is 10 bucks more than last month. I'd prefer just less PPVs with more stacked cards. 4 to 6 a year would be ideal.

[REDDzone]

To be fair, the PPV decline predates the oversaturation and can be seen in more than just MMA. Boxing and Wrestling are down as well. The PPV model is dying out, and I think putting on all these events was the UFC's strategy to combat this. I think their plan is that Fox, Fight Pass, and more gates would make up for the decline in PPV.

I think the UFC would be smart to move their PPV's to Fight Pass and charge like 20 bucks for them. They would still make profit without the cable middle man bitting into them and it would give people more reason to get Fight Pass.

Listening to Ariel talk about DJ and the bad showing on ppv, I was just thinking this morning. What would you think about them having lower priced ppvs? I wonder if that could help ease the transition here. Like, cards with DJ or TJ or maybe even Hendricks headlining could be 25 or 35 bucks or whatever. I wonder if that could move the needle. I mean, the gates would theoretically still be big if they do it right, and they would obviously have less fighter payouts if a DJ or TJ was headlining as opposed to a guy like Bones or probably Cain.

Obviously they could do some pretty simple math to figure out how many more they would have to sell, etc. Someone on the mmahour said though that for example DJ has to have a certain number of fights on ppv. Just brainstorming if lower price could be a way to honor that while also selling ppvs and getting him exposure.

It's possible, but not having a set price could anger consumers when suddenly a PPV is 10 bucks more than last month. I'd prefer just less PPVs with more stacked cards. 4 to 6 a year would be ideal.

Well 55 or whatever it is would be the "default" price of the majority of ppvs and it didn't seem to affect buys too much when they upped the priced for Weidman/Silva. They could just randomly discount some cards but not sure if that opens up another can of worms.

Anyway, I agree with you, I think 4 ppvs would be the ticket.

[CPT]

I don't think they can lower the price of certain PPVs as you're telling the consumer that those guys are worth less. Something about brand prestige.

[cowboyronnie]

Pride FC and Pride Bushido had two different prices.

[CPT]

That worked out well for them, didn't it.

[Cammo101]

So much for over saturation. Both events this week were outstanding. I think the UFC needs to get away from 2 cards in a weekend in favor of a mid-week and weekend card. That helped me stay interested in both cards.

[REDDzone]

So much for over saturation. Both events this week were outstanding. I think the UFC needs to get away from 2 cards in a weekend in favor of a mid-week and weekend card. That helped me stay interested in both cards.

lol yea bruh two non terrible events in a row throws out all notions of oversaturation!

[Jasen777]

Triple A baseball can be outstanding too (or so I've heard).

[CPT]

So much for over saturation. Both events this week were outstanding. I think the UFC needs to get away from 2 cards in a weekend in favor of a mid-week and weekend card. That helped me stay interested in both cards.

lolwut

Two solid cards doesn't make up for the rest of the crap they've been putting out lately.

It wasn't exactly difficult to pick out the fights that were going to deliver from the last two events. Now, take those, along with some of the other decent fights on the 6(!!!) events in the last month, and spread them out over 3 or 4 events, and you would have had some events worth getting excited about.

[Cammo101]

I was just messing around, calm down everyone. Clearly there is still an over saturation issue, but it becomes a lot easier to deal with when the cards deliver.

[Jasen777]

Well a better (not exact obviously) analogy I think would be preseason NFl games (if they put the starters in for the 4th instead of the 1st) vs. regular season.

Over a 2 or 3 week period, would I rather watch the first quarter of 4 pre-season games or watch a whole single regular season game? It's no contest for me. I just don't care about most marginal UFC-level fighters, even if I knew they were going to put on a good fight (which of course is far from guaranteed).

Now if you want to watch all those fights, than you'd probably pick the 4 whole preseasons games, to stretch the analogy. And that's fine, I'm just not that big of a fan (though I'd say I'm more than a "casual").

[Nemesis21]

When this thread was first created, I didn't agree on the oversaturation. But now I'm on board.

[Rasheeed!!!]

I’m on board with saturation as well. Back in the day I used to tune in to every event, knew most of the fighters and upcoming events. This year there’s been so many events that it’s just gotten too hard to keep track of. For the first time since I started watching MMA regularly (2009) I missed an event….and then another and another. Now I’ve just been watching the main event, maybe a co-main as well and fast forward through the rest.

[Shaazzam]

wasn't a big fan when i found out the prelims weren't on tv
mma needs to be easily accessible

[Susan]

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/facing-t ... ening-song

After reading this article and thinking about it for a minute, it just feels like the UFC does a terrible job of marketing. They have very few stars and it's primarily focused on the UFC brand rather than building up stars.

Having a Nu Metal song from 2002 really isn't a good sign when you're trying to bring in new, more educated fans. It plays on the stereotypical "JUST BLEED" fan that I try to distance myself when I tell people that I'm a fan of the sport. The over-saturation would be more palatable to me if the company as a whole grew up and manufactured more stars.

[REDDzone]

Lol, remember the gladiator thing? Didn't they like, just stop doing that?