mma / Columns

What’s Changed Since UFC 100?

July 4, 2016 | Posted by Dan Plunkett

We have entered what is likely the best week of mixed martial arts in history.

Five championship bouts and the return of a fighter who during his brief stay stood alone as the top draw in the sport highlight the week. The fights are spread over three shows, culminating on Saturday with UFC 200, perhaps the single best fight card in MMA history.

Seven years ago, as UFC prepared for its biggest ever show, UFC 100, a week like this was unthinkable, and quite literally impossible. The company had not yet promoted shows on back-to-back days, much less back-to-back-to-back. They utilized only five weight classes – heavyweight down to lightweight – and were still unreceptive to women joining the UFC ranks. Even a star the caliber of Gina Carano, who became available after EliteXC’s collapse in late 2008, didn’t change their mind – they were interested in signing her to the WEC. This week, the UFC will promote 13 matches in weight classes that didn’t exist in the promotion at the time of UFC 100. Three of those bouts are title matches, and four feature women.

The inclusion of additional male lighter-weight classes was necessitated by an aggressive international expansion. In 2009, the UFC promoted 20 fight cards, with four emanating from outside North America. By 2014, they had escalated to 46 events, holding 18 of those outside of North America, not including the promotion’s first trip to Mexico.

The platforms on which we watched UFC fights also changed drastically. In 2009, Spike TV was the home of the UFC, airing everything from live Fight Night cards and the occasional numbered event to shoulder programming like the Countdown shows. UFC ratings were tremendous for the network, particularly in the key demographics. In 2011, Fox secured a deal for UFC’s US television rights that tripled the promotion’s TV revenue. Although their ratings immediately dropped from Spike levels and never bounced back to those heights, the UFC’s television rights are more valuable than ever, boosted by more mainstream acceptance and an abundance of live content at a time when live sports are selling for a premium.

Another significant increase in the UFC’s television rights fees is expected when their television deal with Fox comes due in 2018.

The UFC has not just added more televised events to their schedule since UFC 100, they have also drastically expanded the amount of televised fights by airing preliminary cards. UFC 100 featured a strong preliminary card with names like Mark Coleman, Stephan Bonnar, Jon Jones, and Jim Miller, but only the audience at the Mandalay Bay was able to see those bouts live; everyone else had to wait until the UFC posted the bouts on their website for a small per-fight fee. Watching each prelim fight from UFC 100 would have cost you more than a month-long UFC Fight Pass subscription today.

The UFC brass, perhaps hesitant of overexposure, initially resisted televising preliminary card bouts, publicly reasoning that those matches were a treat for the live audience. In 2008, a WEC preliminary card bout between Donald Cerrone and Rob McCullough received rave reviews and fight of the year consideration, but outside of those in the building, nobody saw it until it aired on a WEC television special a couple of months later. A similar situation in today’s landscape would be unfathomable.

The UFC changed their tune a few months after UFC 100, when UFC 103 went head-to-head with Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez on pay-per-view. Hoping to give their pay-per-view product a boost, UFC aired two prelim bouts on Spike TV. The free fights didn’t help the pay-per-view – Mayweather vs. Marquez smashed its numbers – but they drew solid ratings, providing the UFC with more television content to sell, particularly as they later expanded the televised preliminary fights to four bouts.

The remaining preliminary bouts air on UFC Fight Pass, an over-the-top subscription platform only scratching the surface of its potential. At the time it occurred, UFC 100 was the most-purchased pay-per-view UFC had ever had on the internet, but that technology was still in its nascent stages at that time. As cord cutting developed into a movement and the acceptability and ease of streaming content rose, so too did UFC’s focus on promoting their over-the-top offerings and their internet pay-per-view sales. In the past couple of years, UFC has pushed internet viewing of their pay-per-view products harder than ever, aided by the fact that cable and satellite companies don’t take half of the revenue earned on that medium. This year, although they have pushed Fight Pass harder than ever before, going so far as to take main card caliber fights and make them Fight Pass exclusives. Fight Pass is one platform that will surely have a larger role come UFC 300, but to this point, pay-per-view is still king for the UFC.

UFC 100 was the biggest pay-per-view in UFC history, pulling in an estimated 1.6 million buys, leading the UFC to its biggest year ever on pay-per-view in 2009. The following year was even bigger, but a subsequent sharp downturn led to questions about the viability of the pay-per-view platform going forward. However, the promotion’s 2015 resurgence showed that the decline was not the fault of the platform, but rather the decline in big-drawing stars that led to the drop. The UFC’s pay-per-view business in 2016 is stable as it has ever been since 2010, and has the key stars and shows lined up to potentially create new peaks. According to the Wrestling Observer, the UFC grossed $608.6 million in 2015, and even without Ronda Rousey, who is in some ways their biggest star, fighting this year, they have a legitimate chance at beating that number in 2016.

Last year’s success has reportedly led to offers to purchase the company for more than $4 billion. Most reports indicate the current owners – Lorenzo Fertitta, Frank Fertitta, Flash Entertainment, and Dana White – are looking to cash out, and the deal could be announced as early as this week. White would likely be offered a percentage of the company to stay on, but the absence of the Fertittas, who provided the capital and played a large role in making the UFC what it is today, would be the biggest change from UFC 100.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.

article topics :

UFC, UFC 100, UFC 200, Dan Plunkett