It’s known as “truth preventing” via some, “intense combating,” and “combined martial arts” by way of others. Most inside the United States talk over it as “closing preventing,” a customary usage of a proprietary call taken from the quality-known promoter of this rising hand-to-hand fight game, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Whatever the moniker, venues at the moment are calling those bouts precise for business, as they transcend their brutish stigma and pay-per-view TV roots to generate thousands and thousands of bucks in a live gate and concessions returns.
In reality, in April, UFC fifty-two, a card presenting about among mild-heavyweight champ Randy Couture and Chuck Liddel, generated $three million in the gate at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden, with ticket charges topping out at $400. “We’re very advocated with the aid of this game,” said Daren Libonati, director of Las Vegas’s Thomas & Mack Center, Sam Boyd Stadium, and Cox Pavilion. “We’re trying to promote our own quarterly extreme fighting events and spot what sort of target audiencanble to get and what sort of advertising we will entice,” he said of upcoming programming plans for the three,000-seat Cox Pavilion.
This is a tack also being taken by using venue programmers outdoor Las Vegas and Atlantic City. For example, in Portland, facility control company Global Spectrum has partnered with two neighborhood UFC combatants, Matt Lindland and Couture, to promote Sportfight. The occasion, which UFC isn’t always promoting, is about for July nine at Portland’s Rose Garden. Tickets start at $28 and top out at $168. According to Mike Scanlon, general manager of the Rose Garden, Lindland and Couture have already produced several smaller Oregon-sanctioned fighting activities at Portland-region network schools, most of them sell-outs.
“I suppose that is something which could grow and step up from a three,500-seat auditorium to an 18,000-seat area,” Scanlon stated. Meanwhile, International Creative Management (ICM) is looking to import Pride – Japan’s equal of UFC – into the U.S. “We’re excited about it. It has the capability to be massive,” stated Scott Pang, expertise agent for ICM. “The time is right for it because boxing is a form of limbo, and the live gate for wrestling has dropped manner off.” In Japan, Pride activities wield $three million operating budgets and fill full sports activities stadiums. “We’re now not exactly inside the combat global,” stated Pang of his company, higher acknowledged for representing journeying bands and pinnacle-flight movie talent.
As regional and international promoters also increase the sport of blended martial arts, UFC officers are involved that emblem confusion would possibly harm the photo of the game they effectively fought to rehabilitate. Following the unintentional ring loss of life of a 22-yr-old participant at an occasion known as “Ultimate Championship Wrestling” in Massachusetts, the kingdom boxing commission in June canceled another upcoming mixed-martial-arts event. Under a headline that examines “Boston bans ‘closing combating’ occasion,” the Boston Herald noted that “10 human beings have died in ‘Toughman’ newbie boxing matches… “But the more we pay attention approximately [mixed martial arts], the greater excited we end up.”
” “The Boston event had not anything to do with the UFC agency. However, the article created a false and damaging notion that by some means we’re concerned,” stated UFC founder Dana White, in an organized declaration, announcing UFC’s call for that the Herald print a correction. “We need to clean this up without delay.” White, a former newbie boxer who became Las Vegas entrepreneur, got the mixed martial arts “brawl” rolling in the U.S. Returned in 1993, pitting boxers, wrestlers, and numerous martial arts specialists in opposition to every different in a caged, eight-sided ring called the “Octagon,” in a one-off occasion known as the Ultimate.
Fighting Championship. Designed for pay-in keeping with-view cable TV audiences, the fights drew well early – in fact, over 2 million subscribers tuned into the primary televised card. But the regularly brutal, bare-knuckle bouts – marketed within the beginning as no-holds-barred fights wherein “best one man leaves the Octagon” – drew lawmakers like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Referring to UFC as “human cockfighting,” McCain stimulated cable corporations to banish UFC in 1997, relegating it to “fight membership” reputation on fringe satellite tv for
pc TV channels. Interest in UFC waned till 2001, while White convinced friends Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who are president and chairman of the Station Casinos, to buy into UFC for an undisclosed amount. Under the ownership of Las Vegas-based Zuffa LLC (an Italian word for “scrap”), White re-prepared and re-sold UFC, imposing gloves, rules, and protection rules, keeping apart UFC from brutish events like “Toughman,” and gaining legitimacy from country regulators inside the method. Today, UFC occasions are completely sanctioned and regulated through the
Nevada and New Jersey country athletic commissions. For his part, White admits UFC initially erred by no longer advertising and marketing itself as a secure, properly-ruled recreation. But in published interviews, he staunchly defends UFC’s document – unlike boxing, nobody has ever been killed or “Million Dollar Baby-ed” in a UFC in shape, he contends. Regardless of whether UFC got an awful rap initially, transitioning from bloodsport to authentic recreation inside the public thoughts has changed the whole lot. Gates for UFC events – which topped out at handiest around $225,000 in 2001 – have soared. So has pay-per-view revenue, up twentyfold because of
2001, with UFC, fights were proven inside the United States and 36 international locations abroad. UFC products now include everything from pinnacle-selling DVDs to an Xbox video game. However, the game’s boom arc took its steepest upward flip recently with the airing of Spike TV’s new truth series “The Ultimate Fighter,” which tracks the lives of UFC contenders. The collection averaged 2.1 million visitors consistent with the episode in its first season,
over 600,000 of them advertiser-coveted men elderly 18-34. It additionally added UFC to many that had recognized little about it before. Advertisers have included the U.S. Army and Miller Brewing Co. “The TV display has given the game extra exposure, made it more mainstream, and opened it up for women to come back and notice the occasion,” said Greg Tesone, assistant general manager of Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, which bought
out its eleven,000-seat configuration for UFC’s June 4 event, promoted as “Heavy Hitters.” This transition into the mainstream sport hasn’t gone omitted using casinos, which are more and more booking UFC activities to trap game enthusiasts. Trump Casinos promotes almost every UFC event that involves Atlantic City, while Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand in Las Vegas are the main venues for the bouts in Las Vegas.
“It draws a great demo for the casinos,” Tesone referred to. “It’s one they want to participate in.” In fact, in recent times, venues in Las Vegas and Atlantic City are competing to sell as many UFC occasions as they could. However, there’s a limit to how many bouts UFC can conduct. Because of that, many venue operators are seeking to sell reality fighting competitions out of doors UFC.
