I understand that they want to stop piracy issues but if they charged a reasonable price for the events this wouldn’t be an issue. The disproportionately high prices of these events is what leads to that.The cost to watch 1 UFC or big boxing event is the same price at 7 months worth of Netflix where you get to watch thousands of show/movies. They use the idea that you get your friends together to chip in but that’s insane logic. First of all, lots of people don’t have a group of friends that want to come over and watch fights. Also, unless I was a teenager, I’d feel pretty stupid asking grown men to come over and give me money to chip in. If they charged $19.99 or $24.99 much of the piracy viewings would stop.
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Agreed. I have 5-6 guys over for every fight, but I’m a grown ass man, I’m not asking my friends to all toss me $8 bucks.
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If they’re friends, they should be bringing something to share at least (beer, pizza)
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I agree with you. I am not exactly sure what the price should be that would get more people to buy and still be profitable.
Lets use round numbers for ease:
$70 per ppv, we sell 1m ppv’s we get $70 million
so if we lower the price to $35 per ppv, we need to sell 2m ppv’s to get $70 million
And that’s kind of the issue, how much do we have to lower the price to sell ppv’s and how many people will actually buy once we lower the price.
I personally go to my mates place, there is usually 3 of us, we all chip in to buy the PPV and buy some meat for the BBQ. We are all in our 30’s.
I have no problem asking people to chip in.
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While I would REALLY like to agree ha ha, I’m not so sure. People that can pirate do so, regardless of price. Music anyone? Even at $1 a song, people will get it free.
I do find it expensive, and for many of us, damn Covid restrictions make having friends over impossible. Bars are closed so can’t watch it there either.
I always wondered about this math.
At $60-$70 it’s a tough sell. For $30 I’m buying most all of them.
Would they sell enough more to earn more profit at a lower price? I guess they know the math more than we do. Who knows.
Also, I thought they always had to pay the distributors like half of every PPV. They cut that out by going direct years ago through UFC app/online but they never cut the PPV price at all…did they just start doubling their PPV profit at that point?
Your logic is flawed.
Just because you feel that way doesn’t mean everyone does.
I grew up through naptser’s birth and never in a million years thought I’d pay for music again.
But I’ve been paying for years now for Apple Music. Lots of people I know do the same with that or Spotify. It’s just easier.
If it’s not cost prohibitive it’s easier to just pay than to steal.
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Yep, I used to buy every PPV but they got so watered down. I actually just cancelled my ESPN+ account since they raised the price on that too. Guess I won’t be paying for UFC PPVs ever again. I can afford whatever they charge but they’re just not worth it. There’s no way to rationalize charging so much for the UFC
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I bought every PPV until the whole ESPN+ fiasco. The extra subscription, the high PPV price, and the incredibly watered down cards (I don’t know who the hell three-quarters of fighters are on any given card) and I’m just not going to pay $60-70 for it.
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TTT
First of all the ESPN app is dog shit. Several times I have tried to purchase fights and it wouldnt work.
Secondly fuck 70 dollars for lame cards.
Just set me up with a 10 a month sub and 25 dollar ppvs or something but first ya gotta fix your fucking dog shit web sites and apps.
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Yeah, you think they’d address the issue where the illegal streams are actually more reliable and better quality than the official ESPN stream…but I guess not.
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I don’t remember the last card I bought. It could have been UFC 50 something. After that I went to bars to watch. Now I usually read the results. If I’m really interested, I’ll watch a stream online somewhere.
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I’d pay something like $199/year for all PPV.
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I buy 1-3 events during the year. Only when I have friends come over though. There usually isn’t more then 3 cards throughout a calendar year worth $70, or honestly $30 a year. I mean it’s great having an event almost every weekend but man some of those cards do nothing for me.
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$70 is a lot for a card with only 1-2 maybe main stream fighters
Especially when you can argue that the free ones are sometimes better stacked.
When UFC has a card that has 3 championships it’s almost justifiable but even than it’s a lot for an event IMO.
UFC model like I’ve been saying for years should just move to a monthly sub, I don’t understand why they don’t at least try it. I think a majority of fans probably wouldn’t mind paying 15-20 a month if they just had access to all events. I know I would. Ufc would get a lot more money out of me, even if they required a yearly contract. I would be willing to do it.
They might get one event out of me a year, which is a LOT less if they just charged me $20 a month.
I actually don’t have many issues with the ESPN app. Here and there it might drop the stream and I have to restart it, but otherwise it’s pretty consistent. Along with the quality being way better than cable/sattellite stream. Granted im hard wired Ethernet and on fiber connection that helps reliability tremendously. Depending on what set top player you are using, that might also cause headaches. I use a nvidia shield and like I said before, it’s only locked up me a few times and restarting the app typically fixes it. I had a few issues with a fire stick but they suck, not enough power but they are cheap.
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i really wonder which kind of people are buying them now at this high price, internet only.
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Add an extra subscription to inlcude the fights on fight pass
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I wonder how WWE’s sales changed after switching from a ppv model to subscription
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