IFL terrible ticket sales

My friend works at the box office and told me that the IFL only sold less then 1300 tickets for their last event in Oakland. Now I read on some of the other sites that they had an attendance of 5000. When I asked my buddy, he told me they do something called papering where they go out and give tickets away to groups etc. just to fill the seats.

Can they survive doing this kind of sales? I also thought it misleading to read those kind of numbers and then find out that they didn't sell any where near what they claimed.

Is this common for promotions?

Well, maybe at the box office itself but people buy tickets online also.

ticketmaster was offering "buy one, get one free" tickets to this show last week, so it doesn't surprise me.

Doesn't surprise me. The IFL doesn't have any stars yet. Big name coaches don't sell tickets to casual fans.

washed up or not, it would help a ton if they got the coaches to fight.

CSAC should release number of tickets sold along with the payouts, if anyone wants to call to obtain. 

The IFL just has a corny feel to it.....maybe its the teams.

I honestly hope I'm wrong, but I don't think the IFL will be around three years from now. I just don't think it will ever catch on with the public.

^the sad thing is that the stockholders will lose all of their money, while
the owners will just bankrupt the LLC and lose very little. IFL-great for
fighters, bad for the sport

I said the same thing on the other thread, I made a thread that no one
responded to about why everyone is allowed to bash pride/ufc, but no
one is able to bash this IFL, I just hope you didn't put your life savings in
this thing.

"LMAO @ all the haters!"

Who's hating? I think we'd all like to see them do well, but some of us just don't think it will happen.

At least they used their OWN MONEY cindy O, they are on the fans dime
right now, they should have to answer for excessive papering and I truly
doubt their TV deal is better than the UFC, source CindyO they are a
public company you can do it.

"and I truly doubt their TV deal is better than the UFC"

From what Ive been reading, the IFL's tv deals aren't really that big of a deal.

Not a big surprise -- their concept just doesn't sell. Their tv ratings have been awful and its no surprise that mynetworkTV, a network with terrible ratings, found them attractive. I just don't see them staying around past the current round of funding which they seem to be spending very fast. I guess time will only tell. Will be too bad for all the fighters banking on the stock.

"It took five years and 44 million dollars before the UFC started making money."

Bad comparison. UFC didn't have problems selling tickets and no one questioned the non-team aspect and loved the tournament concept.

The team that wins 3 out of the 5 matches of the night wins the event.

So what happens if Team A winds the first 3 matches? The last 2 matches don't mean much. Or am I wrong.

I hope the IFL succeeds.

"From what Ive been reading, the IFL's tv deals are really that big of a deal."

"ThonolansGhost is CORRECT!
Cindy"

Sorry Cindy, that was a typo (which I've already corrected). Those tv deal aren't anything special. One is a continuation of what they were already doing on the the Fox sports channel and the other deal is on a channel that nobody watches. And the IFL isn't getting much money (or exposure) from either network.

"Their tv ratings have been awful"

Source?

Cindy, I took the info from a Steve Sievert Houston Chronicle article and from UFC junkie.com and I trust their info a lot more than I trust yours.

Network televison deal