If it was on a Monday I’d miss work on Tuesday. I’m fine with staying up late live, or watching it early Sunday morning when I get up
I’m sure its been said but nowadays you get events every week or so with 1 or 2 half decent fights.
In the good old days you’d get one event every few months absolutely stacked from top to bottom.
IMO this is a big reason why mma isn’t as exciting to casuals as it once was.
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Has anyone posted actual viewership figures? I think this is still about UG/hardcore viewership and enthusiasm. My main complaint is depth of cards…but if ur not paying for the ppv….
I don’t care as much that the fights “deliver.” Of course I want exciting fights but I’m most into the important fights with the best fighting the best. On that note, it’s still as good time as ever but there are usu only 1-3 fights per cars I care about. 3 if we’re lucky right?
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I’ve posted about it numerous times, and my point is always the same…if you’re posting on an MMA message board, you’re a hardcore fan…and just because you got old and don’t care as much doesn’t mean less people are excited about the sport.
For example…my join date of this forum was in 2004. I was SUPER into MMA, training, competing in grappling events, having UFC parties, running a local MMA website…I was IN. I was CRAZY excited for the first Liddell vs Ortiz PPV. A group of like 100 people rented a function room at a bar/restaurant, had buffet food, sold tickets for it and it was a fucking AWESOME event. We all had a great time, and enthusiasm for the sport felt huge.
UFC 47 PPV buys - 106K
UFC 63 - Hughes vs Penn 2 was a massive fight, and like 20 of us flew to CA for Lauzon’s UFC debut against Pulver. A local MMA show was the same night, and they stopped the entire show and tuned into Joe’s fight live. MMA felt huge, enthusiasm for the sport was insane, total PPV buys were 400K.
I think you see my point…if a fight does 400K now, people shit all over it, talking about LOL, I guess so and so isn’t as big of a needle mover as we thought HAHAHA…and PPVs are behind a double pay wall, are double the price, are monthly, and people pretty regularly stream it for free. Shit used to be every 3 months, with no MMA on free tv.
The sport continues to grow year over year, and we just had an event on fucking ABC. There might not be as much excitement from the hardcore fans that were 23 in 2004 for the Liddell vs Ortiz PPV, but it’s because we’re 41 now, and there’s a new batch of 23 year olds that eat, sleep and breathe the shit the way we used to.
Even with MMA every week, with most of it being free, the PPV numbers are still doing great compared to where they were.
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UFC, Bellator, ONE, KSW, ACA, Oktagon, ROAD, Combate, Cage Warriors are all holding events today and tomorrow.
None of them are even making an effort to put on huge shows this weekend but rather sustainable shows that fit their individual business models.
UFC alone will have millions upon millions of people watching around the world.
I’d love to have a viewership estimate total for the nine shows I mentioned that are happening today and tomorrow but I have not seen such attempts made by any journalists.
KSW alone averages over a million views for their events on Polish TV and they are still growing.
Oktagon just beat the UFC German attendance numbers when they did a show in June and I doubt they are even one of the top ten most globally viewed promotions in the world yet.
Although JMMA is not what it was during the PRIDE/K1 era…Rizin just did their most watched NYE event as well as far as Japanese ratings go.
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“IDK bro…the 6 guys I used to watch UFC PPVs with don’t even really care about MMA anymore, so the sports not as popular as it used to be”
-The UG
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Pretty much.
For the record, I’m pretty old school and Oliveira’s rise to championship reign, Volk’s level of excellence, Poirier’s career journey etc are as exciting and as good as anything. There is always something to be exited about imo. Yeah the cards are generally thin.
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Yup.
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How big of a sample size do you need?
How many sports bars still show the UFC? This is all way before the price increases.
To not see that it is not as popular as it use to be is naive.
I don’t have a single friend or relative that is still into it since I have been.Only new fans.
I live in California & could probably name 40 MMA promotions (at least 35) and now there are a few & they are mostly all amateur so the promoters don’t have to pay the fighters.
Check my missing forum members thread for a bigger sample size.
Ok, but you realize the way people view and talk about the product have changed, right? For example, I just pulled up the UFC’s tiktok and the video of Paddy teabagging Leavitt got 6.5M views 542K likes and 2658 comments. A video they posted of Conor a couple weeks ago (who hasn’t done anything in the recent months) knocking out Mendes got 8.8M views, 936K likes and 4010 comments. A Pat Barry vs Kongo highlight from a month ago got over 10K comments and almost 18M views.
The entire way people consume the product (all entertainment products for that matter) has changed, and the way people talk about it has changed. MMA fans are talking about the product more than ever, they’re just not doing it here.
As for your comment about not having a single friend or relative into it anymore…I don’t have a single friend or family member who is into college football. Does that mean college football isn’t popular anymore? We used to love the shit when we were in college, but nobody watches it anymore, so it’s dying, right?
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As for local MMA, the entire market has changed…and local MMA was my thing for a very long time, and I’m still very much involved there…the UFC, Bellator and PFL are signing fighters earlier than ever, and there are other shows always popping up like Eagle MMA and others that pay really well for smaller shows along with Fightpass shows that fly guys in who are like 3-0.
So yeah…the smaller, regional promoters aren’t going to have a ton of big pro fights because you rarely see guys who are like 8-1 fighting locally anymore. If you get to 5-0 and have a decent manager, you get a shot on DWCS, Bellator, PFL etc.
Most local shows focus on amateur MMA, sprinkle in a few pro fights but don’t make it a big part of their business because a bigger show will offer your 3-0 guys more than the local show wants to pay.
The difference I see in local MMA now, there are less shows popping up and dying. There used to be 10-15 local MMA shows up in the new england area, but many of them never promoted more than 3-4 events. Some did a bit more than that and stopped, but that’s about it. There are a few consistent shows now, and it’s rare for someone new to pop up.
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Yes @Rickmassmma, I think we goofs here on the UG are a diff crowd. We are the hardcore nerds and this was probably one of the few places for that type back then. Not sure about today. Social media def changed the game as it did for everyone else but that must still be for the casuals no?
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Humans are only able to perceive the world from their own perspective, and it’s natural for them to project that perspective onto other humans. Our poor guy crowbar here simple isn’t capable of recognizing this flawed thinking.
Every promotion that was on tv went down bigtime in the ratings before they folded.This goes back to Elite XC,Strikeforce & others.Promotions like the PFL & Bellator suffered in ratings & they changed networks.
40 promotions in California down the drain.I only know of 2 right now & one of them is Urijah’s that just came out.
How is TUF doing? Did they drop in ratings?
I assume you don’t watch any events, have never trained and don’t know what you’re talking about.
But there you go, each to their own.
Lol
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