Same reason we arent running around beating each other in the head with sticks and stones. Human evolution.
Its a relatively quiet year so far, it is what it is. Things can always pick up pretty quickly anyway. it can go from this to 1m+ selling cards in the space of a few months depending on what gets booked.
So OP said nobody watches MMA anymore yet that does not seem to be the case. Clearly the US is in or heading into recession and other nations are doing even worse. Disposable income for entertainment is not there at the moment but MMA has a huge fanbase when talking about the big fights and free fights do good numbers as well. Huge inflation problem out there. PPV sales are way down for 2022 compared to 2021. Real wages are down.
UFC 268 featured a welterweight title rematch between Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington, a women’s strawweight title rematch between Rose Namajunas and Zhang Weili, as well as a classic lightweight slugfest by Justin Gaethje and Michael Chandler. The initial Usman vs. Covington fight reportedly did 300,000 buys, so that’s a huge jump for the second act.
The UFC’s outstanding pay-per-view run is underscored by the fact that this isn’t even in the top three for best-selling cards of 2021. Both Dustin Poirier vs. Conor McGregor fights surpassed the 1 million mark, Jan Blachowicz’s UFC 259 win over Israel Adesanya had an estimated 800,000 buys, and the sensational Usman KO of Jorge Masvidal (which included Namajunas vs. Zhang I as co-main) at UFC 261 also did about 700,000 buys.
UFC 274 proved to be a considerable success for the promotion.
Sports Business Journal reports that last Saturday’s event pulled in over 400,000 domestic buys on ESPN+. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, that number stands as the UFC’s biggest one thus far in 2022.
No buyrates were publicly reported for any of the promotion’s previous four pay-per-views, which were headlined (in chronological order) by Francis Ngannou vs. Ciryl Gane, Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker 2, Jorge Masvidal vs. Colby Covington, and Alexander Volkanovski vs. Chan Sung Jung. This year has seen UFC pay-per-views increase to $74.99, which is on top of the mandatory ESPN+ subscription.
This was the third pay-per-view main event for both Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje. Oliveira’s previous bout, a UFC 269 win over Dustin Poirier, reportedly pulled in over 500,000 domestic buys to top off a strong 2021 for the UFC. His first main event was estimated at 300,000 buys for his title-clinching victory over Michael Chandler at UFC 262, even with an undercard lacking in big star power.
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@Kirik_Jr it might not have been 1.5 million like I said but 700k is still good for Usman vs Covington!
^
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Usman Masvidal I even outsold a few of Conor’s PPV’s.
UFC 251 last Saturday was the first event to take place on “Fight Island” and according to the amount of PPV buys the event sold it has done extremely well.
The Athletic’s Mike Coppinger first reported the news that the card drew an estimated 1.3 million buys. The event is the highest-selling pay-per-view in 2020 and the largest under the current ESPN+ deal. UFC 246, which took place in January and was headlined by Conor McGregor vs Donald Cerrone, did one million buys.
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Every Champion is a star…except for Carla Esparza.
Yeah, that Pena fame must be overwhelming! and Carla Esparza
Okay and Pena…
Hell, KSW hardly has any of the sport’s top 500 fighters compared to the UFC and Bellator and they just did 2,000,000 viewers for their May event.
But I guess that means nobody watches MMA anymore too…
This. If by “no one” op means more people than
ever, I guess he’s right.
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Mas was still on high popularity when he stepped in and it got the fight alot of talk.
When Joaquin Buckley had that viral KO a couple years ago it had 12.8 million views of the UFC tweet and the video was watched on UFC’s instagram by 17.8 million people.
65 million views total of a KO that happened on the prelims of a run of the mill UFC Fight Night card.
And across three tweets, three Instagram posts, four Facebook posts and a TikTok, the Buckley knockout video has generated more than 65 million views and 83 million impressions for the UFC.
Easy to explain, today UFC sell many shitty ppvs, thats adds up, no quality a lot of quantity, they look better for investors with one year revenue, they have all sort of bullshit contracts with clothing and tv channels, maybe they a winning in short term, but i could see ONE making to look UFC very bland in next 5years.
Then Jones and Conors retires, ufc will be dead to me, not much to wait…
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They havent increased the number of yearly PPVs, its been at 12-13 a year for like 15 years now, they’ve just added way more regular tv cards.
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Back in the day there was an event every 6 weeks which gave you a big sense of anticpation for each event. These days there are so many cards and so many fighters it’s hard to keep up with it all. I can watch a PPV and not know half of the fighters. With everyone wearing generic gear the indiciduality has also been ebbed away.
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Also, the champs don’t fight enough because there’s too much squabbling over pay and who they want to fight. Too much hot air from some fighters and not enough fighting.
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This is one of the weirdest threads that I’ve ever read and I’m not even sure where to begin with a reply. It would be like running into a guy at a BBQ who is convinced the earth is shaped like a hot dog, and has 75% of the people at the BBQ convinced…they’re all rapidly pulling out their phones to show you links of why they’re right, and you’re just standing there thinking “how the fuck could these people actually believe what they’re telling me?”
The UFC is more popular now than it has ever been and if you think that’s even debatable, then there’s really nothing I can say that will change your mind. Just because you aren’t as into it anymore doesn’t mean anything. Back when you were SUPER into MMA and there were HUGE stars, PPV prices were like $45 and less than 100K people bought them…and there were like 4-5 PPVs a year.
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I think the question would be more accurate if the question was “Why are hardcore/longtime fans not as interested anymore?”
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