The COVID-19 pandemic crippled many businesses with many movie theater chains fearing bankruptcy and restaurants across the globe shutting down and never opening back up again. But it turns out the pandemic may be the single greatest factor in the UFC’s recent success.
Over the past few years, the UFC has enjoyed massive gains financially with revenues skyrocketing year after year. While media rights such as the UFC’s deal with ESPN is still the biggest factor when it comes to overall financial gains, the promotion has seen a huge explosion in overall ticket sales and sponsorship deals unlike anything that’s ever been seen before.
While there are a variety of factors that have played a hand in the UFC’s success, the global pandemic may have been the biggest single reason why the promotion is bigger and more popular than ever now.
“Going through COVID definitely didn’t hurt us,” UFC CEO Dana White told Bloomberg recently. “There were no sports on TV except for us.
“Fights that should have been doing 300,000 buys were doing a million. Our fan base grew something like 68 percent during COVID.”
A 68 percent growth spurt is unreal, especially considering the UFC had already been doing big business with live events and pay-per-view long before the global pandemic.
Perhaps the biggest difference now is that the UFC has maintained the fan base gained from that time period and only continued to grow since then.
On Saturday night, UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden in New York produced a live gate at over $16 million, which is the second highest for the promotion at the venue behind only the debut card there featuring Conor McGregor in the main event back in 2016 ($17.7 million).
A recent card in Edmonton sold out with over 16,000 fans in attendance with a live gate over $2.6 million.
In January, the UFC travels to the new Intuit Dome just outside Los Angeles for a first ever pay-per-view event at the state of the art arena that serves as home to the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers. Traveling has also continued to pay off for the UFC with events planned in locations like Saudi Arabia and Sydney, Australia just in the first two months of 2025.
The event in Saudi Arabia alone will produce a huge financial windfall thanks to site fees paid by the government to bring the UFC to the Middle Eastern country. The previous UFC event in Saudi Arabia came along with a $20 million site fee and the next might grow even higher.
The next major moment in UFC history comes in 2025 when the promotion begins to negotiate a new TV deal that could completely change the game compared to the current contract with ESPN that was valued at $1.5 billion over five years. Many analysts believe the new UFC broadcast deal will crush the financials currently attached to exclusivity with ESPN and it looks like players such as Amazon, Netflix and many others are going to get into the bidding war.
In other words, the UFC isn’t slowing down any time soon.
Damon Martin
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