By Alan Snel and Cassandra Cousineau
LVSportsBiz.com
LVSportsBiz.com photos by Steve Rosenthal
Dana White was in a chipper mood late Monday afternoon. The UFC president’s new toy is a 130,000-square-foot production studio and mini-arena facility rebuilt from an old Scientific Games Corp. building that’s part of UFC’s headquarters campus evolving in a master planned area off the 215 Beltway and Jones Boulevard in the southwest valley.
“We are literally limited by imagination,” White said on a video showed to 35 media members before the man appeared in the flesh to lead a tour of the facility that is officially dubbed the “APEX.”
UFC installed six miles of steel studs to redevelop the building into a venue that could host boxing matches and MMA bouts in addition to being the home for “Dana White’s Contender Series” show, now in season 3.
UFC will say goodbye to the old TUF gym building in a stale warehouse near the Palms hotel-casino, with the lease ending there at the end of the year.
UFC, purchased by entertainment company WME-IMG (now Endeavor) in mid-2016 for $4.2 billion, is building out its headquarters into a mini-district under a 66-acre master plan during the next two to three years.
UFC said it has poured at least $20 million into re-making the facility into a state-of-the-art production studio and mini-arena that will hold at least 1,500 for concerts and comedy shows. UFC bought the building in 2018 and began renovations Oct. 22, 2018.
The project included 18 miles of new wire, two new support beams for the roof, each weighing 12 tons each and 395 new energy efficient LED-based lighting fixtures. A 50-by-50-foot sound stage, four athlete locker rooms, a VIP suite and 12 general purpose rooms are all in the APEX.
White was coy about the entire building redevelopment. LVSportsBiz.com asked the UFC ringmaster for the APEX cost and White responded, “Hahaha — really cheap.”
White declined to be specific about construction costs because the company that owns UFC — Endeavor — has filed documents to go public. When the Fertittas owned UFC before the sale, the brothers and White were not interested in going public.
The new mini-arena can be the venue for MMA fight shows literally round-the-clock to highlight international fighters for programming in their home countries whether it be Australia or Russia.
LVSportsBiz.com discusses the APEX with White in a podcast last week.
UFC Chief Operating Officer Lawrence Epstein also discussed the APEX in a podcast with LVSportsBiz.com. Click here for the Epstein podcast.
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