Dana White’s UFC Pulls Off Fight Shows In Las Vegas Through Entire Month of June During COVID-19 Pandemic
By Cassandra Cousineau of LVSportsBiz.com
UFC President Dana White was on vacation earlier this week. The bossman of the Las Vegas-based MMA promotion earned some R&R after the breakneck schedule he maintained for the last two months.
Since March, White has been busy orchestrating the biggest live sporting events in the country. And on Saturday, UFC closed a series of fight cards staged at its Apex venue and broadcast center off the 215 beltway in the southwest valley. The five events go back to May 30, when White made good on his promise to produce the first live sports event in Las Vegas during a coronavirus pandemic that has now claimed the lives of 120,000 Americans.
In fact, not only UFC managed to produce these live weekly events in the year-old Apex facility, White said viewership numbers have been “ridiculous.” The actual ratings have proved White to be somewhat accurate.
According to Nielsen Media Research, UFC on ESPN and ESPN+, has consistently finished second in the overall ratings on cable. Starting with the May 30 fight headlined by a welterweight title challenge eliminator between former champion Tyron Woodley and Gilbert Burns, the kick off event from Apex drew an average of 1.02 million viewers. The clash was the fifth most watched event presented by the UFC and ESPN partnership to date.
The prelims for that fight were headlined by Kaitlyn Chookagian and Antonina Shevchenko. It drew 615,000 viewers, making it the fourth most watched preliminary card of the promotion’s return to live television.
The numbers have fluctuated slightly since and were followed up by the second UFC pay-per-view during the coronavirus era. UFC 250 headlined by two division UFC champion, Amanda Nunes who defeated Felicia Spencer in the main event on June 6th. That event placed second for overall ratings on that night. However, the overall number was the second lowest for UFC pay-per-view pre-lim cards in 2020.
“When we first started on ESPN, if you look at the ESPN totem pole, you had NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, these guys right?” White told media at the promotion’s Las Vegas headquarters. He continued. “We were one notch above corn hole. OK? That we sit in a much better place on the ESPN totem pole then we did when we signed the deal a year and a half ago.”
Producing fights live from UFC’s Apex building in Las Vegas worked out logistically after White looked at multiple athletic commissions in multiple states, fighter availability issues, and a raging global pandemic. UFC crafted a 25-page health and safety manual and submitted it to Nevada state athletic regulators.
Since Ultimate Fighting Championship made its official debut in 1993, White has been saying MMA would become the biggest sport on the planet.
And for four months during a pandemic, his bold prediction has been somewhat accurate. Ratings for UFC on ESPN June 13, averaged 908,000 viewers over the three-hour broadcast. While there were several shows which had more average viewers on that night, the UFC broadcast was tops in the sought after 18-49 demographic.
While all of the Las Vegas-based UFC shows have performed reasonably well, White had other reasons for pushing ahead at such a breakneck pace. He said multiple times that he expects another COVID-19 related shut down in the United States in the coming weeks.
Well before states and eventually the whole country shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19, White proclaimed the multi-million-dollar production facility practically next-door to UFC’s HQ campus would host live cards for the foreseeable future — or until Fight Island was finished. That’s another promise the bossman has brought to fruition.
Fight Island is an actual place the promotion has previously visited. Yas Island in Abu Dhabi officially opens for business July 1, with three championship fights to headline its arrival.
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