Good stuffThe buys are terrible this year. Of course, any boxing PPV that isn't Mayweather or Canelo is in the Mighty Mouse level of bad so I guess it's all perspective. I'm not sure if the 2 Ward/Kovalev PPVs combined for 300k and that was a ridiculous match up between the absolute best in that class.
I think some of it is due to a lack of stars that you feel compelled to open your wallet to watch fight and some of it is due to the fact that there are fights practically every weekend, most of which are free. You put the two together and that's a recipe for lower sales.
If, as a casual fan, you show me 3 events over the course of a month and 1 is on FS1, 1 is on Fox, and 1 is on PPV and I can't really tell a difference in the cards then I'm going to opt for the free ones. Even then because I have no skin in the game as I didn't have to pay for it I may not even be inclined to watch it if something else comes up.
As@FrankieNYC mentioned in another thread, the UFC PPV sales may be lagging but as a business they're doing fantastic because of the way their deals are structured and their expansion into other markets giving even more revenue with a lower operating costs since they cut a ton of positions and controlling costs.
So 350k is a crap number compared to the previous year and most of recent PPV history but there is a general drop in that format for all combat sports and 350k is better than they have been getting out of most of their cards this year. If I'm expecting 275k buys and get 350k buys then that's a big deal even if it is still a crap number.
Also UFC makes a lot of money off a 350k PPV
That is $13m+ just on PPV share alone
Here are 12/16-11/17 buys
