How do they do it? How is UFC getting customers to pay MSG-level fight prices at arenas across the world for matchmaking that, until recently, was absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of fight quality?
UFC 317 at T-Mobile Arena with Ilia Topuria vs. Charles Oliveira is a perfect example. It’s hard to get a floor seat for less than $1,000. Cage side seats are thousands of dollars. And that event is likely going to sell out in short order. Same story in locales like New Orleans and Chicago.
Is it improved matchmaking? Is it TKO’s multi-monopoly machine powering through challenges other entertainment groups can’t solve?
How is UFC and WWE able to win over customers in an environment where it costs so much to buy a ticket to enjoy Mark Shapiro’s “experience economy”?
We are back this week with a new edition of The MMA Draw podcast on Substack, and what a news cycle to debut our new audio recording set-up. (We have plenty of things to improve/fi,x but you’ll hear some of our improvements.)
The free portion of this week’s podcast looks at the UFC 2025 Summer calendar of matchmaking and focuses on matches we think the promotion is putting on the back burner until they get their new media rights deal.
The paid portion of this week’s podcast has a couple of featured attractions we focus intently on.
First, the conflicts and challenges of TKO managing Turki Boxing, and how these headaches are already surfacing in regards to UFC Noche event planning.
This article from Brunch Boxing caught our attention.
What are the historical obstacles TKO needs to overcome to win over a % of the boxing audience? Can they process hustle their way and use brute force to obtain market share by simply purging veteran boxing fans the way they’ve done to veteran pro-wrestling and MMA customers?
Second, we have some big news regarding Meta/Facebook and a Federal lawsuit involving UFC Fight Pass. Quietly, there has been a three-year-old lawsuit in Las Vegas alleging US state & Federal privacy law violations against UFC for utilizing Meta Pixel trackers to supposedly scrape customer data without permission. The case is titled Bloom v. Zuffa, and there was a two-day evidentiary hearing this past week. If the judge in the case grants class certification to the plaintiffs, it could open up some doors for discovery against UFC and Facebook.
The kicker? The man making the class certification determination is none other than Judge Richard Boulware!
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