WEC PPV Will Come To Fruition In April With Faber Vs. Aldo As Main Event
by Kelvin Hunt on Feb 3, 2010 9:54 PM EST
in News
17 comments
World Extreme Cagefighting will stage its first pay-per-view event April 24, scheduling a star-stacked card for its first attempt to persuade mixed martial arts fans to pay $44.99 for its fights.
Urijah Faber will meet featherweight champion Jose Aldo in the main event of WEC 48 from Sacramento, Calif., the lighter-weight MMA promotion’s leaders told The Associated Press before Wednesday’s announcement.
Former featherweight champion Mike Brown also will meet Manny Gamburyan at Arco Arena, and lightweight champion Ben Henderson will fight Donald Cerrone in a rematch of their acclaimed October bout.
After years of showcasing its product on Versus and online, the WEC is eager for its long-anticipated—and possibly treacherous—step into pay-per-view.
"We wanted to wait until we had this type of card to go to pay-per-view," WEC general manager Reed Harris told the AP. "We didn’t want to do a pay-per-view show until fans would say at the end of the night, ‘This was worth it.’ This will truly be the biggest event we’ve ever done."
Of course I'm a little late on this, but today was NSD for college football and I had to keep tabs on my Florida State Seminoles who have pulled in the #6 class overall! Things will get back to normal I promise.
Now on to this WEC PPV. This looks like it will be a one shot deal, and if it does decently(it will not) they could do another one in the future. Now, it IS going to be a pretty stacked WEC card, but the competition it will face is just ridiculous. Not to mention the price being $44.99! Maybe this will put the writing on the wall that the WEC should just fold into the UFC?
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Yeah, the show should be awesome but I’m not sure if there’s room for an extra $44.95 a month on top of other shows especially when it’s going head to head with MMA on free television. Congrats on the ’Noles, man. Fisher should have them heading in the right direction.
oh son
In two years….smh…watchout…you heard it here first!
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cough torrent cough….
can’t really spend any more money on MMA. My muay thai lessons, gym, clothing, supplements, dvds, UFC PPVs, random impulsive mma related purchases…. yeah no more.
by cauliflower_ears on Feb 4, 2010 1:23 AM EST reply actions
move to nevada. it's all free.
I'm all about covering the spread and moneylines. I was building a house, I don't deserve this, deserves have nothing to do with it. Bang. "Unforgiven" I drink your milkshake. I drink it up! "There Will BE Blood"
by wolfmanshowlforever on Feb 4, 2010 1:45 AM EST up reply actions
Sopcast dude, then torrent… or am I the only one who saves basically every MMA event on my drive? lol
"I don’t care, hit him with your groin!"
by 3PA on Feb 4, 2010 5:28 AM EST up reply actions
nope, me too :) I have EVERY UFC fight EVER. And Pride as well :)
by cauliflower_ears on Feb 4, 2010 6:47 AM EST up reply actions
Ditto on the UFC stuff
But I don’t have a couple of the PRIDE Grand Prix-events :(
Add your odd assortment of single fights, Bellator, DREAM, Strikeforce and a small-time show or two.
"I don’t care, hit him with your groin!"
by 3PA on Feb 4, 2010 7:12 AM EST up reply actions
I agree with "cough torrent cough"
That’s what I’ll be doing the very next day.
Hey, I've got a great idea!
Let’s take a promotion that has poor exposure, and typically draws 350-600k viewers on FREE TV, and put it on PPV. And while we’re at it, let’s also charge full price.
RETARDS. Let’s do a comparison here: UFC 105 on Spike drew ~3.7 million viewers on free TV. A few weeks later, UFC 107 (Penn vs. Sanchez) did ~620k on pay per view. So if they lose almost 85% of their viewership by moving an event to PPV, then they’ll get MAYBE 100k viewers. That’s such a piss-poor number, I don’t even know what to say. Oh, and let’s not forget that Strikeforce is going to counter it with a show on CBS. Let’s weigh the two options here… paying $45 for a WEC show, with the same WEC guys we’ve been watching for free for years, OR we can watch a free show on CBS (and in HD) and it might even have Fedor on it.
Come on guys, these are numbers that pale in comparison to the Affliction buyrates, and those were some awful numbers.
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son
I don’t see them doing more than 30-40K…TOPS.
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I think Reed Haris would crap his pants if he got 100K buys. They are smart people and I can only assume that if the WEC can get 40K-70K buys it will be more money than they get from their TV contract. Not a dumb move, it is a calculated move.
Oh it's calculated for sure
If they got 70K I would consider that a success…that would be over 3 million dollars.
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Word is they're shooting for 60K
But really, if that’s all you’re expecting WHY EVEN BOTHER.
Live previews and reviews of all major fights!
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Incorrect math
Even if they got 70K buys (which I highly doubt, closer to 1/3 of that), the PPV company takes around 50% of the revenue. That leaves 70K * 45 = $1.5M. If they get 25K buys then it’s half a mil.
Honestly I don’t know how much revenue they get from Versus normally so I don’t know if getting half a mil or $1.5M is good or not. They still get the live gate but have to pay fighter salaries, locker room bonuses, xxx of the night bonuses and all the production costs. This is not a money maker at all but Harris and co. are obviously aware of this.
The whole thing is just to keep Versus away from any other MMA production. That is the one and only one reason we are even having this discussion. Having said that, why the hell are they even going down this PPV road???
Yea
I know the PPV company gets a big percentage….I was just being lazy and not going that in depth with it…and it’s true that they took the WEC to keep other org’s off of Versus….I have no idea why they are going this route…unless it’s a one shot deal just to see for themselves how it’ll do.
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