Dana White’s boxing venture has started with a huge success. The Canelo Alvarez vs Terence Crawford fight may not top the record books, but it was a fairly successful event, generating a reported $47.2 million live gate. However, on the UFC front, things seemed to be going wrong for the CEO. Following UFC Perth, questions about the promotion’s ticketing strategy started swirling, as we had UFC exec Dave Shaw responding with a statement.
UFC Perth may not have had the biggest of names, but the event delivered great entertainment to the crowd in attendance. With a total of six finishes, which includes three knockouts and three submissions, the event turned out to be a moderate success. However, it appears that Dana White and Co. tried their best to fill the seats at the RAC Arena by slashing ticket prices.
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UFC exec reveals Dana White and Co.’s ticketing strategy for UFC Perth
UFC Perth recorded a live gate of $1.8 million with 12,543 people attending the event. However, unlike the usual high ticket prices, Dana White and Co. decided to slash ticket prices for this Fight Night event. When asked about the reason behind the decision to reduce ticket costs, Executive Vice President Dave Shaw said, “We wouldn’t say slashed [the ticket prices],” during the post-fight presser.
The EVP claims that the UFC didn’t necessarily reduce the ticket prices, but made use of ‘dynamic pricing’. For those who aren’t acquainted with this term, it is a method of adjusting prices due to waning demand, and that’s exactly what Dana White and Co. did. According to Dave Shaw, they wanted to make sure that the tickets were sold out and get as many people as they could into the venue.
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“What we do is we employ dynamic pricing in a variety of different scenarios. And in this case, it made sense for us to do so for mostly the upper-level tickets to make sure that people got into the building,” Dave Shaw added. Well, there could be another reason why the demand wasn’t as high as usual, and that’s because the event took place early morning in Perth, which may not have been the best time of day for the locals to come and watch a UFC event. The reporter who asked Shaw the question also pointed out that events such as the AFL Grand Final could also have affected the UFC’s ticketing strategy.
Prior to the Fight Night event, Dave Shaw was also asked about the poor ticket sales issue with UFC Perth, which some critics could argue is a low point for the promotion. However, Dana White’s stand-in was quick to dismiss those claims.
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Dave Shaw brushed off claims about poor ticket sales
The media did not mince their words when they claimed to have indicated that a lot of tickets were still available a couple of days before the fight. But Dave Shaw did not seem to give any credibility to those claims, and when asked if the issue is real, he said, “Not at all.” Dana White’s stand-in claimed that when it comes to Australia, they’ve always played the “long game” and doubled down on the UFC’s plan to make MMA big in the land down under.
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“Listen, from the very beginning, we’ve taken the long run. We’re playing a long game with Australia… We overturned the ban of the octagon here in 2017. We had a Fight of the Year in 2023 with your boy [Alexander Volkanovski] and Islam [Makhachev]. We will continue to take the long run in Australia,” Dave Shaw stated. “Our viewpoint on Australia as one of the top markets that we go to every year is that this is going to be a massive sport in this country.”
Obviously, the promotion will never admit to facing such issues with their events. However, it begs the question whether the slash in ticket prices is a one-time occurrence or if we’ll see Dana White and Co. adopt a similar strategy in future events. Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.