Portland, Oregon has long been considered a hotbed of mixed martial arts. The area is home to numerous MMA gyms, the most famous being Gresham’s Team Quest. It has produced many top notch professional fighters including Randy Couture, Matt Lindland, Ed Herman and Ryan Schultz. Regional MMA promotions like Lindland’s SportFight and amateur MMA draws good crowds, and there’s few markets in the country that have such a strong mainstream acceptance and understanding of mixed martial arts.The UFC has struggled to sell tickets for UFC 102 at the Rose Garden Arena in the MMA hotbed of Portland, Oregon. Zuffa is insisting the economy is at fault, but public opinion in the Rose City doesn't validate this assertion.
The UFC originally planned to hold an event in Portland last year, but when Randy Couture resigned with the promotion and agreed to fight Brock Lesnar UFC 91 was moved to Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena. The UFC rescheduled their Rose City debut for August 29th, headlined by a matchup between local hero Couture and tough PRIDE vet Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. They anticipated a fever pitch for Couture’s homecoming and the UFC’s first ever trip to the Pacific Northwest.
What they received instead was an outpouring of apathy from the community. As of early this week, there had been as few as 8,500 tickets sold in the 21,000 seat Rose Garden Arena. Even media sources like Yahoo Sports, who invariably put a positive spin on everything the UFC, does are reporting just over 10,000 tickets sold. In the final week runup to the event the UFC has been aggressively giving away tickets, so between that and ‘walkup’ business they’ll likely end up with a respectable 15,000 to 18,000 attendance figure. It’ll look fine on the PPV, as they can curtain off unsold sections of seats and shoot the crowd to make it look larger.
Earlier in the week Zuffa announced the postponement of a WEC event scheduled for Youngstown, Ohio. The official reason given was an injury to main event fighter Ben Henderson, and while that’s not been confirmed several sources have indicated that he did suffer a minor setback during training. More curiously, the WEC announced that the show would no longer be held in Youngstown despite what they insisted were strong ticket sales. The WEC claimed a ‘scheduling conflict’ with the site, and the Youngstown arena management played along claiming that the facility was booked for ‘Motorcycle Ice Racing’ on the rescheduled date in early October. Despite these claims, the official website and phone line for the facility has no such event listed. Furthermore, the organizations that sanction and promote motorcycle ice racing have no knowledge of an early October event in Youngstown. The more the facts become known, the more it becomes apparent that there was minimal interest in the area and that the ‘motorcycle ice racing’ is simply a bad cover up story.
While Youngstown could have been a bad choice for a MMA event all along, the UFC will probably blame the economy for the poor showing of live ticket sales in Portland. While the high unemployment rate nationally and regionally doesn’t help things, it doesn’t appear to be a major factor in the UFC’s struggles to sell tickets in the Rose City. A number of local media outlets including the Portland based MMA website THE SAVAGE SCIENCE have talked to area UFC fans, and the results are surprising. A mind boggling number of people who self identify as casual or serious fans of the UFC had no idea that an event was being held in Portland at all. That’s likely due to a marketing and promotion campaign locally that is somewhere between misplaced and non-existent. The local media hasn’t helped either, with Portland’s largest newspaper providing little print coverage of UFC 102 claiming that it’s ‘not a major sport’.
Even among fans who *did* know that UFC 102 was coming to Portland, there’s no ‘buzz’ whatsoever. There’s a variety of reasons for this—many fans have suggested that the high ticket prices weren’t justified by a relatively weak card. With the exception of the main event, there aren’t any fighters on the UFC 102 card that are exactly household names outside of hardcore MMA circles. Others have suggested that they would be interested in attending the event, but there’s a whole slew of competing events this weekend including the Oregon State Fair.
The latest rumor is that the UFC has decreed a ‘bar blackout’, not allowing bars to order the PPV and charge a cover for viewers. Most likely it’s a cover for the complete lack of buzz among Portland area nightspots. If the ‘bar blackout’ is legit, it’s a very shortsighted strategy that takes money out of local businesses and will do nothing to boost ticket sales.
We talked to a few bar owners and managers and none of them had heard of any sort of ‘bar blackout’. Of greater concern was a few bars that typically show UFC events that have decided not to bother with this one. An owner of a bar near the SAVSCI offices said that “The interest just isn’t there. We had a big crowd for UFC 100, and only about half the turnout for UFC 101. I guess anyone that wants to see this is going to the arena. We thought about showing the UFC on Saturday but we’re doing karaoke instead.”
The UFC has a misguided notion that they can simply put their name on an arena marquee and local fans will pay top dollar for tickets regardless of who is fighting on the card or what else is going on that night. The reality has demonstrated otherwise with poor ticket sales in Portland and other markets. While the promotion’s PPV business is doing fine and is their real source of revenue, the weakness of the demand for their live product outside of a select number of markets like Las Vegas and Montreal should be a source of concern.
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