UFC President Dana White predict UFC 189’s Jose Aldo vs. Conor McGregor featherweight title match will be the organization’s biggest fight of the year. In order to push it as such, White said the company is spending a record amount of money on promotion for the fight, including commercial time buys during next month’s NBA Finals.
The promotion for UFC 189, which takes place July 11 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena and airs on pay-per-view, is already going well. Aldo and McGregor were also got on a nine-city, 12-day “UFC 189 World Tour” in March, which launched a global buzz for the title bout.
White Said “We think this fight is going to do well over a million pay-per-view buys and this thing will probably break even,” White said. “One thing we always wanted to do was a branding campaign. We saw a million pitches and all this stuff. We really liked this one a lot. It really tells the story of the fight. Ireland vs. Brazil and everyone else cares.”
Fights with the significance of Aldo (25-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) vs. McGregor (17-2 MMA, 5-0 UFC) aren’t routine occurrences in combat sports. No fight has sold more pay-per-views than the Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao boxing match that took place earlier this month. The event reportedly sold more than 4 million pay-per-views, but many believed the actual contest did not live up to the hype.
White said that’s absolutely unlikely to be the case at UFC 189. He said it’s “impossible” for Aldo vs. McGregor to result in a boring fight. His hopes are the 145-pound title affair will be “everything” Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was not.
“What we want is this thing to be is everything Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was not,” White said. “There’s no doubt Conor McGregor will go after Jose Aldo. That’s when Aldo fights his best. No way this will be a boring fight. It’s stylistically impossible.”
If UFC 189 goes off without a hitch, White said an unprecedented amount of promotion is set for the weeks and months leading up to the event.
The organization plans to produce 10 episodes of its “UFC Embedded” series ahead of fight night as well as a “UFC Bad Blood” episode, likely to air on FOX Sports 1. There will be closed-circuit viewing in Las Vegas and the bout will air in some capacity in 140-150 countries.
Moreover, White said the live gate for UFC 189 is targeted to settle around $7 million. That number would represent the largest live gate ever for an MMA event in the United States, and White said that’s just one reason why the organization has decided to put so much time and effort into the fight.
“Ticket sales are all over the world for this fight; this is a featherweight fight and this thing is going to break the gate record in the United States,” White said. “The Georges St-Pierre fight the first time we went to Toronto (for UFC 129), (55,000) seats and it did $11 million gate. 16,000 (seats) at MGM, and it’s going to do $7 million for a featherweight fight. ”
Dana White Predict UFC 189 As Biggest Fight Of The Year
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