Lorenzo Fertitta not concerned by low viewing figures for UFC on FOX 3, vows to get behind Nate Diaz over the next few years
UFC co-owner, Lorenzo Fertitta has today revealed he’s not concerned by the low viewing figures the recent UFC on FOX 3 card received, as well as vowing to help fix the problem by getting behind such names as Nate Diaz over the coming years to ensure all events have a face people recognise fighting on them.
Speaking via Yahoo! Sports, Fertitta said:
“Would we like to see the numbers be trending differently? Yes, of course, but we’re not concerned and we don’t think it’s an overall reflection of our business. There are reasons for it. If you think about it, for the first [Fox] fight we had a massive amount of promotion within the NFL on Fox. And we led with our big show, the heavyweight championship, so of course, we were going to draw a much broader range of viewers. The fight in January in Chicago actually performed pretty well, even though it was a little below the first one. It was still super solid. This last show, I’d say it was a moderate performance. Really, what we’re looking at is, ‘How did we rank within the competition compared to what was going on that night?’ And in hindsight, going on Cinco de Mayo may not have been the best thing to do.”
“If The Avengers did [a box office of] over $200 million for the weekend, unfortunately for us, there were a great number of our potential viewers sitting in a movie theater somewhere. Or, they were out that night celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Listen, I’m not trying to make excuses. Hats off to HBO and Bernard Hopkins. That’s a great job and a great number they pulled. But when you say, ‘Are we concerned,’ I’d say no. We’re excited. We had a situation where 2.5 million people, which I would say is still a substantial number, got to see what I would say was a tremendous product. All four fights were great fights and in the main event, Nate Diaz showed he’s potentially a breakout star who down the road could move the needle for us on pay-per-view. The playbook is playing out for us exactly the way we wanted it to. Before I was involved in the pay-per-view business and understood the ins and outs, I was always scared to death to change the channel. We will work on this and look at it, but we’re not unhappy. We got a tremendous amount of exposure for a kid like Nate Diaz. We’re going to build him the way we built Jon Jones. Two years ago, nobody knew who Jon Jones was, and now, a couple of weeks ago, we did a very good [PPV] number for his fight that I think really crossed over and where the non hard-core fans were talking about it.”
To be honest if the Las Vegas based promotion are going to spread themselves as thin as they seem to be doing and end up featuring the likes of Diaz, Dustin Poirier and “The Korean Zombie” in FOX, FX and FUEL TV events then they are really going to have to roll out the hype machine behind these fighters in order to ensure the events don’t end up a flop like they have recently. Stay tuned to MMABay for more on this as we get it.
By Michael Pepper. (Follow me on Twitter)
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