The Fertitta brothers, Dana White and Flash Entertainment are about to get much, much richer. That’s because the owners of Zuffa will be rolling out a huge cash cow this Saturday night, UFC 129. Zuffa has already taken in roughly $11 million from the 55,000 tickets sold to the event at Toronto’s Rogers Centre. Now it’s time to predict how much they are going to rake in from pay-per-view sales for Saturday’s extravaganza.
UFC 129 is of course headlined by UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre, who is the UFC’s surest bet for PPV sales that is not currently residing in the heavyweight division. GSP’s last four headlining appearances have sold between 850,000 and 1,600,000 PPVs. But GSP isn’t the only selling point for UFC 129 – it also has Randy Couture’s “retirement” match (yeah, right); the most explosive lighter-weight fighter in the world in Jose Aldo; Lyoto Machida, who always sells pretty well (for a Brazilian); and, perhaps most importantly, the event is truly an “event” – with the largest crowd ever for a North American MMA event, not to mention the first held amongst the rabid fan base in Toronto, UFC 129 should be electric and must-see viewing for mixed martial arts fans.
So, with all of this taken into account, we are predicting UFC 129 will sell 1 million PPVs. And, considering the UFC gets to keep an unheard of 50% of PPV revenues, they should take in between $25-30 million in PPV revenues from Saturday night. The rich get richer.
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