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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
If you ordered UFC 182 on pay-per-view earlier this month, you may have noticed the bump in price for the card. As it turns out, that's a permanent change for the UFC.
In a statement passed along via a report from MMAJunkie.com, the UFC cites rising costs for the jump from $44.99SD/$54.99HD to $49.99SD/$59.99HD, and is instituting it for all pay-per-view events going forward.
"In an effort to provide UFC fans with the best possible matchups and highest quality programming, we have maintained the same suggested retail price for our U.S. pay-per-view events since February 2008 (UFC 81), with one exception – UFC 168 in 2013," the statement read. "As with most industries, our costs have gone up significantly over this period and we have determined it is necessary to institute a minimal cost increase beginning in 2015."
"UFC considers its pay-per-view events to be a tremendous value for the consumer and it continues to make that value proposition better every year through features such as advanced analytics, real-time interviews and breaking news."
Penick's Analysis: The UFC can raise their PPV price for any reason they please, but there's going to be some backlash when you have comments from Dana White several years ago about never raising pay-per-view prices. Regardless, it was probably just a matter of time before this came to pass. It adds another $65 to the yearly cost for a fan to order every pay-per-view event, and now the onus is on the UFC to make it worth that. They absolutely cannot bump the price and continue providing cards like they did last year; thus far they're giving fans worthy events that they're willing to pay for, and they have to keep that up, or the added cost will make more tune out for lackluster events.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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