UFC
UFC NEWS: UFC 129 brings in $11 million gate, Dana White "blown away" by ticket sales and fan response
Feb 15, 2011 - 4:05:48 PM UFC NEWS: UFC 129 brings in $11 million gate, Dana White "blown away" by ticket sales and fan response

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Last week the UFC destroyed prior records for ticket sales when UFC 129 sold out with 55,000 tickets.

On a media conference call on Tuesday, UFC President Dana White confirmed that the ticket sales bring a gate of $11 million, more than double their previous best. For White, the response for the UFC's first event in Toronto, Ontario, was overwhelming.

"I always talk about how big Canada is, and how big we're growing internationally," White said. "It was a big move to put 42,000 tickets on sale. Every time we go up to [Montreal's] Bell Centre, we sell that thing out. But the question was, how many more people were really looking for tickets? Is it 25,000? Maybe it's 29,000? 30,000?

"When we put 42,000 on sale, I'll admit I was a little nervous about it and I didn't know. I'm absolutely blown away by the response."

The record setting gate marks the first eight figure gate for the organization, but when asked why it's taken so long to reach a higher boxing-level gate, White made it clear that there's a reason the UFC hasn't hit the big boxing level gates.

"That's why we haven't hit those numbers because we don't want to [charge insane prices]," White said. "We sold 55,000 tickets for the Rogers Centre and those are fans buying the tickets... The only reason we're doubling the gate we've done before is because we've sold 55,000 tickets."

"Boxing is charging five grand for tickets [in Las Vegas] and the casinos are buying them. I don't ever want to be in that situation."

This event will be the UFC's first ever stadium event, and it's something they've shied away from doing in the past for fear of losing the "UFC experience" for fans. But White assured those on the call that they've done this the right way.

"The one thing that always worried me about doing a stadium was losing that experience that the fans get in anywhere from a 10,000 to 20,000 seat arena," White said. "This place is perfect. The way we've laid it out, we put risers in; there won't be a bad seat in this place. To be able to do a stadium this big and say there won't be a bad seat in the house, we pulled it off. It's going to be great."

But despite the layout they put together and the fight card that they're bringing to Toronto in April, White admitted that they just don't know what the demand will be in these spots because it's a new thing for them. He questioned whether they'd get 60,000 to 80,000 for an event, and wondered just what the ceiling was in a bigger stadium than the Rogers Centre.

"I'm pretty cocky about this stuff," White said. "I believe in the brand and the sport and the fighters. The question always is, we sold out 23,000 tickets [in Montreal for UFC 124], but how many people were really looking for tickets? Now I'm sitting here with 55,000 sold out and still thinking the same thing. How many more could we have done in a bigger stadium? How many more people were looking for tickets? It's crazy."

The UFC expects this event, along with the first Canadian edition of the UFC Fan Expo, to bring an economic boost of $40 million to the city of Toronto. White added that the taxes from the ticket sales alone will bring $1.5 million to the city. The success of this event should provide an example to New York about what they could be missing with their failure to allow mixed martial arts to run in the state.

UFC 129 features a stacked card headlined by a Welterweight Championship fight between Georges St. Pierre and Jake Shields, a co-main event for the UFC Featherweight Championship between Jose Aldo and Mark Hominick, and a light heavyweight feature between Lyoto Machida and Randy "The Natural" Couture.