Dana White hedging his bets going into UFC 306 at The Sphere
Meanwhile, his sidekick Hunter Campbell's profile continues to rise.
UFC CEO Dana White is backing off his grandiose claims for UFC 306 at The Sphere. Well, maybe not entirely backing off but he hasn’t been saying “the greatest sporting event of all time” to describe the event lately.
In a recent video interview with John Morgan, Dana admits to a very unusual degree of uncertainty:
On Sept. 14, sports and entertainment are truly gonna come together at the same time. Does it work? Is it great? Is it awesome? Does it suck? We don’t know. We won’t know until it’s over, but we’re gonna try it.
Dana also emphasized the degree of difficulty in putting on the show.
The lighting was the first thing. That took four months. It took four months to figure out just the lighting. Then it took months to assemble a team to help us pull this off.
It will be fascinating to pull off a sporting event here where we’re basically doing movies. There will be a movie that night and in between movies, you know, we call them chapters of the movie, there will be fights. And you’ll see our thought process and how we laid it out and how we figured this would work that night. But at the end of the night, we’ll know whether it does [work] or it doesn’t.
He even got a little bit technical.
The rendering… do you know what that means? It takes 12 days to render anything that changes. We had to build a render farm inside the Sphere. Literally built our own render farm in there. The level of how complex this thing is if I even laid a quarter of it out to the people wouldn't even understand how hard and and challenging this thing really was and is.
Dana’s conversation with Adam Hill of The Las Vegas Review-Journal also reflected an unusual degree of self-doubt and self-deprecation:
“I wish I could remember what I was thinking at the time,” White now jokes. “But we’re in it now.”
A preliminary production budget of $8 million has already exceeded $20 million. Long days and even longer nights have strained nerves and panicked accountants. But White believes it will all be worth it after Saturday night.
“I’m excited to see what people say on Sunday,” he said. “The people who experience it live and then the people who watch it on television. I’m ready to hear it all, the good and the bad. The criticism from the media, the people, everybody. I’m fascinated to hear what everyone thinks.”
Since when does Dana care what anybody else thinks? As Zach Arnold recently observed, Dana’s been watching everyone look over his shoulder in Endeavor-land when it comes of how much his grand experiment costs the vulture capitalists.
Ticket prices plunge and critics pounce
Why might Dana be hedging his bets a little bit?
Well, maybe he read Trent Reinsmith’s report on collapsing ticket prices for the show.
And Fred Garvin reports it’s still getting worse:
Even UFC booster Jesse On Fire is shitting on the event:
Dana went to Sports Business Journal (an Endeavor ally) to spin the ticket sales:
Tickets for the UFC event went on sale in late July and, initially, the lowest-priced stubs were around $3,000. As of today on Ticketmaster, tickets were still available, starting at $700, indicating that UFC lowered prices. Some on social media have suggested that this is a sign UFC misjudged the pricing. But while the organization is not commenting on the ticket prices, White told SBJ that sales are going at “a normal rate for any event we put on.”
White: “You have a big group that buys right out of the gate, and then you whittle it down to the last either week or day of the fight -- sometimes the night of the fight. Plus, this is the biggest gate in UFC history.”According to the WrestleTix ticket-tracking site, Noche UFC has 14,328 tickets distributed out of a possible 15,410, meaning 1,082 primary tickets are left, with eight days left until the event. The night will feature 10 fights interspersed in between a six-part mini-documentary about the history of Mexican combat sports displaying on the Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot interior display plane. Each chapter will focus on a different period in Mexican history. Around 450 people have worked on setting up the event, with costs running up to $20 million, more than double the original $8 million budget.
ESPN will air the PPV, and ESPN executive Matt Kenny told SBJ that the network is “very encouraged by the [number of] early-bird buys we’ve seen thus far.” White says he’s “not even thinking about [the Alvarez fight] at all,” adding, “Obviously, I have my beef with [T-Mobile Arena operator] MGM over the whole thing, but listen, it’s Mexican Independence Day weekend, and there’s a lot that’s going to be going on that will catch the attention of the Mexican people. ... They’re doing their thing, and I’m doing mine.”
Defense of Dana from some unexpected quarters
Surprisingly, the most outspoken defender of the UFC at the Sphere show is the usually skeptical Luke Thomas. Luke did a whole video on it, but seemed to completely miss the point.
No one is bagging on the show because they think it won’t be entertaining.
People are just noting the obvious and factual: collapsing ticket prices indicate much less fan interest in the event than the promotion expected going in.
In fairness, Luke does criticize what he calls the “insanely outrageous” ticket prices. He even admits that “there really is no denying that ticket prices for live UFC events in general have gone through the roof in ways that are just hard to understand even relative to just a few years ago.”
He also concedes that the fight card is not as stacked as UFC 298 or 299.
Luke’s main argument seems to be that the Sean O’Malley vs Merab Dvalishvili headliner is much better matchmaking than the Canelo Alvarez vs Edgar Berlanga boxing match that’s going on at the MGM T-Mobile Arena at the same time.
Canelo is anywhere from a 15-to-20 to 1 favorite while Berlanga is a 9-to-1 underdog. Early odds for the UFC main event had Merab opening up as a favorite but the public is heavily betting on O’Malley to win. A main event with sharps vs. John Q Public always has some intrigue.
That, plus… it’s The Sphere. Turns out that Luke’s been there to see Dead and Company and had a religious experience.
I understand if you've never been to The Sphere. You might be like ‘I don't get what the big hype is.’
Again you just want a different level of card quality blah blah blah.
Guys we are talking about something that is the most unique venue in the world. We are talking about the UFC sinking and apparently it normally cost them $2 million for a show for a pay-per-view show they had budgeted $8M for this one (and ended up costing) $20 million.
I'm not asking for people to say the Sphere show is good. That's not what I'm doing. What I'm asking for people to do is to reserve judgment about it until the show is over and the reason why I say that is because in my little anecdotal experience it was mind-blowing.
Luke may be right, but it’s as irrelevant as UFC matchmakers Mick Maynard and Sean Shelby defending lousy UFC cards by arguing “you can’t say a card sucks until you’ve seen the fights!”
Dana’s getting old and Hunter Campbell’s getting press
One of the haters pouncing on Dana’s apparent stumbles with the Sphere show is the infamous MMA Guru who claimed:
Dana's doing bucket list promotion moves.
He knows he's leaving soon. He knows he's getting old so he's doing these wacky zany things.
He's sinking all this money into production value so he can say when he retires (that) ‘no one's ever sunk that much money into the Sphere.’
It's just like shut the eff up and give us a good card.
That part about Dana getting old and being on the way out absolutely stung and made this Sports Business Journal feature on his understudy Hunter Campbell really jump out at me.
Keep in mind when reading this that the SBJ isn’t what it used to be — the Wall Street Journal of sports. Instead, it’s a zombie remnant of its old self that TKO/Endeavor uses as a friendly outlet to get their message out.
As Zach Arnold discussed last April, Endeavor properties are “gold” sponsors for SBJ conferences. That’s where the money is.
That is to say, this isn’t some random reporter going rogue and stirring the shit. This is the UFC brass sending a public message:
CEO Dana White usually is in the limelight for the Vegas-based company. But behind the scenes, or on an airplane, Campbell has quietly become one of the most important and influential executives at the property, which is part of the publicly traded TKO Group Holdings. He’s also viewed by some as the potential heir apparent to White.
With the UFC since 2017, a year after Endeavor bought it, the bespectacled, 6-foot-3-inch Campbell saw his profile rise like never before this summer following his appearances on a documentary about UFC’s leadership that aired on Roku.
…
Matt Kenny, ESPN’s vice president of programming and acquisitions for pro basketball and combat sports, called Campbell’s performance in ensuring no fights got canceled during UFC 303 a “wonderful example of just Hunter’s ability to be an operator.” Campbell also had to replace the main event just weeks before 303 after McGregor got injured in the buildup to his return fight versus Michael Chandler. That fight still has not been rescheduled but could be for late this year or early next year.
“His fingerprints are all over the joint success that our companies have enjoyed over the last six years,” Kenny said.
There are no signs that White plans to leave his role at UFC anytime soon, but Campbell appears to be well-positioned as a potential successor if the timing were to ever align. Other candidates could include UFC COO Lawrence Epstein.
Keep in mind that articles like this are almost never written on the outlet/reporter’s own initiative. Stories like this are often seeded by PR professionals.
That means someone inside TKO/Endeavor thought this week was the perfect time to get a puff piece placed that explicitly calls Hunter Campbell the likely successor to Dana White.
This reminds me of the kinds of leaks that rival factions within failing political campaigns place in outlets like Politico to publicly pin the blame on their internal enemies.
Maybe Ari Emanuel or Mark Shapiro is sending a message to Dana White letting him know that going $12 million over budget on a UFC PPV is definitely a “one and done” deal.
Let’s not forget those cost overruns meant that someone at TKO/Endeavor had to go to Turki Alalshikh hat in hand and ask him to come on board as a sponsor — on 9/11 week — for the event.
Not only did it entail asking Turki for a favor and being in his debt, it also means the Saudi sponsorship money going for the Sphere show is money that might not be used as a site fee down the road.
Spending Saudi money on Emmy-winning technicians and veteran cameramen is not how Endeavor likes to roll. A sponsor fee is pure profit that can go toward executive dividends. Instead, that money went towards putting on Dana White’s dream show.
Should Dana be worried? Or is he already mentally checked out, with one foot out the door?
Is The Sphere event Dana’s last big personal budget-busting hurrah as UFC CEO?
Stay tuned.
We are in this very strange place where we are constantly having to read the political tea leaves with UFC. Endeavor's machine runs WWE and UFC but the political flavoring from the two administratively is curious. Dana is now claiming that WWE is borrowing from UFC. I'm not suggesting competitive tension but it has been unusual to see what Dana is focusing on right now.
UFC wiped out the competition and now it's getting harder for Dana to find foils to rile him up to get those competitive juices flowing. He can blather about wanting new challenges all he wants but something feels adrift.
The political golden parachute doesn't appear to be as secure as previously thought. Vince McMahon is about to get wrecked to Endeavor's liking on Netflix. The palace intrigue is starting to percolate because of the corporate and political nature of Endeavor as a political shop.
When the substance of the product gets shakier and the office becomes enamored with process and politics, you start walking into traps. WWE has the benefit of Triple H steering the creative ship. The UFC matchmaking system leaves a lot to be desired.
By any other metric, The Sphere making a profit and generating a record gate for revenue would be cause for celebration. For you, for me, and anyone else. For Endeavor, that VC mindset of violating their standard business model and profit margins is so sacrosanct that what should be the cherry on top of the sundae is instead internally being debated over as some sort of albatross.
3k to get foot in door, 1000s + tickets unsold, PRICES DROPPING FAST! A 10 fight card that is OK AND definitely not the greatest live event ever tbh. Grossly misplayed their hand on this one. The market said no ty. #nocheufc #ufc306. Sticker shock had a lot of fans/ppl pivot 100%