As the Ultimate Fighting Championship, World Extreme Cagefighting and Strikeforce in recent weeks have talked about expanding their respective schedules next year, a question is raised: How much mixed martial arts can be supplied before the demand is oversaturated?
A couple years back, during another expansion phase, UFC owners Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta stated they didn’t believe overexposure was a possibility. They cited the number of football and basketball games that are played, and that those sports maintain their popularity year after year.
Thus far, they haven’t been proven wrong. UFC has expanded its number of events every year in recent years, and as a business, the sport is currently riding its highest wave of popularity.
But in television, overexposure is a real thing. Whether talk shows, game shows, or whatever is the hot thing in a given year, TV is a world of a new concept getting hot, everyone copying it, and quickly, people burn out on it. Remember the television show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" It was the hottest thing on television, so much so that at one point ABC ran it four nights a week.
The show burned out so fast it’s become a case study of something being the victim of its success.
Many credit these television cycles for the ups and downs of boxing and pro wrestling – when the sports are popular, television adds more hours, which can lead to overexposure and audience burnout, which triggers a down business cycle.
When UFC first started gaining in popularity in 2005 and 2006, many dismissed it as a fad, but if that was the case, it would have already started a decline.
UFC set business records last year on pay-per-view, and its pace this year will break last year’s marks by a wide margin.
But even filet mignon can get tiresome if you eat it every night. White has talked about a schedule that could have UFC doing shows three weekends a month next year, particularly as they talk about more overseas expansion. Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker said that in 2010, they were planning on running 18-20 events between Showtime and possibly CBS.
Some will be low-key Challenger Series events designed to showcase new stars, but the majority are expected to be star-laden major events.
WEC vice-president of operations Peter Dropick talked last week about a schedule next year of 10 events on Versus and possibly a couple of pay-per-views as well.
Based on those numbers, there could be a live event on television or pay-per-view virtually every weekend in 2010, and it’s inevitable there will be nights with two live competing events.
That much product has good and bad points. The bad is the more shows companies put on, the more diluted the shows will become in terms of top talent. The good is that there are more spots for fighters, and with more time slots, that means more chances to make new stars and organically create new matchups the public will want to see. New stars and intriguing matchups are the life blood of the sport's future.
Right now, with more shows than ever before, there isn’t any major evidence of a problem developing. UFC had its most successful show July 11 with 1.6 million buys, blowing away all previous records as one of the five biggest pay-per-view events of any sort in history.
They came back Aug. 8 for a show that recorded an estimated 850,000 buys, a number that blew away even the most optimistic expectations. And this is during a time of prolonged recession, where all the other major pay-per-view events are showing declines over the past few years. The Aug. 8 card also defied the lessons of boxing and pro wrestling on pay-per-view, where shows that draw records do not follow up with big numbers on the next show.
While Strikeforce and WEC events have nowhere near the popularity of UFC events, Showtime did set its record MMA rating on its most recent show on Aug. 15, and that was with head-to-head opposition of a UFC taped show attempting to siphon off some of the audience. The most recent WEC show, on Aug. 9, coming the night after a UFC show, headlined by Miguel Angel Torres’ bantamweight title loss to Brian Bowles did the best rating Versus has ever done for a show that didn’t feature top drawing card Urijah Faber.
On the other hand, UFC television ratings have not increased this year. More people than ever are willing to pay to see the big events, but are also willing to skip the free shows that aren’t headlined by the big names.
MMA's attractiveness in the television world goes beyond its actual ratings to its value to certain advertisers. With MMA, when it comes to both live and televised events, an advertiser has access to large audiences of men between the ages of 25-40. So while it is not drawing the kind of ratings overall that the top mainstream sports do on television, its ability to help sponsors hit a target audience brings it greater value than shows that may draw more actual viewers, but hit a wider variety of viewers.
UFC’s most recent growth seems to have been fueled by the popularity of its hit video game, UFC 2009 Undisputed. The game helped bolster the fan base, as has increased media coverage of the major shows, which in more and more places are being treated as legitimate sporting events.
A few years ago mainstream coverage treated MMA as an oddity and novelty. MMA is still probably the most popular current sport that creates a great generational divide, dismissed as a real sport by most above a certain age, and accepted without question as a sport by most under that age. But if you look back even two years, the level of change in coverage and attitudes is astounding, and that is almost sure to continue as the sport puts down roots in the culture.
As things stand, television wants more MMA next year. It’s a good thing for the sport's growth until it hits the point of sensory overload. We aren’t too far from finding out if weekly major events will establish yet a new level of success, or if the sport will be victimized by its own success.
