UFC CEO Dana White is one of the more knowledgeable people when it comes to the business of pay-per-view.
The UFC stages at least 12 pay-per-view events a year. Not all of them are a homerun when it comes to buyrate numbers.
And White realizes how hard a company has to work to turn a profit on a pay-per-view platform.
During a recent interview, White lashed out at reports which claim influencer boxing cards are generating big numbers on pay-per-view. And he tore apart any claim that a recent Misfits pay-per-view brought in 1.3 million buys. That card in particular, had a main event which featured KSI vs. Tommy Fury, and Logan Paul faced Dillon Danis in the co-feature.
“I haven’t heard about anybody selling a lot of pay-per-views lately,” White told The Full Send podcast. “Let me tell you how hard it is to sell 1.3 million pay-per-view buys, and if you did sell 1.3 million — if you sold 700,000 pay-per-view buys — they’d put putting on fights f——g 10 times a year. When you hear those kinds of numbers fly around the pay-per-view world, they’re lying motherf—–rs. Don’t ever believe that sh!t.”
“You know how much money that is if they cut a deal and did 1.3 million pay-per-view buys?. Anybody who’s been on any of these f——g horrible boxing shows, and I like Logan [Paul] and some of these guys that are involved in this sh!t, if you come out and you say you did 1.3 million pay-per-view buys on your event, you’re lying through your f—–g teeth. Lying through your teeth.
“The amount of money you’d f—–g make, they’d be doing pay-per-views all the f—–g time. Let me tell you what, every pay-per-view distributor out there would want them, and Showtime wouldn’t have went out of business.”
White doesn’t think much of the influencer boxing cards, which often feature social media figures who have little to no experience in the squared circle.
“It’s much cheaper and a much better experience [just to watch the highlights]. The production sucks. The f—–g fights end up sucking. It’s sh!tty boxing is what it is,” White said.
“I’m not trying to [put them down], I don’t care what these guys do. These are just facts. To say that they’re doing any numbers, all these different people have tried to invest in this sh!t, and they tried to raise money and do all this other bullsh!t, people would be fighting over them and throwing f—–g truckloads of money at them if they did anywhere near a million buys. None of those f—–g guys are doing a million buys.”