UFC CEO Dana White knows a thing or two about the pay-per-view business.
With a huge part of the UFC’s business stemming from at least 12 events per year running on pay-per-view, White understands it’s lucrative – but also how difficult – to charge fans to watch your fights. That’s why he finds it really hard to believe influencer boxing cards like the recent Misfits event featuring KSI vs. Tommy Fury and Logan Paul vs. Dillon Danis are pulling huge numbers, especially after reported that the event did 1.3 million buys.
“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****** 10 times a year.
“When you hear those kinds of numbers fly around the pay-per-view world, they’re lying motherf******. Don’t ever believe that s***.”
White believes if influencer boxing cards were pulling anywhere near 1 million buys, promoters and broadcast partners would line up to get in business with them.
“You know how much money that is if they cut a deal and did 1.3 million pay-per-view buys?” White said. “Anybody who’s been on any of these f****** horrible boxing shows, and I like Logan [Paul] and some of these guys that are involved in this s***, 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****** teeth. Lying through your teeth.
“The amount of money you’d f****** make, they’d be doing pay-per-views all the f******* 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 admits there’s a lot of hype around influencer boxing cards, which often times even overshadows better events featuring talented fighters who don’t get as much attention.
That said, he doesn’t have any desire to see those kinds of fights where a pair of YouTubers with no actual fighting ability square off in a low-level boxing match.
“It’s much cheaper and a much better experience [just to watch the highlights],” White said. “The production sucks. The f****** fights end up sucking. It’s s***** boxing is what it is.
“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 s***, and they tried to raise money and do all this other bulls***, people would be fighting over them and throwing f****** truckloads of money at them if they did anywhere near a million buys. None of those f****** guys are doing a million buys.”
