UFC 306, scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 14, will not only be the first sporting event held at the Las Vegas Sphere. It will probably the last, if a lesson is to be learned from Dana White’s admitted blunder.
Tickets sported the highest face value of any event ever staged in Las Vegas. They started at $2,500 for seats in the rafters and topped off at $23,437.50 for floor seats to the right of the Octagon.
As of Wednesday evening, only a few hundred of those face-value seats remained on Ticketmaster out of an original allotment of 18,500.
However, this does not mean that the event is nearly sold out. Thousands of tickets are still floating around reseller sites including Stubhub, where they start at $720, Vivid ($502) and Seat Geek ($531).
On Ticketmaster, verified resellers (scalpers, basically) are losing their shirts on full public display. Right behind two of the original $23K seats (FLR3, Row 3, Seats 3-4) are five seats going for $5,500 each (FLR3, Row 5, Seats 5-12).
If these seats are still available hours before the event, their prices must be lowered much further if they are to sell at all. That includes the hundreds still listed at face value on Ticketmaster — unless UFC gives them away to VIPs.
Why So Much?
Branded as Riyadh Season Noche UFC, for Mexican Independence Day two days later, the 10-bout spectacle — headlined by bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley defending his title against No. 1 contender Merab Dvalishvili — promises to be an excellent lineup.
But not $2,500-$23K-a-ticket excellent.
According to Billboard magazine, UFC CEO Dana White felt forced to charge that much to pay for its $8 million production costs — specifically, producing video content for the Sphere’s massive hi-def screen.
“Think about U2,” White told SNY Sports on Sept. 10, referring to the Irish rock band’s Sphere residency last year. “Whatever that cost them, they had 40 nights to amortize those costs. We just have one.”
Now, however, Billboard claims that White’s production costs have ballooned to $20 million — even after UFC partnered with outside producers, including Valerie Bush and Antigravity Academy, who will screen their own 90-second videos between bouts.
Of course, UFC will recoup some of its financial losses via pay-per-view sales, but, as White told MMA reporter John Morgan recently, “We’re not ever doing an event at the Sphere again,”
White Lies
Last October, White told ESPN’s Pat McAfee that “I have become obsessed with the Sphere,” adding that he had his entire production crew check out U2’s residency to conceive of ideas for visuals to envelop the Octagon.
“I’m telling you right now, this place is incredible,” White said.
If the new Billboard story is to be believed, however, White was not being entirely truthful.
According to the magazine, UFC 306 is only taking place at the Sphere because executives with MGM Resorts booked a deal with boxing promoter Al Hyman for Sept. 14, a date UFC was promised in a 2017 anchor tenant agreement at T-Mobile Arena.
That’s the arena that hosted last year’s “Noche UFC,” where tickets started at $120.
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