Dana White is formally a boxing promoter now, however the sport he grew up loving really performed an influential half in how he determined to construct the UFC.
Maybe the most important issue was White and the UFC matchmakers persistently delivering on occasions that impressed each a stay viewers and the individuals watching at residence on tv. Whereas there’s by no means a assure that each occasion goes to turn out to be an instantaneous basic, the UFC CEO says selling a product that followers got here to belief made the most important distinction, particularly when it got here to ticket gross sales.
“We bought the UFC to a spot the place individuals are shopping for tickets earlier than we even announce the primary occasion,” White stated on the Pleasure Discussion board on Thursday. “So we began to construct this relationship with the fanbase that they knew we had been going to ship it doesn’t matter what occurred. Boxing hasn’t completed that in a very long time.”
White typically lambastes boxing for not likely constructing something however solely specializing in one main combat at a time, which doesn’t encourage long run loyalty with followers.
It’s one thing he hopes to vary with the launch of Zuffa Boxing in 2026 with the fledgling promotion already securing a multi-year deal to broadcast occasions on Paramount.
“I noticed a number of issues that I believed had been incorrect and damaged with boxing on the time and I felt that if we saved constructing on delivering a great product [with UFC] each time — I’ve been saying for a very long time, I really feel like each time you watch a boxing occasion it’s like a going out of enterprise sale,” White stated. “They’re making an attempt to seize up as a lot cash as they will.
“They don’t care if the stay occasion is nice or even when the tv occasion is nice. So long as they will usher in a ton of cash, that’s all they did.”
Manufacturing worth has all the time weighed heavy on White as a result of he’s continually tweaking and making modifications, particularly when one thing goes haywire throughout an occasion.
In fact, White typically pushes the enchantment of attending stay UFC occasions and he believes that’s been an enormous a part of the corporate’s development lately.
“Should you purchase tickets and also you present up on the occasion, irrespective of the place on this planet it’s, you recognize what you’re going to get,” White stated. “And you recognize what you’re going to get in the event you keep residence on Saturday and watch it on TV.”
There was a time when the UFC was practically out of enterprise after White’s boyhood pals Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta purchased the promotion for $2 million after which went within the gap for about $40 million with no indicators that bleeding money would finish.
White says the sport changer was all the time tv, which is what led to a time-buy — basically paying a community to air your programming — with the primary season of The Final Fighter on Spike TV. It was by no means a assure that collection would blow up however White guarantees he knew it might all the time work as soon as a much bigger viewers noticed the UFC product.
“As the game began to develop, you can really feel it,” White stated. “Even after we had been the other way up financially, we knew that it was proper there. We had been proper on that tipping level and what we would have liked was tv.
“We wanted to get it on TV and expose tens of millions of individuals to what we already knew. This product that we knew individuals would really like in all places, all around the world.”
