In this week's blog post I will be talking about the over-saturation of UFC events and the resulting cognitive dissonance UFC consumers feel as a result. The Ultimate Fighting Championships has become the leader in distributing mixed-martial arts events around the world. The UFC primarily make their profits from pay-per-view revenues; however in 2011 the UFC was able to sign a deal with FOX Sports Media to a 10 year, 100-million dollars per year contract. The deal enabled the UFC to distribute fight events to millions of households of varying demographics. As a result, however, the UFC needed to create more events per year, spreading the stars and talent into multiple events instead of stacking events with multiple stars. In the year 2010, the UFC hosted 24 events, and by 2014 the UFC was hosting 46 events.
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| UFC Reached a peak of 46 events per year in 2014 |
Is more necessarily better? In my opinion the more events the UFC host, the less exciting each event becomes since they are not able to utilize the more popular fighters in the same card. Hard-core MMA fans will always watch UFC events regardless of how little star-power it has. However in order to sell pay-per-views the UFC need casual fans to want to buy the events, and it becomes harder to do so when your talent is spread thin. The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched event in television every year because it is an annual event. If the Super Bowl happened 10 times a year, it would not be the success it is today since people would not think it is must-watch TV; the same can be said about UFC events.
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