The fact the UFC opted to move UFC 178 and the light-heavyweight championship rematch between Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson to Las Vegas sucks for Toronto and fight fans in the surrounding area that planned on making the trip to “The Big Smoke” to take in the festivities.
There is no way to spin that as a positive — losing an event is rough and losing one that was presumed to feature the sequel to 2013’s Fight of the Year makes it an even more difficult pill to swallow. And having the anticipated early-December fight card in Montreal in limbo — there has been no official word on where that event, UFC 181, will take place as of yet — is a stinging body shot to the first Canadian city to host a UFC pay-per-view and one that has a rich combat sports history.
With that out of the way, warning: unpopular opinion ahead.
Moving UFC 178 to Las Vegas makes sense for a lot of reasons. In fact, if the UFC decided to host the vast majority of their annual PPV events in the fight capital of the world it wouldn’t be too surprising.
Las Vegas is a year-round destination city. Toronto and Montreal are great cities, but they don’t hold the same getaway allure as Las Vegas. Stick a UFC PPV event in the mix and you can always attract enough bodies to do solid attendance figures and gate receipts at the MGM Grand Garden Arena or Mandalay Bay Events Center. While major holiday events like the annual Fourth of July or year-end show tend to register the biggest returns, even injury-stricken events like UFC 170 and UFC 173 delivered gate receipts of $1.55 million and $1.7 million, respectively, despite the smaller venues.
By comparison, UFC 165, the last event held in Toronto that produced the epic first encounter between Jones and Gustafsson, drew 15,504 people but only produced a total gate of $1.9 million. After an historic start with UFC 129 and high returns for UFC 140, UFC 152 and UFC 165 marked consecutive events in Toronto to register a gate of lower than $2 million.
UFC 129 was a record-setting event, but packing 55,000 people into the Rogers Centre three years ago shouldn’t automatically get Toronto an annual event. In this time of fans and media constantly discussing oversaturation, it’s interesting that no one seems to acknowledge that a market like Toronto is suffering from being over-serviced — four events in just over 28 months.
If the availability of UFC events on television diminishes interest in purchasing pay-per-views, it only makes sense that having an event blow through the city every year makes it less of a must-see event when it does come to town.
Remember, UFC 165 was met with mixed reviews prior to Jones and Gustafsson turning in one of the greatest championship fights in UFC history. When the idea of having the rematch in Toronto first surfaced, there were numerous “Jones? Again?” groans from fight fans in the GTA.
It wasn’t as bad as the blasé reaction in Vancouver when the UFC announced its return to the city after a three-year hiatus, but if the prospects of hosting the sequel to one of the best fights in UFC history isn’t enough to get you pumped up, how much more would they need to add to the event in order to get fans riled up?
At that point, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis and Las Vegas won out.
From a more macro perspective, this whole, “Is the UFC turning its back on Canada?” question is perplexing.
Provided nothing happens with the Halifax event scheduled for Oct. 4, the UFC will still hold three events in this country in 2014 — the TUF Nations Finale in Quebec City and UFC 174 in Vancouver being the other two.
Yes, this was supposed to be a year with an increased number of events in this country, but UFC director of Canadian operations Tom Wright’s assessment that these things are fluid is perfectly valid. Had the UFC not rolled out all five Canadian dates at the start of the year and instead continued to announce events on an “as they come up” basis like they do for everywhere else, there would be less frustration at this point.
If anyone has a complaint to make it’s Montreal. The city has been a consistent market for the UFC dating back to UFC 83, having held the attendance record prior to UFC 129 and having never returned a gate lower than $3.1 million. At least if they don’t host the early-December event, indications are that the UFC will return in March 2015.
As for arguments about Canadian fighters not getting the opportunity to compete on home soil, how is that any different than fighters from other countries not fighting in their own backyard? Again, there will be three events in Canada this year, which means an ample number of Canadian athletes will compete at home. Whatever Canadian talent that was potentially earmarked for those Toronto and Montreal events will be shuffled back into the mix, either in Halifax or one of the myriad shows that will take place between now and the end of the year.
Also, it’s crazy that some people are pointing a finger at the UFC as hampering the grassroots development of the sport in this country. Given the vast amounts of money the UFC has already infused into the various communities it has visited (both with fight cards and other events), their efforts in helping get the sport legalized in this country and the overall impact it has had on the MMA industry as a whole has been vast.
If you’re looking for parties to blame in terms of hampering the grassroots development of the sport, look no further than the government agencies and offices that continually make it impossible to hold events in different cities and provinces. The UFC isn’t solely to blame for the lack of events in Ontario this year — fingers can also be pointed at the Ontario Athletic Commission, just as Vancouver City Council and the lack of a provincial athletic commission kept the UFC out of Vancouver for several years.
At the end of the day, having two events pulled from Canadian cities sucks. But to turn this into a referendum on the UFC’s commitment to Canada and what the company “owes” cities like Toronto, Montreal and Canadian fans is a stretch.
We stopped being “The Mecca of MMA” a couple years ago when Brazil came back into the picture and declining attendance and gate figures in Toronto, coupled with poor support of UFC 174 in Vancouver, paint a picture of a country that isn’t as fiercely interested in the organization and its offerings as it once was.
So why wouldn’t the UFC opt instead to go to new markets that are eager to host events or familiar locales where there is less danger of a show doing poorly while still producing the same financial returns as hosting another event in Toronto?