UFC 306, the first sports event held at the Las Vegas Sphere, generated the highest gross revenue that either the venue or the UFC has ever seen. According to UFC, the 10-fight spectacle earned $22 million in gate receipts, handily trouncing the $17.7 million gross earned by UFC 205 in 2016.
Still, UFC spent $20 million to produce the show at the $2.3 billion venue, so its real profit will need to come from pay-per-view sales.
Though UFC CEO Dana White vowed never to return to the Sphere, he softened his stance on Saturday. He still told the assembled media “no,” but said it was because “I’m under contract with MGM.”
In 2017, the UFC signed a seven-year agreement with T-Mobile Arena, which is co-owned by MGM Resorts, to host at least four annual events at the venue, which is where White had hoped to stage UFC 306. The Vegas orb only became an option after MGM Resorts signed a deal, a year out, with boxing promoter Al Hyman to bring Canelo Álvarez v. Edgar Berlanga to T-Mobile last weekend.
UFC 306, branded as Riyadh Season Noche UFC for falling on Mexican Independence Day Weekend, featured a bantamweight title matchup in which challenger Merab Dvalishvili destroyed defending champion Sean O’Malley, and a women’s flyweight bout in which former champion Valentina Shevchenko reclaimed her title from Alex Grasso, who snatched it from her last March.
The event sold out of the 16,024 tickets made available. However, hundreds of tickets remained available within hours of showtime on the resale market, with most going for steep discounts from their face values of $2,500 to $23,437.50.
Tickets were initially priced so White could cover what he thought would be $8 million in costs to produce a video that could only be played on the Sphere’s giant hi-def screens. Those costs eventually exploded to $20 million.
Speaking on Saturday, White seemed more focused on UFC 306’s successes than its pitfalls.
“This thing, I told you guys leading up to this, the way that this whole thing played out, tonight was meant to happen,” he enthused at the post-event press conference. “It happened. We did it. We killed it.”
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