40K seat Saitama Super Arena 60% empty for UFC on FUEL TV 8

14,600K attendance with how many? giveaways. I'm sure quite a few. Not remotely the same draw as PRIDE, K-1, or maybe even Dream. USA MMA is not much more than dead really in Japan.


http://www.mmajunkie.com/news/2013/03/ufc-on-fuel-tv-8-attendance

I wouldnt doubt that more than half were giveaways. I guess UFC just ran out of American sailors to offload their ticket.

Epic fail for the UFC.

They didn't even use the 40k seat set-up -_-

GLORY/DREAM NYE just did over 19,000. These are good numbers when compared with attendance in the U.S. but less than half of what PRIDE did.

DREAM and K-1 NYE several years ago had 40,000.

Was it a great attendance number? Not particularly.

But to make it sound worse than it actually was is pretty ridiculous. They were using the layout that only allows about 22k.

wekka wrote:Was it a great attendance number? Not particularly.

But to make it sound worse than it actually was is pretty ridiculous. They were using the layout that only allows about 22k.

Yeah, 14K or 15K is in general a good number anywhere but Japan. Since PRIDE was so huge it is hard now to get anything to compare. The closest was the DREAM/K-1 NYE which had 40K or 45K a few years ago.

14k with about 4k being servicemen, trust me the place is huge it would take at least a couple thousand to get a good usa chant going in that place the way they did multiple times last night.

wekka wrote:Was it a great attendance number? Not particularly.

But to make it sound worse than it actually was is pretty ridiculous. They were using the layout that only allows about 22k.

I was stating that a building with capacity of 50K had 14K in attendance. Best case scenario they drew all of that many who paid to get in. It shouldn't matter how many seats the building was set up for.

I could have said "40K seat Saitama Super Arena 40% full for UFC on FUEL TV 8."

0r other examples stated the same..

"55K seat Rogers Center - Toronto, Canada 100% full for UFC 129: St-Pierre vs. Shields"
"40K seat Saitama Super Arena 0% empty for Pride FC - Shockwave 2006"


Or...

UFC Attendance

- UFC on FUEL TV 8 Japan: 14k (a fair number of comp'd tickets)
- Pride FC - Shockwave 2006 Japan: 49K (probably not a fair number of comp'd tickets)
- UFC 129: St-Pierre vs. Shields Canada: 55K (probably not a fair number of comp'd tickets)

I still think it's relevant with what layout was used. It can't be 60% empty when nearly 50% percent of the arena wasn't even available.

Saitama Super Arena is one of a kind with it's retractable seating. UFC knew they weren't going to get anywhere near the full capacity of the entire arena, so they retracted the stands to a normal set-up, the same set-up that DREAM used for all of their non-NYE cards at the arena.

It's not really fair to compare it to the Rogers Centre when they aren't capable of such technology, where their only option was to tarp off the upper decks.

Also, people aren't going to pay for just Wandy, Gomi, and Hunt, unfortunately. They're still widely popular, yes, but they just aren't able to bring in crowds (Wand and Gomi, mostly) like they used to. Most of the paid tickets were undoubtedly for them, because most Japanese don't care for fighters like Okami, Hirota, Mizugaki, and Tokudome. They've just never really been widely seen before (Hirota and Okami, on a smaller scale).

Don't even get me started on Koreans too, who have historically never really been popular, outside of Akiyama (only for the reasons of extreme dislike) and Akira Maeda.

In actuality, the UFC is doing okay with a market they know nothing about.

Comparisons:

UFC dont give a shit about Japanese fans

If they did then they'd actually put on the event at a normal time and not to suit crybaby Americans who'd have to watch at 3am like the rest of the world normally does for American events.

I don't know about Japanese culture but I highly doubt they're clammering for some Americanised cage fighting first thing sunday morning at 10am.

wekka wrote:I still think it's relevant with what layout was used. It can't be 60% empty when nearly 50% percent of the arena wasn't even available.

Saitama Super Arena is one of a kind with it's retractable seating. UFC knew they weren't going to get anywhere near the full capacity of the entire arena, so they retracted the stands to a normal set-up, the same set-up that DREAM used for all of their non-NYE cards at the arena.

It's not really fair to compare it to the Rogers Centre when they aren't capable of such technology, where their only option was to tarp off the upper decks.

Also, people aren't going to pay for just Wandy, Gomi, and Hunt, unfortunately. They're still widely popular, yes, but they just aren't able to bring in crowds (Wand and Gomi, mostly) like they used to. Most of the paid tickets were undoubtedly for them, because most Japanese don't care for fighters like Okami, Hirota, Mizugaki, and Tokudome. They've just never really been widely seen before (Hirota and Okami, on a smaller scale).

Don't even get me started on Koreans too, who have historically never really been popular, outside of Akiyama (only for the reasons of extreme dislike) and Akira Maeda.

In actuality, the UFC is doing okay with a market they know nothing about.

If the UFC was capable of getting more then they would have use the larger arena, but the couldnt get any more people so they used a smaller arena. And still couldnt fill it, even with their free be tickets

I heard from a colleague in Japan who was at the show that it was closer to 10,000 in the building, with lots of empty seats. Do you think all those American military men chanting "USA, USA" actually paid for their seats?

nhbnews wrote:I heard from a colleague in Japan who was at the show that it was closer to 10,000 in the building, with lots of empty seats. Do you think all those American military men chanting "USA, USA" actually paid for their seats?

That's about what I figured.

Unless some changes, I can't imagine Dana & Lorenzo are gonna keep trying to make inroads in the Japanese market forever. You gotta think their overhead taking their show that far from home is huge. The didn't have their bigger PPV revenue for this show and 10K+ paid attendance can't be cutting it.