The UFC’s one-and-done spectacle at The Sphere will not be for nothing, as aside from a $22 million dollar gate, the company is expected to use some of the tech involved in future productions.
While they won’t be back to The Sphere in Las Vegas due to being under contract to MGM, UFC President and CEO Dana White told media outlets including Cageside Press during the UFC 306 post-fight press conference that there will be aspects of the show brought into future UFC events.
“Tons of things. There’s lots of cameras that we used tonight, drones that we used tonight. Some of this stuff will spill over into our production moving forward,” noted White.
In a rather interesting twist, White admitted that he didn’t enjoy Saturday’s show, though it was not an indictment on the quality of the event — that quite frankly looked spectacular on TV.
“Not really no. I don’t ever enjoy it. It’s actually a sick disgusting thing I have,” admitted White. “We build these things up, and I just want them to be over. I just want to get through it. Not a fun way to do it, but it’s how I sort of deal with it.”
Ahead of the event, White had gone into P.T. Barnum mode, promising the greatest live sporting event, or at least combat sports event, to ever be produced. Whether the general public agrees will be determined over the coming days, and White for one is keen for their feedback.
Asked if UFC 306 had lived up to that “greatest live sporting event” billing, White replied saying “I’m not the guy to answer that, you guys are. You guys are here. Listen, the thing went off perfectly, exactly the way we wanted it to go. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anything like this, if you have, I don’t know where the f*ck you live or where you came from. It’s up to you and the fans to determine what happened here tonight. I’m actually looking forward to hearing about it. That’s up to everybody else.”
Still, White believes that Noche UFC (as UFC 306 was branded) may very well change the sporting industry. “It should. Listen I talked a lot of sh*t for a lot of years about boxing and Showtime. Even HBO, who I consider the gold standard of it. In 30 years, the only thing that changed in boxing is HD.
“I always like to push the envelope and make it better. When new technology comes out, we try to raise the bar, because I think it should be. It’s easy to just say f*ck it, go put on fights every Saturday, we sell out, we do great. All these things happen. But I like to, not only for my team, for my production crew — what these guys pulled off, what they did, we should be, already without tonight, at the office we should be stepping over Emmys at the office— but we’ve got two.”
Watch the full UFC 306 post-fight press conference with Dana White above.
