UFC 94 Makes a Killing, Also Makes Leaps for the Sport

Posted on February 4th, 2009

Less than 24 hours before the Super Bowl kicked off in Tampa, Pierre and Penn was plastered all over the front of ESPN’s Web site, arguably America’s top home page for sports fans.

After his dominating victory, St. Pierre was 30 minutes late to the postfight press conference so he could do an interview on “SportsCenter.”

While official numbers have yet to be released, White said he expected UFC 94 to surpass both UFC 91 (Randy Couture-Brock Lesnar) and UFC 92 (The Ultimate 2008) as the top-selling pay-per-view event in the organization’s history, with more than 1.3 million buys (which would top the 1.25 million pay-per-views that the Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao “Dream Match” in December generated).

The company’s record of 1.05 million sales came when Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz squared off for the second time at UFC 66 in 2006.

Should Saturday’s attendance number of 14,885 fans at the MGM Grand hold up, the event would become the highest-attended UFC fight in Las Vegas. Not too mention the $4.3 million live gate, would be good for sixth all-time.

“The casino was scrambling to add more seats,” White said. “Other casinos were looking for tickets. This was the craziest event we’ve ever done, by far.”

Adding further proof, the nearly 300,000 people who poured into Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend had the opportunity to make prop bets for the first time on UFC fighters. One included the number of minutes completed by Penn and St. Pierre against the number of completions by Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. (Throw in MMA female star Gina Carano appearing side-by-side with Bruce Lee in a Pepsi commercial during the Super Bowl and the weekend truly reached out to a new audience like never before).