No championship titles are on the line at UFC 110, but a lineup of competitive and compelling bouts looks poised to deliver marginally better pay per view performance than the prior two UFC events. While UFC 108 and UFC 109 had main events that many fans questioned the relevance of, UFC 110′s main and co-main event are meaningful if not blockbuster matchups that have drawn an increase in fan interest. The build-up of online interest for UFC 110 is about 15% higher than was the case for UFC 108, which delivered an estimated 300,000 buys a month ago (actual PPV buyrate information for UFC 109 has not been released yet, but Tapology’s pre-fight forecast was 315,000). This increased online interest suggests a PPV buy rate for UFC 110 in the neighborhood of 355,000. Breakdown below.
Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.
Heavyweights Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Cain Velasquez face off in a critical divisional bout that could determine the next challenger for Brock Lesnar’s belt, and online interest for Nogueira in particular has been strong in the days leading up to the event. Even stronger, however, has been the flood of interest in former Pride champion Wanderlei Silva’s return to the cage and 185 pound weight class debut. Silva and his war of words with British opponent Michael Bisping have added the necessary reinforcement to a card that wasn’t quite strong enough with just its main event.
| Fighter | Pre-Fight Buzz Score |
|---|---|
| Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira | 14.8 |
| Cain Velasquez | 10.7 |
| Wanderlei Silva | 15.4 |
| Michael Bisping | 9.2 |
| Total | 50.1 |
The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 50.1, 15% higher than the 43.4 score seen for the UFC 108 event featuring Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva. That card came in with an estimated 275,000-300,000 pay per view buys according to early estimates, which is directly in line with Tapology’s pre-fight forecast of 275,000. Early February’s UFC 109 event with Randy Couture and Mark Coleman clocked in with a buzz score of 46.6, leading Tapology to predict 315,000 PPV buys, however results for the event have not yet been released and therefore were not incorporated into the model for predicting UFC 110′s buyrate.
As a result, when we plug a score of 50.1 into the model, we get an estimate of 355,000 pay per view buys, a healthy amount above UFC 108′s level and hopefully bridging the gap until the expected blockbuster UFC 111 card arrives in March.
| Event | Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score |
Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys |
|---|---|---|
| UFC 100 | 156.9 | 1,600,000 |
| UFC 101 | 83.1 | 900,000 |
| UFC 102 | 46.6 | 435,000 |
| UFC 103 | 56.2 | 375,000 |
| UFC 104 | 81.1 | 500,000 |
| UFC 106 | 63.9 | 375,000 |
| UFC 107 | 67.5 | 620,000 |
| UFC 108 | 43.4 | 300,000 |
| UFC 109 | 46.6 | 315,000 (pre-fight forecast) |
| UFC 110 | 50.1 | 355,000 (pre-fight forecast) |
Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com, which in turn frequently source the reporting of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.
