ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP: Homegrown mixed martial arts league becomes major tourist draw

Found this article today about an independent study the UFC had done on the economic impact of the company on Las Vegas compared to other large Vegas events.

ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP: Homegrown mixed martial arts league becomes major tourist draw

More than 4 million households order pay-per-view for six UFC events, data show

I find this passage particularly interesting:

The UFC generated $86.2 million in nongaming revenue for six events between
Feb. 2, 2008, and Jan. 31. Only the NASCAR UAW-DaimerChrysler 400, which
generated $134.3 million on March 2, 2008, ranked higher.

The UFC events attracted 80,087 people, with 56,435 of them coming to Las
Vegas for the event, numbers provided by Zuffa show.

The league's attendance numbers place the UFC behind, in order, National
Finals Rodeo, NASCAR, ACDelco NHRA Drag Races, the Aviation Nation Air Show,
NHRA SummitRacing.com race, the Professional Bull Riders National Championship
and the 10-day Cowboy Christmas Gift Show.

Those numbers show that the UFC has high ticket prices, we know that, but also that there are a lot of events that can be seen as "less famous" that are bringing in more people than the UFC was able to over a year period.

There's no information as to how much the average person pays to get into the PBR National Championship, for example. The UFC makes more money and certainly has better TV ratings than PBR, but are they charging too much for tickets or running buildings too small?

Also, where are they getting the $86.2 million value? The record UFC gates are in the neighborhood of $4-5 million, so with 6 events you're only talking about at most $30 million. Are they extrapolating money spent on hotels and casinos by attendees taking credit for that?

There's also some another dubious spot that really sticks out to me:

The study shows that just more than 4 million households ordered pay-per-view
for the six events in the study. That's a lot of exposure for Las Vegas, based
on the study's findings that each pay-per-view purchase has an average of eight
viewers. Based on that number, the six events garnered a total of 33.7 million
viewers.

Even if 8 people generally watch a show together, it's really pushing it to say that 4 million different households ordered the show when that is, I can guarantee, absolutely not the case. (Side note: I'm a nerd, the average audience when I buy a PPV is one.) Really, the number of "households" isn't going to be much more than the highest buyrate for a show, so if we are generous and grant them that 8 viewers along with only a small overlap, the true number of "viewers" relevent to this exposure statistic has to be more like 12-15 million.

I do like to see some of the interesting numbers regarding the make-up of the show's crowds, that's something nice to see that there hasn't really been a lot of data on before. It is, however, a bit misleading when you list the first bullet in the section as:

The UFC 94 was the primary reason 90 percent of the attendees traveled to Las
Vegas. Only 5 percent of visitors to Las Vegas come for a special event.

You can't sample people at a special event and ask them if they are coming for a special event when the sample you're comparing against is "all people."

I'd like to see the percent of visitors that came to the show on a plane vs. driving, that would probably give a better view of the national hold of the sport, then compare that to some of the larger sporting events like the Super Bowl.