I sometimes wonder if Dana White makes people uncomfortable at wine and cheese parties, raving about how f*cking good the f*cking White Zinfandel is, or if he morphs into a proper business man in the presence of a more reserved target audience. White recently appeared at a NeuLion Sports Media and Technology Conference to talk, in part, about the UFC’s declining PPV numbers. And despite the sensitive subject matter, as far as I can tell, no verbal f*cks were given. Bravo, good sir.
Dana explained why the drop in viewership isn’t concerning, saying, ““This year, yeah, pay-per-view numbers are down, but this business isn’t what everybody thinks it is. Trust me, we love pay- per-view. When these big events happen, the pay-per-view numbers will come back. But we’re much more than a pay-per-view company.”
He stressed the growth in international markets as one reason to have confidence in the company’s ongoing vitality. “Every time we go into these other countries, it just keeps building more and more momentum. We hear all of this negative stuff here in the United States because they don’t get the whole global strategy . . . . We’re killing it in all of these other countries.”
As positive as his outlook is for his own organization, his take on the apparently meaningless rivalry offered by Bellator was pretty grim. “There’s just no value there . . . . If they called me today and they wanted me to do a deal with those guys, there’s literally no contracts over there that I would be interested in.”
But that may have just been a shot at Tito.
