The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) first New York City event has sold more than US$17 million in tickets, setting a box-office record for Madison Square Garden.
Gate receipts for yesterday’s UFC 205 lineup surpassed the US$11 million (US$15.9 million adjusted for inflation) in tickets sold for a 1999 boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis.
The event, which features Conor McGregor, mixed-martial arts’ (MMA) biggest male star, also passes the previous US$12 million gate record for UFC.
“It’s the biggest event we’re ever going to do,” said UFC chief operating officer Lawrence Epstein, who was at that Holyfield-Lewis fight. “For pay-per-view we believe it will also be our biggest event of all time, but there’s also this brand enhancement we’ll get out of this event that frankly we couldn’t get in any other city in the world.”
Ranging from US$105 to US$1,510, tickets at face value nearly sold out. They are also setting records on the secondary market, where the average seat is selling for US$1,227, a new high-water mark for MMA tickets, according to data collected by TicketIQ. Fans have come to expect high prices for boxing and MMA events, which do not happen that often.
The biggest MMA promoter in the world, UFC sold for US$4 billion earlier this year to a group led by Hollywood talent agency WME-IMG. That deal came a few months after New York legalized the sport, ending its holdout as the only state where professional MMA was not allowed.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier