Contemplating the massive danger Dana White is taking by doing the primary ever sporting occasion on the Sphere on September 14th, might we be heading to a future the place he’s prepared to take different probabilities at venues like AT&T Stadium or Allegiant Stadium?
White is well-known at this level for being fairly anti-stadium. Since its inception the UFC has held simply 4 reveals at full sized stadiums: in Toronto, Melbourne, Sweden, and Brazil. They’ve by no means carried out a stadium present in the USA or United Kingdom, which looks like fairly large missed alternatives.
So with White ticking the Sphere off his bucket listing of venues to make use of, might it lastly be time for a UFC occasion at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium subsequent? In a brand new interview with Grind Metropolis Media, White shot down the thought and defined that his dislike for stadium reveals went past climate issues.
“It’s not that I get frightened, I don’t wanna take the expertise away from folks,” he mentioned. “We’ve carried out stadiums earlier than. It’s simply it’s not my favourite factor. I like arenas. Yeah, I actually like arenas.”
“I feel that followers get a a lot — what I care about each Saturday, whether or not you stayed residence and watched it on TV otherwise you got here to the venue and watched it, is that everyone walks away on a Saturday night time going, ‘God, I’m glad I got here to the fights,’ or ‘This was price coming to.’ Or they don’t stroll out going, ‘Nicely, that sucked. That wasn’t a superb expertise.’ That’s what I deal with actually each week.”
Jon Jones and Conor McGregor have each mused on the prospect of combating at Allegiant Stadium, the 71,000 seat residence of the Las Vegas Raiders. However White says the venue isn’t on his radar.
OKTAGON MMA (@OktagonOfficial) staged one of many greatest reveals in European MMA historical past this previous Saturday.
28,000 followers packed Eden Stadium, Prague, for a tremendous stay spectacle stacked with large names.
And it gained’t even be our largest this 12 months. Roll on Eintracht Frankfurt! pic.twitter.com/Dkzz3Kzrpk
— Scott Lagdon (@scott_lagdon) June 10, 2024
“No, that’s not what I search for,” he mentioned. “I search for unimaginable experiences, distinctive experiences, and issues which have by no means been carried out earlier than. That’s what I’m into. I’m not like, ‘Oh, I’ve to do Allegiant Stadium.’ I don’t should do Allegiant Stadium. I wanna give followers a terrific expertise each time.”
It’s unusual, we’ve by no means heard any complaints from anybody who went to those 40,000 and 50,000 particular person UFC stadium reveals. They occur semi-regularly in Europe for each boxing and MMA and nobody says stadiums don’t work for fight sports activities. Positive, you’ll have to look at a whole lot of the present on the massive screens. However it’s important to try this on the area as properly, so what’s the massive deal?
If it’s about high quality of expertise, we’d argue that making U.Ok. followers in Manchester keep up till 5 within the morning native time is a a lot worse expertise, however there’s no signal that follow is stopping. Give them the choice of Anfield Stadium over Pacific Normal Time scheduling, and we suspect they’d decide Anfield.
