UFC fans confined to white males, boxing's Arum says

By Sergio Non, USA TODAY

MCLEAN, Va. -- Boxing promoter Bob Arum still sees mixed martial arts as the province of young caucasian guys.
"It's the same audience over and over," Arum said Tuesday. "It's white males, and they have never been able to expand their demographic."
Arum and boxer Manny Pacquiao on Tuesday visited the Washington, D.C. area on the final leg of a four-city trip to promote Pacquiao's upcoming fight with Shane Mosley. The trip included a stop at USA TODAY's headquarters in northern Virginia for a roundtable and interviews with journalists.

Bob Arum is CEO of Top Rank Boxing, whose stable of boxers includes Manny Pacquiao.


CAPTION

By Sean Dougherty, USA TODAY


The roundtable included Arum and Pacquiao, along with USA TODAY's Sergio Non and Scott Zucker. Most of the discussion focused on boxing, but it briefly turned to mixed martial arts:

Non: UFC just sold 50,000 tickets in Toronto, while boxing's been having some trouble selling tickets lately -- only 6,000 sold in Detroit for the Devon Alexander fight. What can boxing take marketing-wise from an up-and-coming combat sport like MMA?
Arum: Understand, nothing sells like a major boxing match. I can sell for a Manny Pacquiao fight, 100,000 seats easily, if I price them right.
We put this fight in Las Vegas, but the gate in Las Vegas will be one-and-a-half times more than it was in Texas, when he fought Clottey and we had 50,000 people. So the number of people that come to the match is not necessarily indicative of anything.
Comparing the event in Detroit, where (Timothy) Bradley fought Alexander, is really indicative of the fact that the event didn't belong in Detroit. Neither fighter came from Detroit. Neither fighter was that well known. It was put in a building that has long functioned as a normal sporting arena.
In boxing, typically, fights not on the magnitude of big title fights with Pacquiao or Mayweather, generally draw 4,000 to 5,000 people. This goes back to the '70s and '80s.
When Sugar Ray Leonard won his world title from Wilfred Benitez, that was fight was fought in The Pavilion at Caesar's Palace, which seated 4,200 people. And on the undercard was Marvin Hagler and Vito Antuofermo. When Norton and Holmes fought for the WBC title, it also was in that arena in Caesar's. When Leon Spinks beat Muhammad Ali, that fight took place at the Hilton, for 4,500 people.
So particularly when fights are shown free on television, premium television, network television, there isn't that much of an incentive to go to the event. People watch it on television.
I don't want to demean UFC, because they've done a marvelous job of marketing. But it's the same audience over and over. It's white males, and they have never been able to expand their demographic.
Non: So am I an outlier?
Arum: The Hispanics don't care anything for it. Most African-Americans don't watch it. Hey, this country is becoming more and more Hispanic, and it's growing African-American (in the) audience.
So the future success of UFC is limited. The success of boxing is not, because boxing reaches those groups. The only demographic that boxing has lost is the white, young males, period.
Zucker: We opened this up by you saying you want to get back on network TV…
Arum: Absolutely.
Zucker: … and what is the demographic that the networks are all after? It's the 18-to-25, white, male market, right?
Arum: Male market, but it now includes Hispanics and it includes African-Americans. We believe if we're back on network television, and the product doesn't cost people money to watch, either by a subscription or by buying a particular fight, that that audience will watch and come back.
Remember, that male demographic, of a certain age, because of its very nature, involves different people. Those people in that demographic get older, and younger come in to fill it up. So it is required that we get back on network television so we can again build that demographic into the audience.
This isn't the first time that Arum has described MMA's demographic as limited in scope. He first made the assertion in a September 2009 interview with MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani.
Yet modern mixed martial arts has long been popular among certain non-Caucasian groups.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship was co-founded by Brazilians. The roots of modern MMA in Japan predate the first UFC event.
Japan has produced the largest live crowds and biggest TV audiences in MMA history. Several Japanese MMA shows over the years generated viewership estimates in the tens of millions.
Although MMA as a whole hasn't made deep inroads in the U.S. Latino community, some fighters with Mexican backgrounds do very well among that ethnic group.
Much of the crowd was Latino at heavyweight Cain Velasquez's Oct. 23 title win over Brock Lesnar in Anaheim, Calif. Light-heavyweight ex-champion Tito Ortiz has tapped into the Latino market for years.
Even Pacquiao's home country has shown interest. UFC's publicity events in the Philippines always draws crowds in the thousands, even for non-Filipino fighters.
The buzz has been strong enough to convince the company to make the Philippines the location for the first overseas version of UFC's reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. A Filipino TUF might be produced by the end of this year, UFC President Dana White said Tuesday.