First of all, UFC 106 is on PPV. This is essential to the strategy. Even if it is wildly successful, the very most it will do is in the 1.2 million range. Personally, I’d predict a number close to 800,000 buys given Carwin’s anonymity, but you never know until the week of the show. The UFC could headline a Spike show with two fans in the crowd and do 800,000 viewers.
It doesn’t matter if the stars are bigger on 106, only a certain amount of people will pay to see it. We saw back when the UFC counter programmed EliteXC on CBS with the first free airing of Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva. At the peak hours of both shows, the combined audience for Kimbo’s fight with James Thompson and the Chuck Liddell special on Spike TV was somewhere close to the 9 million viewer mark. There are a lot of people willing to watch MMA that will not pay for it, and advertising that you’re giving away something better for free is a great marketing tactic.
The point that people congregate for PPV shows is irrelevant. They congregate for Spike TV shows on weekends too, there’s a reason that when UFC sells their product to investors they give the same statistics on viewers per household for Spike TV programs and PPV shows.
Further, the entire point of counter promoting is to do it against Brock Lesnar. Putting it against Matt Hughes, Frank Mir, or Dan Henderson is a complete non-story. You lose the press avalanche. You also lose the clever advertising possibilities of arguing that you can pay $50 to see a fake pro wrestler or see the best in the history of the planet for free. You lose the ability to go to sports writers and give them stories they can bring to their editor and get on the front page.
Counter promoting almost always benefits the numbers for both parties. It riles up the fan base, drives media attention, and captures the public’s imagination. If Affliction’s first show ran unopposed, it would have received next to no press. Instead, Dana couldn’t control himself, and as a result got a story about his war with Affliction pushed to the front page of the LA Times and various other newspapers the day of the show. In the days after the show, some people at Affliction exclaimed to me, “imagine what we would have done if the UFC didn’t run against us!” Even they couldn’t figure out that the UFC actually helped them, and it’s no surprise those geniuses aren’t around promoting anymore.
Here’s something to consider: The UFC countered Carano v. Cyborg with a UFC 100 replay. The replay was free, and had an average of 2 million viewers. It peaked well above that for Mir vs. Lesnar. There is no way UFC 106 will have as many viewers at any time as Frank Mir vs. Brock Lesnar did on Spike. Strikeforce, going against the free replay, broke the all-time MMA record on Showtime. If you compare the peak for Carano v. Cyborg against the peak of Shamrock v. Diaz, Strikeforce posted an improvement of 135%. All this going against a free show that undisputably had more viewers than UFC 106 will.
The entire point here isn’t “winning” the battle, which Strikeforce can’t do. It’s to do well for themselves based on their own standards of success. People are so obsessed with competition that they fell for the UFC’s ridiculous claims that they “won” the night against Gina Carano and Cyborg because they got more viewers, even though the rating for Showtime was better.
Counter programming a Spike TV show makes no sense. You counter a show people have to pay for, and you do it with the best fighter in the world. All the talk about how it’s “crazy” to go up against Brock Lesnar ignores the basic math. Even the best PPV numbers won’t come close to the viewers Anderson Silva and James Irvin did against Affliction, let alone the numbers The Ultimate Fighter premiere will probably do next week. If there’s any advantage Strikeforce has in this “war,” this is it.
Nobody really knows what Fedor’s first show on Showtime will do. It could break the Carano record, or it could end up right where Shamrock and Diaz was. Personally, my guess is 450,000 viewers, but it’s very hard to guess until the week of the fight. Whatever it is, I think going up against the UFC would ensure they are successful that night judging things by Showtime’s standards. It will probably help the UFC too, but again, this isn’t a zero-sum game. Strikeforce’s goal is to be successful, not to hurt the UFC.