Despite being an “American promotion,” the UFC has always had a tremendous fanbase in Canada. At the UFC 124 press conference earlier this afternoon Dana White had some very exciting things to say about the promotion’s expectations for Saturday’s event. MMA Junkie with the details:
The UFC boss said Montreal’s Bell Centre will draw more than 23,000 fans and produce a gate of more than $5 million for the heavily anticipated show.
Both marks also will break the UFC’s current records. They’re currently held by UFC 97 in Montreal (21,451 attendees) and UFC 66 in Las Vegas ($5,397,300 live gate).
Live gate and attendance figures are obviously the big indicators of interest in a show in a local market but so is ticket price. Our good friends at Seat Geek provide the following graph to show that UFC 124 is outperforming other recent “major” UFC cards:
GSP’s popularity in Canada has these tickets selling at a higher clip than Rampage Jackson, Brock Lesnar and B.J. Penn headlined events. So even though White is completely full of it when he repeats his line about GSP being the most famous Canadian athlete ever, St. Pierre is doing just fine as the most famous Canadian mixed martial artist ever.