Dana White’s boxing venture began with a huge success. The Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford event earlier may not top the record books, but it was an extremely successful event, generating a reported $47.2 million live gate, the highest for the venue. However, on the MMA front, things are not going according to plan for the UFC boss. After the Carlos Ulberg vs. Dominick Reyes fight failed to repeat the previous blockbuster successes in Australia, UFC exec Dave Shaw finally addressed whether anything went wrong in their ticket strategy.

UFC Perth recorded a live gate of $1.8 million with 12,543 people attending the event. However, unlike the usual high ticket prices, Dana White and Co. decided to slash ticket prices for this Fight Night event at the RAC Arena. And when asked about the reason behind the decision to reduce ticket costs, Executive Vice President Dave Shaw said, “We wouldn’t say slashed [the ticket prices],” during the post-fight presser.

The EVP claims that the UFC didn’t necessarily reduce the ticket prices, but made use of ‘dynamic pricing’ [a method of adjusting prices according to demand]. According to Shaw, UFC wanted to make sure that the tickets were sold out and get as many people as they could into the venue. “What we do is we employ dynamic pricing in a variety of different scenarios. And in this case, it made sense for us to do so for mostly the upper-level tickets to make sure that people got into the building,” Shaw added.

Whether Shaw admits it or not, no one can deny the fact that Ulberg vs Reyes was not a successful affair, unlike its previous editions in Australia. For example, UFC 284 was a huge success with a sold-out crowd watching Islam Makhachev take out Alexander Volkanovski. A year later, UFC 305 emerged as the biggest success in Australia, with the event attracting 14,000 spectators at the RAC Arena. Naturally, this year’s lower ticket sales raised questions, and there may be reasons why demand wasn’t as strong as before.

According to the reporter who asked Shaw the question, he also pointed out that events such as the AFL Grand Final could also have affected the UFC’s ticketing strategy. The poor timing for the locals to come and watch the event may have also contributed to the poor sales.

Prior to the Fight Night event, Dave Shaw was also asked about the poor ticket sales issue with UFC Perth, which some critics could argue is a low point for the promotion. However, Dana White’s stand-in was quick to dismiss those claims.

Dave Shaw brushed off claims about poor ticket sales

The media did not mince their words when they claimed to have indicated that a lot of tickets were still available a couple of days before the fight. But Dave Shaw did not seem to give any credibility to those claims, and when asked if the issue is real, he said, “Not at all.” Dana White’s stand-in claimed that when it comes to Australia, they’ve always played the “long game” and doubled down on the UFC’s plan to make MMA big in the land down under.

“Listen, from the very beginning, we’ve taken the long run. We’re playing a long game with Australia… We overturned the ban of the octagon here in 2017. We had a Fight of the Year in 2023 with your boy [Alexander Volkanovski] and Islam [Makhachev]. We will continue to take the long run in Australia,” Dave Shaw stated. “Our viewpoint on Australia as one of the top markets that we go to every year is that this is going to be a massive sport in this country.”

Obviously, the promotion will never admit to facing such issues with their events. However, it begs the question whether the slash in ticket prices is a one-time occurrence or if we’ll see Dana White and Co. adopt a similar strategy in future events. Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.