While the UFC's recent Australian event will forever be remembered for a scoring debacle that caused an immediate flyweight rematch between Demetrious Johnson and Ian McCall, the event was also notable for another reason: one untelevised fight.
UFC on FX 2's first fight, a heavyweight affair between Shawn Jordan and Oli Thompson, was just the second UFC fight (joining Chris Camozzi vs. Dustin Jacoby at UFC on FOX 2) in more than one year that was not broadcast live in some form.
Despite the snub, UFC president Dana White said the UFC plans on continuing to stream preliminary matchups on Facebook, though there will be rare times when it simple doesn't make sense.
"The reason we did that is because it was only one fight, and it costs a lot of money to get that thing on Facebook," White told MMAjunkie.com (
UFC blog for UFC news, UFC rumors, fighter interviews and event previews/recaps | MMAjunkie.com). "It's not cheap. You'd see everybody throwing fights on Facebook if it was cheap. it's expensive, so that's why we didn't do it."
UFC on FX 2 took place in Australia at Sydney's Allphones Arena. The main card aired on FX, and six prelim matches were broadcast on FUEL TV.
Beginning with January 2011's UFC Fight Night 23 event, the UFC has generally streamed any untelevised events on Facebook, and many hardcore fans have become accustomed to watching fights on the social-networking site. The number of fans tuning into the contests has never been publicly disclosed by UFC officials, but White said he's been pleased by the results thus far.
"I think the most we've ever had watching on Facebook was something like 140,000 people," White said. "That's a good number. If you look at some of the numbers that some of these other organizations have pulled on HDNet, MTV2, whatever it might be, to pull 140,000 is a good number."
Of course, the Facebook streams aren't the only content the UFC airs online. The recently launched "The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil" series also streams online to the U.S. audience. White said while the audience is much smaller for the subtitled reality competition series, he's also pleased with the number of fans tuning in.
"Just on UFC.com the other day, when we did 'The Ultimate Fighter' from Brazil, we had something like 17,000 people that watched it just on UFC.com," White said.
So despite a few recent omissions, UFC officials plan to continue using Facebook to air fights. April's UFC on FUEL TV 2 event from Sweden is the next fight expected to receive the streaming treatment since the six-fight preliminary card has yet to have any official broadcast plans attached to it. After all, White said, had that been the case in Australia, the company would have footed the substantial bill.
"If we would have had five fights under there, we would have put them on Facebook," White said. "It would have been worth it."
