UFC president Dana White has been pretty vocal about the money the UFC is "losing" by putting the heavyweight championship between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos on free broadcast television at UFC on Fox 1 instead of on pay-per-view at UFC 139. White made it clear the the UFC views it as a long-term investment in attracting new fans -- some of whom who will later buy UFC PPVs.
UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta spoke with USA TODAY and broke down the actual math on the deal from the UFC's perspective:
The whole idea is to draw millions of more fans into the group. If I can convert 100,000 of those millions that will be watching for the first time into customers for the next 20 years, then our investment on Fox has paid off.
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It's a huge commercial. You have to let people sample the product. Once again, there's a lot of people out there that really haven't been exposed to the UFC, don't know guys like Cain Velasquez, how special he is; a guy like Junior Dos Santos. Once you watch them, you create new fans.
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