UFC 215 on the verge of selling out
Mixed martial arts event at Rogers Place appears to be heading for a quick sellout
The “Sold Out!” sign could go up Wednesday.
Within the first 100 hours of tickets going on sale, UFC 215 in Edmonton was within 1,000 tickets of being sold out at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
If UFC cards were like Garth Brooks concerts, Edmonton could go to work selling the other eight today.
“From the day Bob Nicholson hired me to come to town, I went to work to get us a UFC numbered pay-per-view event. There are only 12 a year and they can be very difficult to book. But it’s a great event. To hold one of these annually is very high on my agenda,” said Sheena Way, assistant general manager of Live Entertainment at Rogers Place. “We did this with sellout expectations and very much with an eye to becoming one of the busiest buildings in North America.”
Nine Garth Brooks sellouts and a near UFC sellout in just over 100 hours will go a long way toward that. Not that Way is finding it a challenge to find hot properties to book into the arena drawing rave reviews and an audience response to match.
“It’s a testimonial to the sports scene in Edmonton and how Edmonton responds to major events,” said Oilers Entertainment Group CEO Bob Nicholson of the unusual-even-for-the-UFC sellout.
To think people wondered if this might be a tough UFC card to sell.
UFC 215, the first numbered payper-view card held in Edmonton, drew a lot of criticism around the UFC world for not having mainevent sizzle to do big business. But it drew equal praise for being — as headliner Demetrious (Mighty Mouse) Johnson put it in reference to the number of quality bouts — “a stacked card.” Three former UFC champions are featured on the card.
“We are thrilled with UFC 215 ticket sales thus far,” said David Shaw, senior vice-president of UFC North America. “Edmonton fans have been loud about us bringing an event to their city and have responded enthusiastically. We plan to bring a thrilling night of fights to Edmonton Sept. 9.”
The event, scheduled for the first anniversary of the opening of the building, is one of the fastest to sell out during this ballistic year at Rogers Place that included the first seven Stanley Cup playoff games here in a decade.
The two headliners, Johnson and Amanda Nunes, were brought to town last Wednesday, while UFC boss Dana White was holding a pre-fight press conference in Los Angeles.
Tickets went on sale Friday at 10 a.m.
By 2 p.m. Monday, only about 1,000 of the almost 20,000 tickets scaled at $379.75, $253.16, $126.58, $94.94, and $63.29 (plus additional fees via Ticketmaster) remained. And this is an event scheduled head-to-head with the annual Labour Day football rivalry replay game against the Calgary Stampeders that traditionally draws the largest CFL crowd of the season.
While there’s every expectation it could be sold out by the end of the day Wednesday, Way said some additional tickets will likely become available closer to fight night.
“There are ticket holds for the additional big screens they put up and for TV camera positions,” she said.
It’s not the only ballistic success story Way has had in her first year booking the building.
“Nothing is going to compare to Garth Brooks, but Bruno Mars sold exceptionally fast as well,” she said of the back-to-back Mars shows just completed.
Way was in five hours of meetings here Tuesday with the promoters of the inaugural three-day Professional Bull Riding Global Cup event. No 100-hour sellout there, but the event, scheduled for Nov. 9-11, has restricted sales to three-day passes at this point.
“Part of the meetings involve the timing of putting the single performance tickets on sale,” she said, adding whatever date that is they’ll also announce the entertainers who will headline the Friday and Saturday shows. Expect both to be country artists producing a number of top-of-the-chart hits.
Both UFC 215 and the newly created PBR Global Cup are IMG sports properties.
“We are very happy with our partnerships with IMG. Both organizations think big.”