UFC 109 Pay Per View Buy Prediction: In Line With 108

Randy Couture has long been one of the UFC’s most popular fighters and has been the headliner for the last six UFC events he has been a part of. While it is uncertain if he will contend for another title at this point in his incredible career, the UFC is still comfortable in his ability to deliver as a main event draw. Couture takes on fellow veteran and hall-of-famer Mark Coleman in the main event of UFC 109 in a showdown that appears poised to deliver just enough fan interest and buzz to carry the UFC forward towards its blockbuster March and April schedule. The build-up of online interest surrounding UFC 109 is slightly above what took place for UFC 108, which delivered an estimated 300,000 buys a month ago. Online activity from the past few days suggests a buy rate for UFC 109 in the neighborhood of 315,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Randy Couture and Mark Coleman both lead the way with pre-fight buzz scores of 14.8, which barely edges out the level of buzz that had been generated by Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva for UFC 108 (scores of 13.0 and 10.8), but falls well behind other recent main event participants including Diego Sanchez and Tito Ortiz (scores of 27.3 and 30.6, roughly twice the online buzz). UFC 109’s co-main event fighters Nate Marquardt and Chael Sonnen add a little punch, with Chael Sonnen in particular parlaying his controversial pre-fight interviews into more fan interest. As with UFC 108 before it, the card ultimately lacks a true buzz for any particular fight as is necessary for big pay per view sales among casual fans.

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 46.6, just above the 43.4 score seen for the UFC 108 event featuring Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva. That card came in with an estimated 275,000-300,000 pay per view buys according to early estimates, which is directly in line with Tapology’s pre-fight forecast of 275,000. Last August’s UFC 102 event (also featuring Randy Couture) had an identical pre-fight score of 46.6 and managed to deliver over 400,000 buys, which is a sign of hope for a surprisingly strong night for the UFC. While UFC 102 was coming on the heels of blockbuster UFC 100 and UFC 101 events, however, UFC 109 has no such spillover momentum.

As a result, when we plug a score of 46.6 into the model, we get an estimate of 315,000 pay per view buys, just above UFC 108’s level and holding on the lower end of pay per view performance for the last year in the UFC.

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com, which in turn frequently source the reporting of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.