Dan Hooker tweets Dana White to come back to New Zealand
Dan Hooker, one of New Zealand’s biggest household MMA names has appealed to the president of the UFC Dana White to bring MMA back to the Kiwi home country.
Only two major events have taken place in New Zealand and quite small ones at that. The latest event that was held in Auckland, the most populous city in NZ only held around 7,000 people in it, which is quite the downgrade when comparing other major UFC events all over the world.
However, Hooker is now pleading White to choose the southern island as his choice of the event location.
@danawhite @seanshelby Bring the UFC back to New Zealand! We can host the event at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin. Covered stadium that holds 36,000! 👊 #ufcsouthisland pic.twitter.com/JB1iIKEKnt
— Dan Hangman Hooker (@danthehangman) October 13, 2019
The most populous city on the southern island, Dunedin, only has around 150,000 people living in it, but the island itself, where road trips are a common occurrence holds nearly a million people.
The venue suggested is Forsyth Barr Stadium which can hold up to 36,000 viewers. This number is more what UFC is hoping to achieve in countries like New Zealand.
However, it will be quite hard to convince White to make such a commitment, considering how there’s a large MMA market right across the Tasman Sea.
Australia has been a boiling pot for aspiring MMA fighters and Melbourne seems to be its largest concentration in the country so far.
The sheer amount of investment that the UFC itself and mobile betting sites for Australians made in this industry make it very hard to favor an underdeveloped scene over in New Zealand, even if the number of fighters keeps on increasing.
The UFC’s agreement to host an event in New Zealand would heavily depend on the availability of venues in Australia. Considering such a prerequisite, Hooker’s request on White may fall on deaf ears as the UFC needs to guarantee some kind of profit from the whole gig as well.
One thing that can be said about Hooker’s proposition is that Dunedin could indeed be an amazing location for future UFC fights, but it’s definitely not going to be the first choice for a major event considering how few people it can house.
Several fighters have even argued that the UFC doesn’t necessarily generate income through the offline viewership it brings to the stadiums, but the online viewership instead. Most of the income is generated through sponsorships, ads, and various other fundraising activities. Ticket sales are probably the lowest of the low in the association’s revenue listings.
Should both Kiwi and Aussie fighters push the idea of bringing the UFC back to New Zealand, it’s likely that Dana will agree for at least the Under 20s fights to be held there.
