OPINION: Big stadium, more people, cheaper tickets — bring UFC to SA
It's time Dricus du Plessis got the chance to fight in his home country.
Dricus du Plessis is middleweight UFC champion, but is yet to fight in his home country of South Africa. Picture:As a South African, how much would you pay to go watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship – specifically in South Africa?
This has been a question indirectly posed to lovers of mixed martial arts in the last few days by South Africa's UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis.
Ever since DDP won the title back in the beginning of last year, there have been claims that the UFC have tried to host an event in South Africa, but the lack of an indoor arena big enough seems to be the biggest problem.
But late last week on a podcast, Du Plessis shed some light on what now appears to be a problem just as big as the lack of a venue.
He stated that the cheapest single ticket for a UFC event in Las Vegas – in an arena with a capacity of approximately 23,000 seats – costs around R6,000, with VIP ringside seats going for an astronomical R900,000 a pop.
'Come on, let Dricus fight in his home country'
These numbers are quite simply well above the budget of most South Africans.
He went on to say that here in South Africa the biggest indoor venue has a capacity of about 14,000, which will raise the price of the cheapest ticket to a ridiculous R10,000.
Now, South Africa's Minister of Sport, Gayton McKenzie, agreed this is a problem.
'This is the absolute truth, we are trying to get sponsors to subsidise tickets, we must find a way,' McKenzie said on social media.
This again raises the question of why can we not just host a South African UFC event in one of our many world class stadiums? There's Cape Town Stadium, FNB Stadium and Loftus Versfeld, all of which have a capacity of well over 50,000.
But what about the weather? This has been one of the biggest reasons the UFC refuse to hold open air events.
Our weather conditions in this country are mostly predicable so time of year would be the only problem.
Bigger venues would mean more tickets sold. And more tickets sold would mean cheaper tickets.
Come on UFC, book a stadium so we can see our champion in his own backyard.
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