Normally, a top fighter loves his Pay Per View cut. Maybe a dollar for every buy over 300k PPV’s sold, $2 for every over 400k buys and so on. That’s an extremely rudimentary way of explaining how very few fighters (the cream of the crop) make extra cash outside of their sponsors and show/win money, but I think you get the idea. Ben Henderson has no need for the extra cash — he’s fine with the soccer mom love, and he’s getting a lot of it with his multiple appearances on the bright lights of FOX.
It’s not a 1:1 tradeoff, but Ben Henderson makes a fascinating point: who needs some extra cash when you can be a household name. One basically begets the other? Right? Right. Here’s Ben Henderson discussing the viewership gap between PPV and FOX:
“(I felt) probably pretty much the same, but it was taken very well, I did a pretty good job. I earned a `W.’ But just the number of people who tuned in for the main event, 5.5 million, that’s a lot of people. That smashes any pay-per-view numbers. A lot of guys talk about pay-per-view buys. I don’t give a crap about pay-per-view stuff. I like fighting on the biggest platform and FOX is that platform. I’m excited to be on FOX for the second time in a row. I think that it shows the trust the UFC top brass and the FOX top brass have in me. They think I’ll portray the sport in the right manner. I think it’s the cool to have that bigger platform. 5.5 million viewers and the core demographic of males, but it’s great to be watched by soccer moms who are flipping channels, they stop and watch and become fans. I go to the grocery store now, 50-year-old soccer moms say, `I saw you on TV.’ I really dig that, and it only happened after being on that big of a platform.”
With two top ten all-time MMA network TV performances, maybe Henderson is savvily setting himself up for a sweet PPV payday with his massive exposure on FOX. Smart, Ben. Very smart.
