Dana White Names Locations On UFC’s Radar For Live Events

In May, following a record-setting night at Enterprise Center in St. Louis, UFC CEO Dana White said the time had come for the UFC to reduce the number of events it holds at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas and hold live events in front of larger crowds.

“I’ve been saying this for a long time,” White said at that event’s post-fight press conference. “We’ve got to get out of the Apex and start doing more events in all these different cities. We’re starting to do it. We’re getting it done this year.”

The pandemic was one of the big reasons the UFC held so many events at the UFC Apex. With the facility close to UFC headquarters, it was convenient and easy for the UFC to hold events at the Apex while adhering to COVID-19 protocols. In 2020, the promotion held 29 events at the Apex. That number increased to 42 in 2021, then dropped to 29 in 2022 and 27 in 2023. As of today, the UFC has held 10 events at the Apex, with four more events on the books for the site through September.

One reason the UFC might be reluctant to fully eliminate events at the Apex, which have very few fans in attendance, is the profitability of those Fight Night cards, something TKO Chief Financial Officer Andrew Schleimer addressed in May.

“I think what you’ve seen since we have worked our way out of COVID, we have held a significant amount of events outside UFC APEX, and those that we do hold on our campus in Las Vegas, those numbers have gone down meaningfully,” Schleimer said. “That being said, bringing events on the road is as much about growing our fan base as it is generating income. It’s also about ensuring that we maintain certain margins and profitability profile, and there’s a cost-benefit analysis for us that we view opportunity costs of doing events domestically, internationally, and holding them at APEX.

“What we do in any budget cycle, as I’m sure you can appreciate, is determining the right mix. Not just to generate top-line revenue, but to ensure profitability. Those APEX events do carry the lowest cost structure for us to hold them on our home turf in Las Vegas. I don’t think we’ve found the perfect mix yet, but rest assured that we’re looking at the numbers and working to do so.”

At the UFC 303 post-fight press conference, White fielded a question about when the UFC would be visiting Minneapolis.

“Soon. Minneapolis wants us,” said White. “We’ll start hitting a lot of places that we haven’t been in a while, places like Seattle, we haven’t been there in a while. We got to hit some of these places in Canada that we haven’t been in a while. We got a lot of options.”

One of the places the UFC is holding an event that it has not been to in years is Denver for this weekend’s UFC Fight Night event at Ball Arena. The last time the promotion was in Denver was in 2018.

At the end of July, the UFC will be in Manchester, England, for the first time since 2016 for the UFC 294 pay-per-view card.

Outside of those two events, the UFC is not booked in a location it hasn’t visited before 2023 for the events that have been announced through late October.