Hill: White says UFC at Sphere could change live sports: ‘It’s going to be badass’
UFC president Dana White is uncharacteristically calm a week out from trying to pull off a spectacle worthy of his vow to put on the greatest sporting event of all time.
“I got into this for the stress,” he said by phone this week. “Why would I have wanted to do this if I didn’t think it was going to be hard? That’s what makes it so fun. I love it. And we’re ready. We’re good to go. It’s just all about rehearsing and making sure it goes off seamlessly.”
That will be easier said than done considering the scope of what the UFC is trying to accomplish next Saturday at Sphere.
Riyadh Season Noche UFC is equal parts athletic competition, big-budget entertainment production and experiment in pushing the limits between the two. It will attempt to incorporate all the immersive technology of the most innovative arena in the world into the unpredictability of a live sporting event.
It could go terribly wrong.
But if any sports organization is going to be the first to try to incorporate all the technology Sphere has to offer, it’s White’s Las Vegas-based mixed martial arts organization, which is owned by perhaps the most powerful agency in Hollywood.
“I’m extremely confident,” White said. “It’s going to be badass. It really is.”
‘We’re in it now’
His assurance is based on more than blind faith.
White has seen the production elements he and his team — boosted by some of the best audio, video and production people from the television and movie industry — have worked on for the better part of a year come to life in rehearsals that have to take place between 1 and 7 a.m. the last couple of weeks because of scheduling at the venue.
The night of the first rehearsal, sometime around 3 a.m., someone displayed the wrong clip to start the show.
It didn’t matter.
White was so blown away, he had seen enough. It was exactly the vision he had when he sat at one of the first U2 shows at Sphere and immediately sent his team to the next show to start formulating ideas for how to do a live UFC card at the venue.
“I wish I could remember what I was thinking at the time,” White now jokes. “But we’re in it now.”
A preliminary production budget of $8 million has already exceeded $20 million. Long days and even longer nights have strained nerves and panicked accountants. But White believes it will all be worth it after Saturday night.
“I’m excited to see what people say on Sunday,” he said. “The people who experience it live and then the people who watch it on television. I’m ready to hear it all, the good and the bad. The criticism from the media, the people, everybody. I’m fascinated to hear what everyone thinks.”
He’s also interested to see how other sports leagues react. Will they get grand ideas for how they could incorporate the technology of Sphere into their own games and follow the UFC into the venue? Or will they see the production costs and the planning headaches as prohibitive and chalk it up as impossible?
‘Love being first’
The reality is it would take a unique event for any other sports organization to even try something this ambitious, and White knows that.
“That’s exactly why I’m doing it,” he said. “I love being first. I love doing things that people believe can’t be done.”
White does think the sports world will be watching, however. And if those other sports can’t come to Sphere, maybe some of Sphere can come to other venues.
He said so many live sporting events have become stale not just because of a lack of creativity, but also a lack of the technology to dream bigger.
As new arenas are built and older ones refurbished, lessons could be learned about how to bring some fraction of the tech advances Sphere has made possible into other venues.
“I mean, you go to a Lakers game and you have a guy juggling and the mascots dunking balls at halftime,” White said.
All apologies to the dog that catches Frisbees or the lady who balances a tall stack of glassware, but times are changing.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.
