Sphere Today, Stadium Tomorrow?
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
White made it a point to be the first person to use the Las Vegas Sphere for a sporting event, but isn’t in any rush to hold the first MMA event inside Allegiant Stadium.
Considering the big risk Dana White is taking by doing the first ever sporting event at the Sphere on September 14th, could we be heading to a future where he’s willing to take other chances at venues like AT&T Stadium or Allegiant Stadium?
White is well known at this point for being pretty anti-stadium. Since its inception the UFC has held just four shows at full sized stadiums: in Toronto, Melbourne, Sweden, and Brazil. They’ve never done a stadium show in the United States or United Kingdom, which seems like pretty big missed opportunities.
So with White ticking the Sphere off his bucket list of venues to use, could it finally be time for a UFC event at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium next? In a new interview with Grind City Media, White shot down the idea and explained that his dislike for stadium shows went beyond weather concerns.
“It’s not that I get worried, I don’t wanna take the experience away from people,” he said. “We’ve done stadiums before. It’s just it’s not my favorite thing. I like arenas. Yeah, I really like arenas.”
“I think that fans get a much — what I care about every Saturday, whether you stayed home and watched it on TV or you came to the venue and watched it, is that everybody walks away on a Saturday night going, ‘God, I’m glad I came to the fights,’ or ‘This was worth coming to.’ Or they don’t walk out going, ‘Well, that sucked. That wasn’t a good experience.’ That’s what I focus on literally every week.”
Jon Jones and Conor McGregor have both mused at the prospect of fighting at Allegiant Stadium, the 71,000 seat home of the Las Vegas Raiders. But White says the venue isn’t on his radar.
OKTAGON MMA (@OktagonOfficial) staged one of the biggest shows in European MMA history this past Saturday.
28,000 fans packed Eden Stadium, Prague, for an amazing live spectacle stacked with big names.
And it won’t even be our largest this year. Roll on Eintracht Frankfurt! pic.twitter.com/Dkzz3Kzrpk
— Scott Lagdon (@scott_lagdon) June 10, 2024
“No, that’s not what I look for,” he said. “I look for incredible experiences, unique experiences, and things that have never been done before. That’s what I’m into. I’m not like, ‘Oh, I have to do Allegiant Stadium.’ I don’t have to do Allegiant Stadium. I wanna give fans a great experience every time.”
It’s strange, we’ve never heard any complaints from anyone who went to these 40,000 and 50,000 person UFC stadium shows. They happen semi-regularly in Europe for both boxing and MMA and no one says stadiums don’t work for combat sports. Sure, you’ll have to watch a lot of the show on the big screens. But you have to do that at the arena as well, so what’s the big deal?
If it’s about quality of experience, we’d argue that making U.K. fans in Manchester stay up until 5 in the morning local time is a much worse experience, but there’s no sign that practice is stopping. Give them the option of Anfield Stadium over Pacific Standard Time scheduling, and we suspect they’d pick Anfield.
