Star Power Matters! (But Being a Sport Matters More)
The Wrestling Observer website has a very good article up today tracking the drawing power of UFC pay-per-views (PPVs) in the Ultimate Fighter (TUF) era (2005 to Present). The article is recommended reading, but just in case here's a summary: UFC will always have two or three top stars. Those top stars' pay-per-view buyrates will always draw far larger numbers than pay-per-view events headlined by fighters with lesser star power. The ostensible lesson told in the article is that non-star PPVs stay pretty much constant, while PPVs that feature stars and/or grudge matches tend to fluctuate dramatically based on the quality of star. Towards the end of the article, there is a graph (created by Paul Fontaine , author of the article) that purportedly shows a relatively constant level of non-star PPV buyrates (the lower line on the graph) and a fluctuating line of star/grudge match PPV buyrates (the graph's upper line). Neat stuff all around; good job, Paul. But I thi