UFC remains bullish on Western Canada event hosting

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It took six years for the UFC to come back to Calgary, but don’t expect that to happen again.

On Friday, tickets for the UFC on Fox card on July 28 are set to go on-sale to the general public, and with a legitimately stacked card that’s headlined by a lightweight fight between Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Poirier, it seems like a safe bet that tickets are going to sell quickly.

That’s no surprise to David Shaw, the UFC’s senior vice president of international and content, who said Western Canada remains one of the MMA promotion’s most vibrant markets.

“It’s hugely important to us, it’s a big, big priority,” Shaw said.

“We’ve talked about there being more fans per capita in Alberta than any other province . . . We see it in pay-per-view buys, we see it in viewership, we see it in social media, for us we will continue to support the market, admittedly in a better way we have in the last few years.

“It won’t be another six years until we’re back to Calgary.”

While the UFC hasn’t held an event since UFC 149 in 2012, the MMA promotion has repeatedly returned to Western Canada over the past five years. Last September, it held a pay-per-view in Edmonton, and the company has also hosted fights in Saskatoon in 2015 while making multiple trips to both Winnipeg and Vancouver.

For the past couple years, the UFC has held one pay-per-view in Canada, as well as one major card that is nationally broadcast in the U.S. and one smaller “UFC Fight Night” show.

Shaw said that unless the company decided to increase the number of shows it held in Canada, fans should expect that schedule to continue.

daustin@postmedia.com

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