Half Empty Or Complete Sell Out?

01/19/2025 01:30 AM

Was UFC 311 as empty as it looked, or was it a sell out as the UFC claims? The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Was UFC 311 half empty? It sure looked like it in a bunch of long shots of the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.

And would it really be all that surprising if it was? While the UFC is hotter than it's ever been right now, tickets to the event were extremely expensive and main event challenger Arman Tsarukyan was forced off the card at the last minute due to injury, triggering a mandatory refund for any ticket holder that wanted one.

Oh, and then there's the historic wildfires raging ten miles up the road. While fire fighters are now in the process of containing the blazes which were running out of control last week, the people of Los Angeles are still reckoning with 40,000 acres destroyed and 100,000 people displaced.

So when fans tuned into UFC 311 and saw what looked like a lot of empty seats, it was easy to think the UFC took a wash at the gate. But according to Bruce Buffer, UFC 311 was sold out. And according to fans who were there, the arena wasn't as empty as it looked on TV.

The big culprit: the Intuit Dome's fancy seats, which have LED lights built into the arm rests.

Sure, they can create some cool color, sparkle, and fade effects during walk-ins. But they also created the impression that any seat where the arm rests were visible were empty.

Take a look:

But here's a better lit shot of the arena as shared by someone actually there:

Zoom in on that image and you'll see beyond the impression created by the lights. Sure, there are indeed more empty seats than you might see at most UFC events. But most UFC events didn't go through the one-two punch of a natural disaster and last minute main event cancellation.