San Francisco Chronicle refuses to cover MMA and UFC and UFC President bashes em

Very few non-sports events get covered like events, but Osteen's debut in your town should get some form of significant walk-up coverage, be it wire or homegrown, and a rummage sale of that size would probably be a business section or metro lead story.

It's not really about what Dana White and the UFC/MMA dice-rollers want, it's what your readers want. A sellout crowd indicates enough people are interested in it to warrant inclusion. And there's plenty of copy to be had for the non-hardcore fans: casuals who maybe watched a Fight Night or episode of Unleashed and want to know more about the sport, non-fans who see the Tapout shirts and wonder what the deal is, economic impact, emerging trend stuff, so on and so forth.

I've made this statement twice, and now I'll flat out ask you: Name a sporting event that draws 13,000 fans on a summer Saturday in your coverage area that you would say should not get a single inch of copy.

 

I agree. For the casual fan it is like wrestling. Who wins or loses doesn't seem to matter in a larger context (like a golfer winning a major or a boxer winning a belt).

 

Re: San Francisco Chronicle refuses to cover MMA and UFC and UFC President bashe

None here. But I'm guessing in a region with more than 6 million quite a few events drawing 13,000 people (.002 of the population) that don't get covered.

 

Then the paper would be wrong, at least legally -- there's no legal or even good-faith basis to contend that the sport is scripted. Pro wrestling has acknowledge the man behind the curtain. The only things wrestling and MMA have in common are young fanbases and Dana White tapping into his inner Vince McMahon to drum up attention -- an affectation that seems to be finding success.

And there's plenty of people who think boxing is fixed. But a boxing card with 13,000 fans in your city's arena gets covered before, during and after.

 

No, I'm pretty sure they still staff A's games.

13,000 is still legitimate in a major city. The Chronicle has covered events with fewer in attendance. The New York papers have too. And the arena was the rate limiter because it was a sell-out; they didn't get 13,000 because that's all they could get.

 

Re: San Francisco Chronicle refuses to cover MMA and UFC and UFC President bashe

That's if all the tickets were actually sold. The UFC has had to paper arenas in the past by giving out fistfuls of tickets to local radio stations. I believe I read for UFC 104 they gave out 3,000 freebies.

And, like I said, in a region that size 13,000 isn't that big of a number. Not enough to make it a must-cover event.

I still wonder if manpower might be behind this. How many staffers are there in sports there? Were they all tied up on their beats? Did the UFC just happen to pick the wrong weekend of the year if they wanted SFC coverage?

 

I thought Oracle seated 19000+.

 

Not to speak for the Chron, of course, since they're the big metro daily and I'm a 10K'er in farm country, but, there's no such thing as too much Niners coverage, Raiders come in a close third behind the Giants in a pennant race and the A's, well, what do you do with a team that has one foot out the door? Warriors get good play, since they've been putting the fun in dysfunction under lame duck Cohan, but aside from the playoffs, Sharks coverage is now in the good hands of AP.

But that said ... there may have been alternate sources. I know both AP and the LA Times had advancers and I think AP staffed it. Was that considered? We may never know.

 

They claim sellout instead of capacity crowd, and the previous two PPVs sold out with no papering, from what I saw (115 in Vancouver they claim was their fastest sellout to date).

Maaaaaybe in the fall or winter when there's a lot going on, though even then, a capacity crowd at a major arena is still something to not ignore. In the summer, when there's less on the plate in terms of live events, I can't imagine not covering it.

It's possible, but apparently every other major media outlet in the area devoted resources of varying degrees to it. It could have been bad timing between vacations and news, but they also had pretty good head time -- Dana White announced the main event for the show on April 13 on Rome is Burning, and word leaked that the show would be in Oakland (after originally being targeted for Salt Lake City) later in the month. Enough time that they could have lined up some form of coverage, even if via stringer.

 

As a young writer and an MMA fan the logic that MMA fans won't read the paper so it is OK to blow the event off is exactly what's wrong with the industry. How are we going to get this demographic to start buying the newspaper or at least reading the coverage on-line if we ignore what they want?

 

It does for basketball, but UFC setups are different. UFC 115 was sold out in Vancouver but the attendance was something like 3,000 less than the basketball capacity at GM Place. I'm not sure if the UFC setup for Oakland was more complicated for whatever reason.

As for Inky's question about papering, this link has the average revenue per ticket at $120, for whatever that's worth.

 

I can't speak for other cities but in Vancouver it sold out in 30 minutes and scalpers were making a killing.