Inside The $20 Million Plan To Bring UFC 306 To The Sphere | Forbes - Video

With billions at stake for its upcoming media rights deal, the Las Vegas-based fight promotion is creating its biggest spectacle yet.

For all the grandeur of the Sphere, with its state-of-the-art, $2.3 billion dome and its 160,000-square-foot screen, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White’s plan to bring the first sporting event to the entertainment venue came together some seven miles away, on the dusty outskirts of Las Vegas—in a storage closet.

The 55-year-old White says he sets up specialized rooms for all his ventures so he can visualize the information. He wanted to rent an external space and build a replica of the Sphere he could walk through, but his team advised him that spare space inside UFC headquarters would be more budget conscious. Within a week, a closet was cleared out and filled with schematics, renderings and storyboards that would lay out the most extravagant event in UFC history.

Initially, no one at the company, including White, had any idea how expensive it would be to stage a promotion at the 18,600-seat venue. When the CFO at TKO Group Holdings, UFC’s New York City-based parent company, asked what the budget might be for the event, UFC executive vice present and chief content officer Craig Borsari estimated $8 million. In the end, it cost White and Borsari more than $20 million to realize their vision for UFC 306.

Read the full story on Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2024/09/11/inside-dana-whites-20-million-plan-to-bring-ufc-306-to-the-sphere/

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