UFC Sells All 55,000 Tickets For Toronto Debut At Rogers Centre

UFC on Saturday said that “all tickets for its April 30 event at Rogers Centre in Toronto have been sold,” according to Franklin McNeil of ESPN.com. Rogers Centre was “originally configured to accommodate 42,000 spectators, but due to increasing public demand it was reconfigured to seat 55,000 fans.” UFC 129 will be the first MMA event held in Ontario. The event is “expected to more than double” the record attendance of 23,000 set at UFC 124 at Bell Centre in Montreal on Dec. 11. UFC 129 also is “expected to shatter the promotion's mark for live gate revenue.” The current record, $5.4M, was set on Dec. 30, 2006, for UFC 66 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas (ESPN.com, 2/12). The CP's Neil Davidson noted UFC 129 “became an official sellout Saturday morning at 55,000, with a gate in excess” of C$10M. The sellout is “only part of the financial story.” The event also is expected to “attract a pay-per-view bonanza.” More than 40,000 tickets were sold Thursday “in the first day of a pre-sale to members of the UFC Fight Club, prompting the UFC to put more on the market.” The rest of the tickets were “snapped up Friday, in another pre-sale, and Saturday, when tickets were made available to the general public.” UFC Dir of Canadian Operations Tom Wright said that 15 seconds after online sales started at 10:00am ET Saturday, there “was a queue of 4,000 people waiting to buy.” Online tickets were “snapped up in seven minutes.” Tickets “originally ranged in price” from C$50-800. StubHub on Saturday was “offering seats from” C$143-9,999 (CP, 2/12).