White: ‘Fight Pass’ Started When FOX Turned Down Broadcasting of 10 UFC Fights

“The whole Fight Pass thing was confusing to people. I think we did a bad job of messaging it, not only to our fans, but also to our fighters. I heard Gustafsson said yesterday ‘I’m a little bummed out – I went from PPV to Fight Pass.’

“First of all, the fight is being distributed to 350 million possible viewers throughout the world. This fight is available in Canada, in Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, The Dominican Republic, Venezuela, The Phillipines, Australia, Mongolia, India, New Zealand, The UAE- Abu Dhabi and all this countries down there. In the UK, the entire will be on BT Sport, and the main event for the first time ever here will be on Channel 5, open TV to everybody. We’re in Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Croatia, and Israel. All of those countries in Israel, 350 million homes.

The A m e r i c a n s have to pay for it on Fight Pass. So the reason that this happened is, we added 10 more fights, we went to FOX and try to see if FOX would pick up these 10 more fights, and they didn’t. So that’s why we put these on Fight Pass.”

“They create their budgets at the beginning of the year and it wasn’t in their budget to pick up these fights. You know, not to say they don’t pick them up later, or whatever could happen with the deal, but that’s what happened. So, it’s either no onebody gets to see them or you put them on Fight Pass.

“So, I hope that clears up some of the questions about Fight Pass. And anybody else and the rest of the world and countries I didn’t call, that I didn’t say a minute ago, they get it on Fight Pass too. Which of course all these people in other countries are pumped to pay for it on Fight Pass, whereas the Americans who are used to getting these fights for free, some of them are a little twisted, but whatever, what are you going to do.”

– Dana White via his pre-fight media scrum last Friday in London.