UFC events are an amazing spectacle that any MMA fan would want to be a part of. There’s nothing quite like seeing your favorite fighters go at it, live and in the flesh. But of course, to attend a UFC event, you have to pay the price.
And of course, an important question to ask is, how much should I pay for a UFC ticket? Do you want to have a high-ticket front row seat among celebrities and fighters? Or are you comfortable watching from the nosebleeds?
Well if you want these questions answered then you came to the right place my friend. In this post, I’m going to delve into the history of UFC ticket sales to answer all your questions.
How much do UFC tickets cost?
For an average UFC event, tickets can range from about $65.00 for the cheapest seats, to $500.00 if you sit cageside. However, for high profile events, such as UFC 246, ticket prices range from $300 to $1,500. Of course, resale prices go much higher, going as high as $25,000 for cageside seats at UFC 205.
In the rest of this post, I’m going to detail the average prices of tickets for UFC events, as well as historical data on ticket prices for highly anticipated events.
Ticket Prices For Average Events
So as mentioned already, ticket prices for average UFC events can range from about $65.00 up to $500.00. But what exactly is considered an average event?
If you landed on this page, it’s probably because you’re considering attending a UFC event, and you want to know how much the tickets will be before they’re available.
The UFC Fight Night event between Benavidez and Figueiredo is what I would consider an average event, despite it being for a Championship.
You can check if tickets are available for the event you are looking for on the UFC’s event page.
So here are my criteria for what would be considered an average event: Usually UFC Fight Night events automatically fall under this category. UFC pay-per-view events can also fall under this category if they feature a lackluster main event or supporting card.
It may sound harsh, but the truth is fighters who do not bring in views have cheaper tickets to their events.
The fight between Chris Weidman and Jack Hermansson has cageside seats set at $800, pretty high for a Fight Night event.
However, that’s not to say that the range given will be the exact range for every “average” fight card. As of the time of this writing, tickets for Fight Night Hermansson vs Weidman start at $70.00, but go all the way up to $800!
That’s a bit too expensive for me to call it an “average” event.
Ticket Prices For Highly Anticipated Events
For UFC cards that people are excited to see, the UFC will charge more to make more money. It is a business after all.
I’m going to use Conor McGregor’s events as the main examples in this section. Say what you want about McGregor, but the man sells tickets.
Any event that McGregor is a part of will have a lot of attention around it, such as his recent bout against ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone.
So how much are tickets to a McGregor fight?
In short, tickets to see Conor McGregor fight can range from $100 to $300 on the low end, all the way up to $1,500 for cageside seats. Resale prices are known to skyrocket for McGregor’s events however, going as high as $25,000, and will likely continue to rise with the sport’s growing popularity.
The $100.00 entry-level tickets were the price for a McGregor show back in 2016, when he beat Eddie Alvarez for the Lightweight Championship at UFC 205. I should also mention that the price of an average resale ticket for this event was $2,093, regardless of the seating section.
Despite losing to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229, McGregor still retained much of the fans’ attention in his return at UFC 246.
Just a few years later, the entry-level price for a McGregor ticket has gone up to a $300 minimum for his UFC 246 event against Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone in 2020. McGregor did experience a significant boost in popularity since UFC 205, having attained champ-champ status, then boxing Floyd Mayweather, and then making his return against Khabib Nurmagomedov.
So far, we have only looked at the low and high end of the ticket pricing. Now let’s take a closer look at how the ticket prices vary by where your seat is.
How Prices Vary By Seating Area
As with any major event (sports or otherwise), ticket prices have different ranges depending on which section you are seated in. Now obviously, the seats closer to the Octagon will be the most expensive. But how much do they vary?
This is the seating layout of a UFC event. You can see the various sections, which each have their own price range.
The arena for a UFC event is usually split up into three major sections: the floor seats (cageside), the inner stadium seats, and the outer stadium seats. First, we’ll take a look at the price range for cageside seats for the event in question (Hermansson vs Weidman).
Below, you’ll see a closeup of the cageside seating area, taken from the screenshot above.
You can probably guess this simply by looking at the image, but the best sections here are 6, 4, and 2, which are similarly priced. The front row seats start at $800, with the pricing going down gradually by row.
For example, prices for the 2nd row are $600, 3rd row $500, 4th $400, and continues this pattern until getting down to about $200 for the last row cageside.
The corner sections, those being 7, 1, 5, and 3, are considered the inferior seats on the floor, and are priced adequately. Here the row pricing goes like this: 1st row $500, 2nd row $400, 3rd row $350, etc.
As you can see, the corner seating is generally less expensive than the seats right in front of the cage, and with good reason. So for corner seats you will pay $200 – $500, while with adjacent seats you will pay $200 – $800.
Now let’s look at the stadium seating. Note that the screenshot below is only a corner of the arena, so there are 3 other sections that are exactly alike to the ones shown here.
Section 115 starts from $150 and goes up to $300, as they are the best seats (after cageside ones). Section 114 is similarly priced, ranging from $100 – $275.
Sections 111, 112, and 113, also have similar pricing models (although 113 is the slightly cheaper of the three). These sections range from $80 up to about $150.
Lastly, we have the outer stadium seating. These sections (216 – 220) all have the same price, $70.00.
Like I mentioned earlier, this is only one corner of the stadium, but the other three corners follow the exact same pricing model and range.
Conclusion
The ticket prices are pretty straight-forward, and as mentioned at the beginning of this post, you can always check out the UFC’s event page to see if tickets are listed for an upcoming event.
In short, UFC ticket prices can range from $65.00 for a UFC Fight Night, all the way up to $1,500 for a cageside seat at a pay-per-view event. However, price ranges differ based on how much attention surrounds the event. For example, tickets for UFC 246 started at $300, compared to the average starting price of $80.
I hope this post helped clear up any questions you had regarding ticket prices for UFC events. If it did, please consider checking out other posts on the site, such as those on the Martial Arts History page. Thanks for reading!