Fans and MMA: Reimagining the world post-COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has managed to challenge the very fundamentals of our world. Starting from simple things like greetings and meetings to the very working of the global economy; the pandemic has managed to shatter and redesign every institution of the modern world. The world of sports, including MMA, has been hit hard. Starting from schedules to finances everything has gone for a toss.

In these challenging times it is only MMA that has somehow managed to stay afloat, with the UFC holding events. But even that hasn't come with a cost, fans haven't been allowed in the events, the overall physical contact has been limited and only American fighters have been allowed to compete. The UFC president Dana White has also been insistent on one thing, the creation of Fight Island, an island exclusively built to host UFC events.

With announcements like these it is becoming clearer that at an elementary level the idea of combat sports fan and athlete interaction is going to change. Fans have been an important part of the MMA experience. At UFC 189, what people remember more about the night is not the fight but the craziness that the fans brought in. The way Irish fans tried to sing along to live music and the way they celebrated post, Conor McGregor won the belt. Or when Stipe Miocic defeated Alistair Overeem at UFC 203 and led a chant that apparently only fans in Clevland understood.

Right now pulling off something like that looks impossible but doubt there is are drastic changes coming in future. Let's take a look at some of the current active possibilitiesfor the psort of MMA:

Travel to a foreign nation is still going to be very difficult. That means the UFC is more likely to hold events in the USA, thus the possibility of having MMA stars from other countries having events in their home ground will go down.
Even if fans are permitted in they will be expected to maintain distance thus the tickets will be limited and given the high demand will be expensive. Thus the audience reactions which go down as legends of their own are bound to just not happen at all.
The possiblity of fan-athelte interaction, which usually took place at events like open workout and public weign ins will also reduce , in fact it wouldn't be surprising if these concepts are killed altogether, making the experience very exclusive.

And all of this is with the idea that things might get better and fans are permitted near atheltes. If that doesn't happen it brings us to the idea of Fight Island. If one starts thinking about it, it's actually a massive buisness opportunity. The sport of MMA having an entire island to create an experience, a violent version of Disney World if you may, sounds like a dream come true. The possiblites are limitless but that also means the experiece of watching a live MMA fight is going to become expensive.

Think about it conducting an event in an exclusive space for a limited audience, the tickets are going to cost a fortune. Making sure that the sport which started out as a civilised version of street fighting will now end up as something only elites can expereince! Dana White has been on record at points to say that the UFC won't go ahead with empty arenas for major MMA fights, particularly McGregor fights, because of the gate invovled but that doesn't mean they can't have those fights in an island where only the superrich enter. Let's hope for the best but also let's be mentally prepared if watching in-person live MMA becomes an exclusive experience