Planning for the UFC White House card is underway with the event expected to go down as one of the biggest spectacles in the history of the sport.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has already been teasing the magnitude of the event by promising numerous title fights expected to take place on the card with a custom built arena being constructed on the lawn of the White House. There\u2019s an expectation for several thousand attendees but who actually gets to sit and watch the fights remain to be seen because there won\u2019t be any public onsale for tickets for the prestigious event.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to figure out right now is what we can and can\u2019t do with that event, which is scheduled to take place on Flag Day \u2014 somebody\u2019s birthday is that day as well,\u201d TKO Group Holdings president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro said during the UBS Globial Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a spectacle. If we thought the Sphere was a spectacle, this is a spectacle on steroids.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting requests, I\u2019m not even talking about people who want to buy tickets because that won\u2019t be available. There will be no ticket sales. It will hurt us financially but what this will do for brand, reach, engagement, notoriety, press, earned media, advertiser interest, this is an absolute monster. We\u2019re excited about it. Dana White and Hunter Campbell are hard at work at putting together a sensational fight card.\u201d<\/p>\n
UFC CEO Dana White has stated that he expects to begin truly building the card in February but numerous high profile athletes have already requested to compete on the White House card including Conor McGregor and Jon Jones.<\/p>\n
The exact layout for the UFC White House event won\u2019t truly be revealed until closer to the date, which coincides with Trump\u2019s birthday, but there are already hints that the fighter walkouts could include a trip through the Oval Office before setting foot in the octagon.<\/p>\n
Add to that, Shapiro teased that Trump would almost certainly play some role in the event but what he\u2019ll be doing hasn\u2019t been determined yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t know yet what the president\u2019s involvement will be but judging from the draw day with World Cup, clearly he\u2019s willing to get involved with those sports that he loves and take place on U.S. soil, not to mention the 250th birthday celebration of the United States,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be gangbuster and we\u2019re just trying to understand structurally how we can do it and set it up, what we\u2019ve got to build in and replace the soil and the sod and what we can sell from an advertiser standpoint. The only thing we do know at this point is it is happening and there won\u2019t be ticket sales.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his appearance, Shapiro also confirmed that approximately half of the UFC\u2019s major numbered events (previously known as pay-per-views) are expected to be simulcast on both Paramount+ and CBS, which extends the potential audience for the promotion\u2019s biggest cards.<\/p>\n
That almost certainly includes the White House event, which could go down as one of the most talked about cards in UFC history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planning for the UFC White House card is underway with the event expected to go down as one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-338894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}