From MMA Junkie:

Saturday’s UFC 88 event, which took place at Philips Arena in Atlanta, earned a $2.6 million gate according to UFC President Dana White.

White confirmed the numbers in a post-UFC 88 press conference.

The amount scored as the second-highest total in the nine-year history of the arena — narrowly falling short of the amount earned by a 2006 Barbara Streisand concert. White was jovial about falling short of the record mark, stating that he “wants a rematch with Barbara.”

Additionally, White said the official attendance for Saturday’s pay-per-view event was 14,736. The near-capacity crowd was a positive sign for the organization, and White said the UFC would likely return to Atlanta in the future.

Saturday’s UFC 88 was the organization’s first trip to Georgia in over 11 years.

Obviously its Dana White’s job, as well as the UFC’s job, to put the happiest spin they can on these figures but a “near capacity” crowd its putting it kindly. The Phillips Arena seats 18,545 for hockey and 18,729 for basketball. For concerts, they can accommodate as many as 21,000 people. In other words, the UFC had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 available seats–more or less depending on the exact configuration but definitely closer to ‘concert’ number. To put a “glass half empty” spin on 14,736, that means that the UFC 88 live event was less than 75% full.

The #2 all time live gate is something of a red herring as well–its not hard to get an impressive revenue number with the traditional high price structure of UFC tickets. Here’s the UFC ticket prices from the Phillips Arena website:

$604.00, $404.00, $254.00, $154.00, $79.00

It would be safe to assume that the only other act in that price range was Babs Streisand–who also likely sold out the 21,000 seat venue. By comparison, here’s the ticket price structure for Madonna’s forthcoming tour stop in Atlanta. Note that her tickets are substantially higher priced than the average touring musical act:

$352.00, $167.00, $97.00, $57.00

Making the sparse live attendance even more troubling for the UFC is the “loaded” card they offered, headlined by Chuck Liddell who is by most accounts the biggest box office star in the promotion. Underneath you had another top star in Rich Franklin and former two division PRIDE heavyweight champion Dan Henderson, who has headlined two UFC events himself (against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rich Franklin).

The UFC could have made a scheduling mistake as well–everyone knows that Georgia is football country, and the UFC decided to run their show at night after a University of Georgia home game in nearby Athens and on the eve of the Atlanta Falcons season debut right across town at the Georgia Dome. Both football games would be competing for the UFC’s cherished 18-35 year old male demographic, and going up against football in south is usually a losing proposition.

Maybe the most troubling aspect of this is the fact that most MMA media sources are conveniently overlooking the poorly attended live card. Had Affliction: Banned run in front of a less than 75% full arena the Dana nuthuggers among the MMA media would have reported that it was a “half filled house”. While the most likely causality of the UFC’s attendance woes in the ATL is the aforementioned scheduling issue, it could portent bigger issues.

A big joke among mainstream media sports hacks is that “no one cares about hockey in the south”. The Atlanta Thrashers averaged 15, 831 for their 2007-2008 homegames. By that metric, no one in Atlanta cares about the UFC either.

UFC attendance numbers @ MMA Junkie