It appears ticket sales are looking up in the “Land Down Under.”
Earlier this week, reports suggested that ticket sales for this weekend’s UFC Perth event in Perth, Australia, have been “poor” and the promotion has been forced to significantly slash prices. This was reported by 7 News Australia, which claimed the venue is “about half full.”
“The response to UFC’s return visit to Perth this year has been disappointing, not the sellout of previous years,” said Australian reporter, Geoff Parry.
On the contrary, UFC execs are allegedly seeing no issues with UFC Perth’s ticket sales and don’t seem all too worried about it. During Friday’s early-morning press conference (replay HERE), UFC executive, Dave Shaw, answered questions from the media and eventually had to address the elephant in the room.
“Not at all (is there a ticket problem),” said Shaw during Friday’s press conference (shown above, transcription via MMA Junkie). “Listen, from the very beginning, we’ve taken the long run. We’re playing a long game with Australia. We mentioned being first here in 2010 with UFC 110. We opened up the office, playing the long game in 2014 when the UFC Australia office in Sydney was opened, and in 2015, we held the biggest event in UFC history with Ronda (Rousey) and Holly (Holm) in Melbourne. We overturned the ban of the octagon here in (Western Australia) in 2017. We had a Fight of the Year in 2023 with your boy (Alexander Volkanovski) and Islam (Makhachev). We will continue to take the long run in Australia.
“We know that you guys are a sports-mad country, and for us, you often hear Dana (White) talk about how MMA is going to be the biggest sport in the world. Our viewpoint on Australia as one of the top markets that we go to every year is that this is going to be a massive sport in this country. This is also a pretty special card. I mean, think about us having more regional athletes, more Australian and Kiwi athletes on this card than we’ve ever had in the past. We’ve got a first-time female athlete from New Zealand. We’ve got a first-time Adelaide-based athlete fighting on the card as well. It’s really important for us to build the future in terms of the quality athletes. Guaranteed, someone from this card is going to be the next Jack Della (Maddalena) – and that’s what we’re invested in.”
After being asked the same question again, Shaw had the same response.
“We do not see an issue for this event,” he said.
Whether the RAC Arena is full or not, UFC Perth will go down tomorrow night (Sat., Sept. 27, 2025) LIVE on ESPN+ and feature a main event showdown between light heavyweight contenders Carlos Ulberg and Dominick Reyes.
MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC Perth fight card on fight night, starting with the ESPN+ preliminary card matchups scheduled for 7 p.m. ET, followed by the remaining main card balance on ESPN+ at 10 p.m. ET.
To check out the latest and greatest UFC Perth news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive event archive here. For the updated and finalized “Ulberg vs. Reyes” fight card and ESPN+ lineup click here.
