Currently, in the state of New York it is illegal to fight in a cage with small boxing gloves professionally. In layman’s term, the sport of mixed martial arts, or MMA, cannot be fought professionally in New York. For years, there have been legalization bills seen in the state assembly and in the senate. However, the bills were never brought to the senate floor. One of the reasons was Sheldon Silver and now that he is no longer in power, the bill has a chance to pass.

One of the biggest MMA promotions is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. To show how the sport and the company has grown I found a data set indicting their Pay Per View buys since their first show in 1993. However, I would start at 2000. I would want the visualization to show case several things: the growth in PPV buys, which city has the highest PPV buys, and which main event fighter has the most PPV buys.

First, its interesting to see the growth of the company. UFC has dominated the MMA event world. There are other promotions but not even close to the caliber of UFC. Plus, the UFC is lobbying extremely hard to get the legalization bill passed.

Second, the cities that have the highest PPV buy, would compete with New York arenas like Madison Square Garden or the Barclay Center, if the bill were passed. It would be interesting to see if the West Coast dominates that scene and an analysis could be made to see if the New York arenas could top the West Coast arenas.

Third, many fighters are from New York. If the fighters with the highest PPV buys are from New York, then image if that fighter fights at MSG or the Barclays.

I believe this data will show that legalizing MMA could be beneficial to New York along the lines of revenue. I am looking into how it would effect tourism. I am also looking into the data boxing data. Which would bring MSG more money: boxing or MMA.

http://mma-manifesto.com/ufc-ppv-data/ppv-main/all-time-ufc-ppv-sales-data.html