UFC:s VD Dana White och UFC:s ansvariga i Europa Gary Cook var nöjda över hur eventet gick i Stockholm under gårdagen. Med 14 506 personer på plats i Globen så var det förvisso inte slutsålt, men det var inte långt ifrån. Men med en del problem i samband med att Alexander Gustafsson inte blev medicinskt godkänd så var det många fans som oroade sig om det här var sista gången som UFC faktiskt kommer till Sverige.
”Yeah you know the first time that we came here it was great, the event ran smooth everybody was great,” säger UFC:s VD Dana White på presskonferensen efter galan. ”This one was beyond difficult, I will admit that. But yeah we are not looking at Sweden and saying we will never come back here again. Because it’s a great market. Fans have been fantastic to us here and we will be back.”
Efter en stund under presskonferensen så tog Gary Cook över mikrofonen och gick lite djupare in i vad som gäller för deras planer i Europa.
”The challenge we have right now is US Television,” berättar Cook. ”Right now we are contracted with the major broadcasters in the USA. So we are limited by how many we can have in Europe. We are going to try to have more in Europe. Then we have to decide which markets and we haven’t even been to Russia. We haven’t even been in Poland. we have not been to Turkey. We have gone to Abu Dabi once, but it’s the UAE market that’s big and there is a lot of fans over there. That sounds like we have to prioritize, which is the element of truth. We do. And we look at Stockholm as one of the host cities of the world so the objective is to try to keep going back consistently in to the same cities in the same time of the year.”
Så om traditionen ska fortsätta så kommer UFC att återvända till Sverige och Stockholm någon gång under våren redan nästa år.
