An Inside Look At How UFC Treats Its Highest Rollers

Boardroom joins On Location to experience one of the most exclusive fan experiences in sports.

Last month, the UFC made its annual November pilgrimage to Madison Square Garden for UFC 322. The event featured two major title fights and the prestige of competing at the world’s most famous arena. For more than 95% of the spectators in attendance that Saturday night, getting a ticket and taking in the chaotic, frenzied atmosphere inside and outside the octagon was well worth the price of admission. Then there are the clients of On Location.

On Location serves as the UFC’s official luxury hospitality provider, a service it provides to everything from the Super Bowl and the Olympics to the World Cup, Final Four, WrestleMania, and golf and tennis majors. And for hundreds of guests, On Location provided an elevated UFC experiential package that varied depending on the price. For next month’s UFC 324, packages start at $1,200 and can range to more than 10 times that for the elite VIP treatment.

“If you’re watching a movie, you’re a passenger. If you’re a sports fan, you’re an active participant. But if you’re doing a VIP program with us, then you’re quite literally a part of the show,” Rachel Nabatian, On Location’s general manager of combat sports, told Boardroom.

On Location took me behind the scenes that weekend to get a taste of how a high roller lives at a major UFC fight weekend. The festivities began Friday with the fighter weigh-in ceremony at the 5,600-seat MSG theater. The top level of seats for the event are free and first come, first serve, drawing the most diehard, passionate, and loud UFC fans, but the On Location ticket holders made up the theater’s front few rows.

UFC analyst and decently famous podcaster Joe Rogan, who the UFC declined to make available for interview, emceed the event, bringing every fighter to the main stage to step on a fake scale (the official weights had been recorded earlier in the day, which some On Location clients got to attend), flex their muscles for the crowd, stare down the opponent they’d face the next day, and shake hands with Dana White. Select VIPs even stood on the stage next to White. It’s a dog-and-pony show, a spectacle unique to combat sports. Bringing On Location clients under this circus tent helps transform the UFC package from a one-night event to an entire weekend.

After the ceremonial weigh-in, it was off to rooftop restaurant Versa with 360-degree views of the city for a VIP dinner with appearances and meet-and-greets with UFC fighters past and present. “The athletes actually hang out with our guests, sit down with them, eat with them, and engage in natural, organic conversations,” Nabatean said. “It feels like you’re all part of the same party kicking off the weekend.”

On Location is officially listed as a subsidiary of IMG under the broader TKO Group umbrella, which also owns the UFC. In the company’s third quarter earnings report released on Nov. 5, IMG’s live events and hospitality revenue for the first nine months of 2025 was $558.9 million, down $471.9 million from 2024 largely due to the 2024 Paris Olympics, the first Olympiad On Location’s ever held the rights for, but still an impressive number. Sports hospitality is a big business, and On Location is the unquestioned industry leader.

“For an event like this, there are certain things that are very coveted, very limited, with huge opportunities of access that don’t exist in other places,” Paul Caine, On Location’s president, told Boardroom. “This particular event is in high demand.”

For certain VIPs, Saturday started at noon with fans sitting in on production meetings and rehearsals and would extend deep into the night with seats at the fighters’ post-match press conferences. For everyone who bought the On Location UFC packages for that even, five hours of hospitality at MSG’s Chase Lounge offered fans free food and drink throughout the preliminary bouts and photo ops with UFC legends like Alex Pereira. Some of the higher tier guests got to watch one of the preliminary fights from one of the promoter tables right next to the octagon.

It was at the front of the photo op line at the Chase Lounge where I met one of On Location’s most diehard and devoted UFC superfans. Marci Holt from Springfield, Missouri had just started attending fight nights this year, but has gone to six of them in 2025 with her fiancé Jason. Over the course of the year, Holt began collecting fighters’ autographs on white t-shirts and eventually took those patches and ironed them onto a jacket to create a custom, bespoke fashion statement that fighters across the country began to recognize and appreciate.

But there was one statement, in particular, that Holt made at an On Location event that will last a lifetime. At UFC 314 in Miami on April 12, On Location helped Marci facilitate an unforgettable marriage proposal.

“Jason is obviously a huge fan and I thought, how can I go big or go home, right,” Holt told Boardroom. “So I contacted the On Location ticket guy and said we’re coming and I want to propose and beat him to the bunch because he’d already hinted that he was going to. They were wonderful to work with and helped me with everything.”

As Marci and Jason got to the front of the line to meet UFC fighters Gilbert Burns and Randy Brown, Marci got down on one knee as Burns and Brown held the ring and handed it to her.

“When it was time, he had no idea. He kept thinking we were holding up the line,” she said. “Gilbert is going, ‘you better say yes.’ It was so great. They had champagne for us afterwards and it was the best proposal ever. I understand you pay to come to this, but they go above and beyond.”

The vast majority of On Location fans then took their seats for the main card, but a select few got to go backstage to the locker room to walk out with welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena as he made his way to the octagon to take on Islam Makhachev. During select UFC numbered events like 323 in Las Vegas on Dec. 6, Nabatian said there was a special Dana White all-access package where fans get to go into the octagon for the main event decision, stand next to White as he puts the belt around the champion, and then take photos with the champion.

After Makhachev defeated Della Maddalena by unanimous decision, I joined a group of about 50 VIPs who got to enter the octagon after the action was over for photo ops. As I walked across the ring and tip-toed around the dry blood and other fluids, I noticed how soft the surface of the octagon was and how so many would’ve killed for the opportunity to step inside this specific area. There’s a reason why so many pay thousands of dollars for these types of experiences and why On Location is able to drive so much revenue across the biggest sporting events on earth.

“Our goal is to ensure our guests have these once-in-a-lifetime experiences,” Nabatian said. “We love to see good feedback so we can continue to push the boundary of access with a full weekend of activities.”