K-1 World Grand Prix Final Arena Change; Sign of the Times?

If you are a fan of K-1 you've been through a bit of a rollercoaster the past year or so; with the highs from the World Grand Prix finals being action-packed, to the lows of this year's financial problems and lack of shows or communication from FEG about what is going on. It is clear that FEG is being monitored by their mysterious investor, Chinese investment firm PUJI, as K-1's plans have been scaled back all year. When K-1 announced their initial road map it involved tributary GPs, East and West Europe GPs, an Oceania GP, Asia GP and another Final Qualifying GP. We ended up with considerably less.

Now, it looks like K-1 will be moving the K-1 World Grand Prix Finals to a new arena. As NOB outlines, this would be the third arena change in the past few years, with the size dwindling about 32,000 seats. The original venue was the Tokyo Dome, which is known to hold anywhere from 42,000 fans to as many as 60,000 if the seating is done a certain way. Then they moved to the more modest Yokohama Arena, which holds around 17,000, but in recent years were having problems selling it out. Now they have moved to the Ariake Coliseum, which holds a more modest 10,000. The official excuse was they were attempting to put on the Finals in Shanghai but received too many complaints and opted to move it back to Japan.

I'm fairly certain that this is a good move for K-1 and that no one should set off any alarms yet. The costs of running a larger arena and not filling it can cut into revenues and even make a show move into the "red" territory. Even if they were able to fill an arena and dude it by slashing ticket prices, while it might look more impressive, the financial strain is too much for a company attempting to rebuild itself financially.