The Official UFC Thread!
#1201
11-03-2011, 10:17 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831
#1202
11-03-2011, 10:25 PM
LOL, the 7th. They'll be stealing zimmer frames and those electric scooters in that one.
"I live my life 1 tums at a time"
OK, back on topic, sorry.
"I live my life 1 tums at a time"
OK, back on topic, sorry.
#1203
11-04-2011, 01:38 AM
The Rock is a solid guy.. I follow him on twitter and he trains at the weirdest times.. sometimes as early as 3am..
The UFC is obviously trying to attract a new set of followers.. Mandy Moore? isn't she a kid movie star or something?
The UFC is obviously trying to attract a new set of followers.. Mandy Moore? isn't she a kid movie star or something?
#1204
11-04-2011, 12:55 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831
#1205
11-04-2011, 12:55 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831
#1206
11-04-2011, 03:35 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831
#1207
11-04-2011, 04:05 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831
UFC co-owner Fertitta: Fox deal 'a huge commercial'
UFC co-owner Fertitta: Fox deal 'a huge commercial'
By Sergio Non, USA TODAY
Lorenzo Fertitta owns 40.5% of Zuffa, parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Strikeforce.
CAPTION
By Reed Saxon, AP
Even after more than a decade of promoting mixed martial arts, Zuffa CEO Lorenzo Fertitta still sees the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the sport in general as a field largely unknown to much of North America.
"There's still a large group of media and large group of just what I'd call sports fans, casual sports fans, that maybe kind of know what UFC is, but they're not saying, 'Hey, right now I have to be home to watch this fight,' " says Fertitta, whose company owns UFC and Strikeforce. "That's what we're hoping, is to bring millions more people in to see the UFC."
Zuffa will start its biggest marketing effort yet next week when it arrives on the Fox network for a Nov. 12 show featuring UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos. Officials for Zuffa have said their company will be giving up a significant amount of revenue by putting a title fight on free TV, but all they hope to do is turn a small percentage of new viewers into pay-per-view adherents.
"If I can convert 100,000 of those millions that will be watching for the first time into customers for the next 20 years, then our investment on Fox has paid off," Fertitta says.
USA TODAY spoke to Fertitta recently about the seven-year deal with Fox, Zuffa's long-term ambitions, and its view of new competitors. Excerpts from the conversation:
Q: You've been talking to networks periodically for the last few years. Why did the Fox deal happen this time?
Fertitta: I think that all the networks were interested in us since 2006 when they saw the success with us on Spike TV.
In the early days, we made countless trips to Hollywood and to L.A. to meet with all the different networks. Nobody would talk to us. Nobody had any interest in putting us on television.
When we started on Spike TV and we had such success, all the networks started calling, but we were locked up with Spike TV; they had an exclusive on our content.
As the expiration on that deal started to wind down, it was no secret that this Dec. 31, 2011, was basically going to be the end of our relationship if Spike didn't re-up their contract. Once that happened, all the networks started calling and we sat down with all of them.
We're happy that Fox really was the one that came out and made the most sense for us. That's always kind of been our No. 1 dream network to be with is Fox. So it worked out good, I think.
As recently as a few years ago, TV executives including Fox Chairman David Hill said -- at least publicly -- that they had no need to broadcast MMA. What accounts for the change in attitude?
People were kind of sitting on the sidelines waiting to see (if) was this kind of a flash in the pan? Was this a one-year or two-year thing like you see sometimes?
I think they saw the consistency of our ratings; how many different types of programs that we had that rate. I think guys like David Hill really saw this as the opportunity to have a very, very valuable and strong brand to tie into the Fox family.
What's the appeal of Fox for you?
We look at Fox. They're, in our opinion, the No. 1 leader in sports. They broadcast the Super Bowl, Major League Baseball, World Series, serious NCAA football. I think the way that they produce those shows, they're a little bit edgier of a network, even going back to the days when The Simpsons came on; now it's Family Guy and that whole suite of products. They just seem to be a little bit more attuned to males and young males, which obviously is our demographic.
Your co-owner Dana White says you're not mainstream. How much would you agree with that?
I agree. We have definitely carved out our market and our niche, but we are not mainstream. We've had a lot of success, but you certainly can't say, at least here in America, that we're on the level of an NFL or anything of that nature.
But the good news is we have room to grow. I think this is a platform -- a platform like Fox is what can get us there.
I think there's still a large group of media and large group of just what I'd call sports fans, casual sports fans, that maybe kind of know what UFC is, but they're not saying, "Hey, right now I have to be home to watch this fight." That's what we're hoping, is to bring millions more people in to see the UFC.
I know that we've had some controversy from some of the boxing promoters, like Bob Arum, saying we're stupid; why would we put the heavyweight championship on free TV; that's a stupid move.
The reality is this: Our model has been very successful for us, as far as putting our product on free TV to generate new fans, and that's the way we look at it. I'm not concerned about what our bottom line looks like in November; I'm concerned about what it looks like five years from now.
The whole idea is to draw millions of more fans into the group. If I can convert 100,000 of those millions that will be watching for the first time into customers for the next 20 years, then our investment on Fox has paid off.
So when Dana says there's no direct profit in free TV, you see the advantage as just good marketing?
It's a huge commercial. You have to let people sample the product. Once again, there's a lot of people out there that really haven't been exposed to the UFC, don't know guys like Cain Velasquez, how special he is; a guy like Junior Dos Santos. Once you watch them, you create new fans.
We've already proven the model out, right? There was really a very, very niche fan base before Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar fought, and once they did, the sport exploded. We're looking for that same type of effect.
There's a school of thought that says anyone who has even the slightest interest in MMA has had a chance to watch it by now, given that it's been on basic cable for more than six years. Why would Fox make a difference?
It's just a bigger platform. It's a bigger platform, it'll reach more people. They're going to put a significant amount of resources in marketing behind it. I think you're already seeing it with the cross promotions they're doing in the NFL on Sundays; that they're doing in the World Series already. It's makes a lot of sense, being on Fox. It's just a stronger network.
You're on track for 16 pay-per-views this year. Next year, do the four Fox shows take some of those slots, or do they complement the pay-per-view lineup?
We're going to pull back a little bit on the schedule next year. We have 14 pay-per-views. Trying to find the right balance and mix between the free fights on Fox; the free fights on FX; we're going to have, I think, four free fights on Fuel. Then we have to feed the pay-per-view. So we did throttle back a little bit, but they're certainly not going to take the place of it.
But at the same time, you guys have said the quality of the Fox cards would be comparable to pay-per-view lineups.
I can't guarantee they're always going to be championship fights, but they're going to be good fights. Even a fight like (BJ Penn vs. Nick Diaz) could potentially have been a Fox-type card.
Third-party estimates of your pay-per-view sales indicate your buyrates are down this year. You've had a bad run of injuries, but even your previous show -- UFC 136, which was stacked with talent -- was not among your better sellers this year, according to Dana. How do you know interest in UFC simply hasn't peaked?
We feel like there's still a lot of growth left for us here in the U.S. How do we know? A lot of times we run this business on gut feel. You can't really run numbers or statistics. I know the research that we have gotten back, we're seeing our fan base growing. We're seeing our fan base grow particularly in the African-American community, as well as the Hispanic community, and we haven't really tapped (into those groups) as much as we think we can. Now we're starting to dissect all these things and we think there definitely is room to grow.
I will tell you there is no question in my mind that these injuries have absolutely hurt us in a big way. Because to really correctly promote a fight, you literally need four to six months of marketing and planning to get the story lines out there, to get the marketing out there.
Then all of a sudden, you're two or three weeks away from a fight happening, and you've got to flip everything over, change the artwork, change the commercial, story line goes away, you don't have time to build it back up. It has affected us big-time.
When you look at Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard, it takes time to build a pay-per-view star. There are some instances where it happens overnight. But Anderson Silva has been fighting for us since 2006; he didn't really become a huge star until 2011, where you say, "We know when Anderson fights, we're going to do a huge number." It took even St. Pierre five or six years to become a pay-per-view star.
So I think a guy like Frankie Edgar, he's a great fighter. If you're a real fight fan, you can appreciate the way he fights. He's tough as they come. Give him a couple of years. He might be that next guy.
You're moving to Fox just as some of your top stars, like Anderson and Brock Lesnar, are reaching their mid-to-late 30s, which suggests they probably don't have many years left. The only real big, young names that jump out are Jon Jones and Cain Velasquez. What's the difficulty in finding fighters who capture the imagination and become big sellers?
It all seems to work out at the end of the day. It's certainly our job to promote them, but it's also their job to perform and connect with the fans.
Look, we had the same question four years ago, when it was very evident that Chuck was going to be close to the end of his career, and he was the big star. Randy at the same time. Tito kind of went through his downhill. Everybody said, "Oh, there's nobody there."
Guys rise to the occasion. Now you have Anderson. You have GSP. We'll just go through those cycles like anything else, and do our best to promote these guys.
Other individual sports tend to be cyclical in nature, based on their stars at any given moment. How do you avoid those up-and-down cycles?
I don't know that we can do anything to avoid it. The good part for us is, there's so many great athletes that still haven't been discovered. Guys that are in the show that need to continue to mature and grow and we need to get exposure for.
Look at Jon Jones. If we were sitting here two years ago, nobody knew who Jon Jones was. He was an undercard fighter. Now look at the guy -- everybody's saying he has potential to become the greatest fighter ever. We will find those guys. They will emerge. They will perform. It'll all happen.
The most popular sports on Earth are all team sports. How possible is it for any individual sport to reach that level without the geographic ties that make it easy for people to root for teams?
Me and Dana talk about this all the time. You can argue back forth (about) who is the most recognizable athlete in the world, right? Still playing or retired. I'll make the argument that Muhammad Ali, if you look around the world, he's got to be either No. 1 or right up there. Tyson in his heyday, one of the most recognizable people on Earth.
The fact is is that humans, they are fascinated with great fighters; the baddest man on the planet, all that other stuff. So I do think we can transcend other sports with this.
I think that if you look back at big events -- I don't even know what you would compare it to -- but when you look at Ali-Frazier I in 1971, that was an absolute international event. Captured the entire world's imagination and actually affected essentially race in the United States and politics in the United States. There's not many sports teams and sports in general that can affect culture in that way. That's really what we have the ability to do.
Boxing has its peak stars and iconic figures, but in terms of continuous interest, individual sports haven't been able to match the appeal of something like the NFL, with massive audiences coming back every week. How do you attract that kind of popularity, as opposed to doing it two or three times a year?
We actually are doing it. The difference between us and the NFL or us and Major League Baseball, as everybody knows, we have no season. We're going 365. We're running almost every weekend and that shows the strength of what we really have and the opportunities are that we really have.
Look, the NFL's super strong, but if I live in Tampa Bay, how many home games does Tampa have? It's eight games, so they're packing the place.
Growth in popularity brings greater scrutiny. You guys still have an image of rough edges, such as Rampage's behavior and occasional things that Dana says. How do you present an acceptable image to a larger audience without alienating the core fan base that likes that stuff?
You can look at it a couple of different ways. Dana's a promoter; he's a fight promoter. He's out there trying to spread the word. There's times when he's going to say some stuff that might be controversial. I certainly don't think it damages our image or damages the sport or anything like that.
The thing that's special about that is that compared to other figures in sports, who continually water down, filter down what they're really thinking or what's really going on, Dana's the only guy that gives you the straight answer, tells you what he's thinking. At times, maybe that doesn't sit well with people, but he is who he is. He's going to tell you exactly what he's thinking.
I think from a fan perspective, I think they appreciate that. I really do. How many times can you sit there and listen to Roger Goodell or David Stern give an answer that you know is (baloney), you know what I mean? It goes on and on and on.
Dana will get up after a fight and he might ruffle some of our athletes' feathers by saying "Kenny Florian's a choker" or "This fight was terrible" or "This guy wasn't in shape." He calls it, he tells the truth.
It's not like (the way) Don King will get up after you see the worst fight of your life and say, "Oh, that was the greatest fight in the world." You can't trick the public, you know?
But do those rough edges put a cap on your growth?
Who knows? So far there hasn't been. We've risen from ashes to a situation where we're now on Fox Sports and a major player in sports. So far there hasn't been a cap.
At some point, there's going to be a cap. There's a cap for everything. Look at what is going on with the NBA. Major League Baseball is having their issues. Even the NFL is trying to figure out different sources of revenue and how to grow; they're having problems selling tickets and all these other things. So there's always a cap to everything; you've just got to manage around that.
In our case, though, we're still in our infancy. We still have a lot of room to grow here in North America. When I travel around the world, we're just starting.
Much of your role, in particular, has to do with expanding Zuffa overseas. Ultimately, how much of your business will come from the international market?
I'm thinking in the next five years, we'll probably be in a position where North America will represent 50% of our business and the rest of the world will probably represent 50% of our business.
Right now, we're probably 85-90% North America. I think that mix of revenue's going to change, obviously, over time. We've got so many markets that we're just starting to get to.
Brazil's a great example. That market right there can easily become our second-biggest market. U.S., Brazil probably, then Canada. There's an explosion of interest in the UFC now.
I think when you look at Europe -- although we've been in the U.K. now for about five years, now all of a sudden it feels like the UFC in 2005, where you're just starting to feel the groundswell: People talking about it; people training; people going to small shows. And it literally feels like it's going to explode there.
We have a lot more work to do in the other European markets, I'll be honest. Italy, we're just starting. The awareness is not very high. We just got a television in Spain for the first time, so we're just starting from ground zero. Some of the other European countries, we've got a lot of hard work to do.
And if you talk about Asia -- Asia's going to be a long-term investment. I think we'll connect with those markets, because of the culture of martial arts in those markets. When they see the UFC, they like it; they get it. They have to learn a little bit more about the ground game, very similar to what the U.S. had to do, but we think our future there -- ex-Japan, because obviously that's a market that's been around for a long time.
Why has Japan been so tough to break into?
In general, when you look at industries, most industries do have a hard time managing around Japan, whether it be the auto industry or you name it. There are some successes, I'm sure, but at the end of the day, we just felt like we were going to take our time. Wait and let the market figure itself out there. We feel like while the market's big, the competitors have kind of weeded themselves out there; there's no real financially strong competitors there, so now's the time to go in and make a move.
How much of the difficulty in Japan stems from the fact its market developed organically on its own?
The consumer loves our product. Japan seems to be a very closed society when it comes to their kind of club that they have. Our competitors there are fierce competitors and the last thing on Earth they want to do is see the UFC come there and be successful, so I'm sure they're not helping us at all.
How do you grow overseas without diluting the quality of U.S. events?
One of the things that we have found is there seems to be a ton of great talent out there, so finding talent's not an issue. What the issue is, we have to be smart about providing a platform to expose the talent so we can build these stars, so that we have enough to go around so we're not diluting these events. That's really the thing that we're working with.
We started, when we bought the company, we were doing five shows a year. Next year, I think we'll do 32. We've been successful in managing that all the way along.
So 375 fighters is enough?
For the amount of shows that we're doing right now, it is enough. Who knows what will happen in the future? If we add future shows, we'll have to add fighters.
What areas are the most fertile pools of talent?
I think you need to look at it the other way around. The area that you struggle are the big guys, the heavyweights. There doesn't seem to be as many heavyweights out there as say, 145 or 155. From what we've seen in Brazil, there's probably 1,000 Jose Aldos running around Brazil that want to fight for the UFC that are just as talented. So I think you'll see a lot of talent coming from Brazil in those lighter weight classes, '35, '45, '55.
Now that Viacom has dived into MMA promotion with both feet by buying Bellator, is that a good or bad thing for Zuffa?
I look at from the standpoint that when we started this thing, we were massive underdogs. Everybody from the boxing guys to the Hollywood guys, everybody laughed us. They said this is going to be another failure. We had to work hard. We had to use some good old American ingenuity and figure this thing out.
The way I look at the Viacom thing, it's massive competition for us. We're in a situation now where it's literally David vs. Goliath. We're David and Viacom is Goliath. They have $5 billion on their balance sheet. They own as many networks as any other media company, and they can use those networks to promote Bellator and plug them now that they own them.
We've just got to wake up every day and compete as hard as we can. They're going to be a significant competitor. That's fine. We kind of thrive on that.
They say they're not competition because they use a different format and different business model.
That's smart, because the whole thing about competition to gain a foothold in a marketplace is, you have to come up with a different idea. You have to differentiate yourself. If I just do the same thing as a restaurant next door, what's the point? So I give them credit that they have been smart as far as coming up with a different format.
It may take, it may not, but I can tell you this: They definitely have the resources to get behind it. Whether or not it's a good idea, I don't know. But they have resource to do it, and once again, it's David vs. Goliath. We're the little guy.
You think they're eventually going to pay-per-view? Right now they're strictly doing free TV.
I'm sure they're in this to make money, and if you want to make a little side bet, I'll bet you that they're on pay-per-view in the next couple of years.
If you can draw big-enough TV ratings, do you need pay-per-view?
It's different. The thing that's different about that, culturally here in America and in a lot of countries, people are used to paying for fights. It's something that's been around since the 1970s, even when the only way to see a fight would be to go buy a ticket to go to a movie theater to watch it on closed circuit. This whole generation has grown up saying, "If I want to watch that, I've got to pay for it."
Whereas, you start trying to pay-per-view a football game or something like that, culturally, we're not ready for that. That would be like hearings in Congress and stuff like that.
They will definitely make the move to pay-per-view. That's fine. We'll compete.
How much does the purchase of Bellator counter the accusation that you're not a monopoly?
We're not a monopoly. There's no way that you could ever say UFC is a monopoly when exactly this happens. There's no barriers to entry. There might be a point in time where our other competitors, their businesses fail or whatever, but that doesn't prevent somebody from coming back in. Literally anyone can go to the commission offices downtown and file for a promoter's license and go on put on a fight card and go get a television deal.
There's never been a time when more media outlets are looking for mixed martial arts. There's no question that Comcast is interested in MMA because of the interest they showed us. Obviously you've got Spike being opened up now with Viacom. You have CBS, which at one point wanted to get into mixed martial arts and they did, so they're sitting out there. You have the guy that brought mixed martial arts to Showtime now over at HBO. And ESPN can do whatever they want because they have more money than all of us put together.
Listen, the landscape is completely wide open. There's no barrier to entry. Anybody that says that we're a monopoly just doesn't understand what that even means.
Given your position in the market, how serious of a competitor can another promoter be?
At the end of the day, resources go a long way. UFC wouldn't be alive and wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the resources that me and my brother had to be able to fund the losses on this thing and create and build it to what it is, to where it got on its feet.
Viacom, they can do whatever they want. They've got an open checkbook.
Your big breakout came with The Ultimate Fighter in 2005. What was it about TUF that sparked more interest?
The sport had been around, but it really hadn't been exposed, and the exposure it had before really wasn't the sport; it was more the spectacle. People kind of knew what the UFC was, but a lot of the reaction and the connotation was in a negative sense.
I think when it was repackaged and presented as a real sport, and when we focused on the athleticism and these competing against each other and not the violence, I think then it was more accepted by the general public. It allowed the fans to get behind it as a sport.
But the first season of TUF was a spectacle.
Well, the reality part of it was. But it showed, at the same time, the commitment that these guys had; how hard they train; how technical it is to be a mixed martial artist; the time and effort you have to put into it. While they acted like a bunch of nutty teenagers in a house, when they were doing their job, they were pretty serious about it.
Then people obviously saw the fights and saw how technical they were. … People realized this is a real sport.
UFC co-owner Fertitta: Fox deal 'a huge commercial'
By Sergio Non, USA TODAY
Lorenzo Fertitta owns 40.5% of Zuffa, parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Strikeforce.
CAPTION
By Reed Saxon, AP
Even after more than a decade of promoting mixed martial arts, Zuffa CEO Lorenzo Fertitta still sees the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the sport in general as a field largely unknown to much of North America.
"There's still a large group of media and large group of just what I'd call sports fans, casual sports fans, that maybe kind of know what UFC is, but they're not saying, 'Hey, right now I have to be home to watch this fight,' " says Fertitta, whose company owns UFC and Strikeforce. "That's what we're hoping, is to bring millions more people in to see the UFC."
Zuffa will start its biggest marketing effort yet next week when it arrives on the Fox network for a Nov. 12 show featuring UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos. Officials for Zuffa have said their company will be giving up a significant amount of revenue by putting a title fight on free TV, but all they hope to do is turn a small percentage of new viewers into pay-per-view adherents.
"If I can convert 100,000 of those millions that will be watching for the first time into customers for the next 20 years, then our investment on Fox has paid off," Fertitta says.
USA TODAY spoke to Fertitta recently about the seven-year deal with Fox, Zuffa's long-term ambitions, and its view of new competitors. Excerpts from the conversation:
Q: You've been talking to networks periodically for the last few years. Why did the Fox deal happen this time?
Fertitta: I think that all the networks were interested in us since 2006 when they saw the success with us on Spike TV.
In the early days, we made countless trips to Hollywood and to L.A. to meet with all the different networks. Nobody would talk to us. Nobody had any interest in putting us on television.
When we started on Spike TV and we had such success, all the networks started calling, but we were locked up with Spike TV; they had an exclusive on our content.
As the expiration on that deal started to wind down, it was no secret that this Dec. 31, 2011, was basically going to be the end of our relationship if Spike didn't re-up their contract. Once that happened, all the networks started calling and we sat down with all of them.
We're happy that Fox really was the one that came out and made the most sense for us. That's always kind of been our No. 1 dream network to be with is Fox. So it worked out good, I think.
As recently as a few years ago, TV executives including Fox Chairman David Hill said -- at least publicly -- that they had no need to broadcast MMA. What accounts for the change in attitude?
People were kind of sitting on the sidelines waiting to see (if) was this kind of a flash in the pan? Was this a one-year or two-year thing like you see sometimes?
I think they saw the consistency of our ratings; how many different types of programs that we had that rate. I think guys like David Hill really saw this as the opportunity to have a very, very valuable and strong brand to tie into the Fox family.
What's the appeal of Fox for you?
We look at Fox. They're, in our opinion, the No. 1 leader in sports. They broadcast the Super Bowl, Major League Baseball, World Series, serious NCAA football. I think the way that they produce those shows, they're a little bit edgier of a network, even going back to the days when The Simpsons came on; now it's Family Guy and that whole suite of products. They just seem to be a little bit more attuned to males and young males, which obviously is our demographic.
Your co-owner Dana White says you're not mainstream. How much would you agree with that?
I agree. We have definitely carved out our market and our niche, but we are not mainstream. We've had a lot of success, but you certainly can't say, at least here in America, that we're on the level of an NFL or anything of that nature.
But the good news is we have room to grow. I think this is a platform -- a platform like Fox is what can get us there.
I think there's still a large group of media and large group of just what I'd call sports fans, casual sports fans, that maybe kind of know what UFC is, but they're not saying, "Hey, right now I have to be home to watch this fight." That's what we're hoping, is to bring millions more people in to see the UFC.
I know that we've had some controversy from some of the boxing promoters, like Bob Arum, saying we're stupid; why would we put the heavyweight championship on free TV; that's a stupid move.
The reality is this: Our model has been very successful for us, as far as putting our product on free TV to generate new fans, and that's the way we look at it. I'm not concerned about what our bottom line looks like in November; I'm concerned about what it looks like five years from now.
The whole idea is to draw millions of more fans into the group. If I can convert 100,000 of those millions that will be watching for the first time into customers for the next 20 years, then our investment on Fox has paid off.
So when Dana says there's no direct profit in free TV, you see the advantage as just good marketing?
It's a huge commercial. You have to let people sample the product. Once again, there's a lot of people out there that really haven't been exposed to the UFC, don't know guys like Cain Velasquez, how special he is; a guy like Junior Dos Santos. Once you watch them, you create new fans.
We've already proven the model out, right? There was really a very, very niche fan base before Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar fought, and once they did, the sport exploded. We're looking for that same type of effect.
There's a school of thought that says anyone who has even the slightest interest in MMA has had a chance to watch it by now, given that it's been on basic cable for more than six years. Why would Fox make a difference?
It's just a bigger platform. It's a bigger platform, it'll reach more people. They're going to put a significant amount of resources in marketing behind it. I think you're already seeing it with the cross promotions they're doing in the NFL on Sundays; that they're doing in the World Series already. It's makes a lot of sense, being on Fox. It's just a stronger network.
You're on track for 16 pay-per-views this year. Next year, do the four Fox shows take some of those slots, or do they complement the pay-per-view lineup?
We're going to pull back a little bit on the schedule next year. We have 14 pay-per-views. Trying to find the right balance and mix between the free fights on Fox; the free fights on FX; we're going to have, I think, four free fights on Fuel. Then we have to feed the pay-per-view. So we did throttle back a little bit, but they're certainly not going to take the place of it.
But at the same time, you guys have said the quality of the Fox cards would be comparable to pay-per-view lineups.
I can't guarantee they're always going to be championship fights, but they're going to be good fights. Even a fight like (BJ Penn vs. Nick Diaz) could potentially have been a Fox-type card.
Third-party estimates of your pay-per-view sales indicate your buyrates are down this year. You've had a bad run of injuries, but even your previous show -- UFC 136, which was stacked with talent -- was not among your better sellers this year, according to Dana. How do you know interest in UFC simply hasn't peaked?
We feel like there's still a lot of growth left for us here in the U.S. How do we know? A lot of times we run this business on gut feel. You can't really run numbers or statistics. I know the research that we have gotten back, we're seeing our fan base growing. We're seeing our fan base grow particularly in the African-American community, as well as the Hispanic community, and we haven't really tapped (into those groups) as much as we think we can. Now we're starting to dissect all these things and we think there definitely is room to grow.
I will tell you there is no question in my mind that these injuries have absolutely hurt us in a big way. Because to really correctly promote a fight, you literally need four to six months of marketing and planning to get the story lines out there, to get the marketing out there.
Then all of a sudden, you're two or three weeks away from a fight happening, and you've got to flip everything over, change the artwork, change the commercial, story line goes away, you don't have time to build it back up. It has affected us big-time.
When you look at Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard, it takes time to build a pay-per-view star. There are some instances where it happens overnight. But Anderson Silva has been fighting for us since 2006; he didn't really become a huge star until 2011, where you say, "We know when Anderson fights, we're going to do a huge number." It took even St. Pierre five or six years to become a pay-per-view star.
So I think a guy like Frankie Edgar, he's a great fighter. If you're a real fight fan, you can appreciate the way he fights. He's tough as they come. Give him a couple of years. He might be that next guy.
You're moving to Fox just as some of your top stars, like Anderson and Brock Lesnar, are reaching their mid-to-late 30s, which suggests they probably don't have many years left. The only real big, young names that jump out are Jon Jones and Cain Velasquez. What's the difficulty in finding fighters who capture the imagination and become big sellers?
It all seems to work out at the end of the day. It's certainly our job to promote them, but it's also their job to perform and connect with the fans.
Look, we had the same question four years ago, when it was very evident that Chuck was going to be close to the end of his career, and he was the big star. Randy at the same time. Tito kind of went through his downhill. Everybody said, "Oh, there's nobody there."
Guys rise to the occasion. Now you have Anderson. You have GSP. We'll just go through those cycles like anything else, and do our best to promote these guys.
Other individual sports tend to be cyclical in nature, based on their stars at any given moment. How do you avoid those up-and-down cycles?
I don't know that we can do anything to avoid it. The good part for us is, there's so many great athletes that still haven't been discovered. Guys that are in the show that need to continue to mature and grow and we need to get exposure for.
Look at Jon Jones. If we were sitting here two years ago, nobody knew who Jon Jones was. He was an undercard fighter. Now look at the guy -- everybody's saying he has potential to become the greatest fighter ever. We will find those guys. They will emerge. They will perform. It'll all happen.
The most popular sports on Earth are all team sports. How possible is it for any individual sport to reach that level without the geographic ties that make it easy for people to root for teams?
Me and Dana talk about this all the time. You can argue back forth (about) who is the most recognizable athlete in the world, right? Still playing or retired. I'll make the argument that Muhammad Ali, if you look around the world, he's got to be either No. 1 or right up there. Tyson in his heyday, one of the most recognizable people on Earth.
The fact is is that humans, they are fascinated with great fighters; the baddest man on the planet, all that other stuff. So I do think we can transcend other sports with this.
I think that if you look back at big events -- I don't even know what you would compare it to -- but when you look at Ali-Frazier I in 1971, that was an absolute international event. Captured the entire world's imagination and actually affected essentially race in the United States and politics in the United States. There's not many sports teams and sports in general that can affect culture in that way. That's really what we have the ability to do.
Boxing has its peak stars and iconic figures, but in terms of continuous interest, individual sports haven't been able to match the appeal of something like the NFL, with massive audiences coming back every week. How do you attract that kind of popularity, as opposed to doing it two or three times a year?
We actually are doing it. The difference between us and the NFL or us and Major League Baseball, as everybody knows, we have no season. We're going 365. We're running almost every weekend and that shows the strength of what we really have and the opportunities are that we really have.
Look, the NFL's super strong, but if I live in Tampa Bay, how many home games does Tampa have? It's eight games, so they're packing the place.
Growth in popularity brings greater scrutiny. You guys still have an image of rough edges, such as Rampage's behavior and occasional things that Dana says. How do you present an acceptable image to a larger audience without alienating the core fan base that likes that stuff?
You can look at it a couple of different ways. Dana's a promoter; he's a fight promoter. He's out there trying to spread the word. There's times when he's going to say some stuff that might be controversial. I certainly don't think it damages our image or damages the sport or anything like that.
The thing that's special about that is that compared to other figures in sports, who continually water down, filter down what they're really thinking or what's really going on, Dana's the only guy that gives you the straight answer, tells you what he's thinking. At times, maybe that doesn't sit well with people, but he is who he is. He's going to tell you exactly what he's thinking.
I think from a fan perspective, I think they appreciate that. I really do. How many times can you sit there and listen to Roger Goodell or David Stern give an answer that you know is (baloney), you know what I mean? It goes on and on and on.
Dana will get up after a fight and he might ruffle some of our athletes' feathers by saying "Kenny Florian's a choker" or "This fight was terrible" or "This guy wasn't in shape." He calls it, he tells the truth.
It's not like (the way) Don King will get up after you see the worst fight of your life and say, "Oh, that was the greatest fight in the world." You can't trick the public, you know?
But do those rough edges put a cap on your growth?
Who knows? So far there hasn't been. We've risen from ashes to a situation where we're now on Fox Sports and a major player in sports. So far there hasn't been a cap.
At some point, there's going to be a cap. There's a cap for everything. Look at what is going on with the NBA. Major League Baseball is having their issues. Even the NFL is trying to figure out different sources of revenue and how to grow; they're having problems selling tickets and all these other things. So there's always a cap to everything; you've just got to manage around that.
In our case, though, we're still in our infancy. We still have a lot of room to grow here in North America. When I travel around the world, we're just starting.
Much of your role, in particular, has to do with expanding Zuffa overseas. Ultimately, how much of your business will come from the international market?
I'm thinking in the next five years, we'll probably be in a position where North America will represent 50% of our business and the rest of the world will probably represent 50% of our business.
Right now, we're probably 85-90% North America. I think that mix of revenue's going to change, obviously, over time. We've got so many markets that we're just starting to get to.
Brazil's a great example. That market right there can easily become our second-biggest market. U.S., Brazil probably, then Canada. There's an explosion of interest in the UFC now.
I think when you look at Europe -- although we've been in the U.K. now for about five years, now all of a sudden it feels like the UFC in 2005, where you're just starting to feel the groundswell: People talking about it; people training; people going to small shows. And it literally feels like it's going to explode there.
We have a lot more work to do in the other European markets, I'll be honest. Italy, we're just starting. The awareness is not very high. We just got a television in Spain for the first time, so we're just starting from ground zero. Some of the other European countries, we've got a lot of hard work to do.
And if you talk about Asia -- Asia's going to be a long-term investment. I think we'll connect with those markets, because of the culture of martial arts in those markets. When they see the UFC, they like it; they get it. They have to learn a little bit more about the ground game, very similar to what the U.S. had to do, but we think our future there -- ex-Japan, because obviously that's a market that's been around for a long time.
Why has Japan been so tough to break into?
In general, when you look at industries, most industries do have a hard time managing around Japan, whether it be the auto industry or you name it. There are some successes, I'm sure, but at the end of the day, we just felt like we were going to take our time. Wait and let the market figure itself out there. We feel like while the market's big, the competitors have kind of weeded themselves out there; there's no real financially strong competitors there, so now's the time to go in and make a move.
How much of the difficulty in Japan stems from the fact its market developed organically on its own?
The consumer loves our product. Japan seems to be a very closed society when it comes to their kind of club that they have. Our competitors there are fierce competitors and the last thing on Earth they want to do is see the UFC come there and be successful, so I'm sure they're not helping us at all.
How do you grow overseas without diluting the quality of U.S. events?
One of the things that we have found is there seems to be a ton of great talent out there, so finding talent's not an issue. What the issue is, we have to be smart about providing a platform to expose the talent so we can build these stars, so that we have enough to go around so we're not diluting these events. That's really the thing that we're working with.
We started, when we bought the company, we were doing five shows a year. Next year, I think we'll do 32. We've been successful in managing that all the way along.
So 375 fighters is enough?
For the amount of shows that we're doing right now, it is enough. Who knows what will happen in the future? If we add future shows, we'll have to add fighters.
What areas are the most fertile pools of talent?
I think you need to look at it the other way around. The area that you struggle are the big guys, the heavyweights. There doesn't seem to be as many heavyweights out there as say, 145 or 155. From what we've seen in Brazil, there's probably 1,000 Jose Aldos running around Brazil that want to fight for the UFC that are just as talented. So I think you'll see a lot of talent coming from Brazil in those lighter weight classes, '35, '45, '55.
Now that Viacom has dived into MMA promotion with both feet by buying Bellator, is that a good or bad thing for Zuffa?
I look at from the standpoint that when we started this thing, we were massive underdogs. Everybody from the boxing guys to the Hollywood guys, everybody laughed us. They said this is going to be another failure. We had to work hard. We had to use some good old American ingenuity and figure this thing out.
The way I look at the Viacom thing, it's massive competition for us. We're in a situation now where it's literally David vs. Goliath. We're David and Viacom is Goliath. They have $5 billion on their balance sheet. They own as many networks as any other media company, and they can use those networks to promote Bellator and plug them now that they own them.
We've just got to wake up every day and compete as hard as we can. They're going to be a significant competitor. That's fine. We kind of thrive on that.
They say they're not competition because they use a different format and different business model.
That's smart, because the whole thing about competition to gain a foothold in a marketplace is, you have to come up with a different idea. You have to differentiate yourself. If I just do the same thing as a restaurant next door, what's the point? So I give them credit that they have been smart as far as coming up with a different format.
It may take, it may not, but I can tell you this: They definitely have the resources to get behind it. Whether or not it's a good idea, I don't know. But they have resource to do it, and once again, it's David vs. Goliath. We're the little guy.
You think they're eventually going to pay-per-view? Right now they're strictly doing free TV.
I'm sure they're in this to make money, and if you want to make a little side bet, I'll bet you that they're on pay-per-view in the next couple of years.
If you can draw big-enough TV ratings, do you need pay-per-view?
It's different. The thing that's different about that, culturally here in America and in a lot of countries, people are used to paying for fights. It's something that's been around since the 1970s, even when the only way to see a fight would be to go buy a ticket to go to a movie theater to watch it on closed circuit. This whole generation has grown up saying, "If I want to watch that, I've got to pay for it."
Whereas, you start trying to pay-per-view a football game or something like that, culturally, we're not ready for that. That would be like hearings in Congress and stuff like that.
They will definitely make the move to pay-per-view. That's fine. We'll compete.
How much does the purchase of Bellator counter the accusation that you're not a monopoly?
We're not a monopoly. There's no way that you could ever say UFC is a monopoly when exactly this happens. There's no barriers to entry. There might be a point in time where our other competitors, their businesses fail or whatever, but that doesn't prevent somebody from coming back in. Literally anyone can go to the commission offices downtown and file for a promoter's license and go on put on a fight card and go get a television deal.
There's never been a time when more media outlets are looking for mixed martial arts. There's no question that Comcast is interested in MMA because of the interest they showed us. Obviously you've got Spike being opened up now with Viacom. You have CBS, which at one point wanted to get into mixed martial arts and they did, so they're sitting out there. You have the guy that brought mixed martial arts to Showtime now over at HBO. And ESPN can do whatever they want because they have more money than all of us put together.
Listen, the landscape is completely wide open. There's no barrier to entry. Anybody that says that we're a monopoly just doesn't understand what that even means.
Given your position in the market, how serious of a competitor can another promoter be?
At the end of the day, resources go a long way. UFC wouldn't be alive and wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the resources that me and my brother had to be able to fund the losses on this thing and create and build it to what it is, to where it got on its feet.
Viacom, they can do whatever they want. They've got an open checkbook.
Your big breakout came with The Ultimate Fighter in 2005. What was it about TUF that sparked more interest?
The sport had been around, but it really hadn't been exposed, and the exposure it had before really wasn't the sport; it was more the spectacle. People kind of knew what the UFC was, but a lot of the reaction and the connotation was in a negative sense.
I think when it was repackaged and presented as a real sport, and when we focused on the athleticism and these competing against each other and not the violence, I think then it was more accepted by the general public. It allowed the fans to get behind it as a sport.
But the first season of TUF was a spectacle.
Well, the reality part of it was. But it showed, at the same time, the commitment that these guys had; how hard they train; how technical it is to be a mixed martial artist; the time and effort you have to put into it. While they acted like a bunch of nutty teenagers in a house, when they were doing their job, they were pretty serious about it.
Then people obviously saw the fights and saw how technical they were. … People realized this is a real sport.
#1209
11-04-2011, 06:06 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831
I know right...i started reading with enthusiasm and then...it died...alas...lol le sigh
sry
sry
#1210
11-04-2011, 08:06 PM
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Montreal, Qc
Posts: 23,831