Issue 113

April 2014

Nobody likes change. Not if it disrupts their well-worn pathways. In the seven hours between the UFC launching Fight Pass on the Saturday afternoon, and Anderson Silva wrapping his leg around Chris Weidman’s to steal the headlines (UFC 168), there was plenty of talk, and a little confusion, over how it would work.

Gareth A Davies

MMA and Boxing Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, London, on the UFC’s, new TV subscription package, Fight Pass

For the price of $9.99 per month, UFC fans get to see 10 overseas cards a year and gain access to the UFC’s entire video library, which includes all seasons of TUF, and the bought-out companies like WEC and Pride. However, it’s the live event set-up that will be a complex matrix, depending on which country you are watching from.

Some territories feature a subscription payment, while others offer pay-per-view and free-to-air, as in North America. There have been comparisons drawn already with the WWE’s digital network, unfavorably. While another issue that has been raised is some of the fighters who need the exposure won’t get the airtime, but that’s probably true already.  

Still, despite any reservations, it hasn’t stopped 100,000 fans signing up to Fight Pass in the first month, and those numbers are only set to grow when it eventually becomes available globally. It’s now available in the UK and Ireland, and set for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) territories toward the end of March. 

“The issue for us is managing the different rights that we’ve licensed in other territories,” UFC executive Marshall Zelaznik explains. “Obviously, we have more and more content coming online which means further negotiations with television and in this role that I have, it’s not only rolling out Fight Pass and managing our digital content, but it’s all the TV deals around the world that go with it.”

For example, all EMEA events this year are expected to be on Fight Pass in the US, with negotiations in Europe taking place to screen them on network TV. The old-style Facebook fights, of course, have gone, and are now also a part of the Fight Pass delivery.

“The focus now is the delivery of all of the produced programming and live events we have, but there’s a checkerboard of work that has to be done to make sure that we comply with all of our contracts, and that we have sign-off from all our partners,” Zelaznik adds. “We have good partners around the world and we’re going to do nothing to upset them, but we want to keep our business growing that way.”

He reveals that when the UFC consulted with fans through focus groups, a ‘one-stop-shop’ was favored. “When we did the focus groups here, primarily in the US, we spoke to our avid fans. We found the thing that got them as excited about the product as the live portion of it, whatever the live content is, was the fact they knew they could come to one place to get all the content. They didn’t have to search on YouTube, or go look for it and hope to get lucky and find it somewhere.

“It is complex. When it comes to the curation of the site and making sure the product is feeding fans, we are very good at listening to our fans. We’re always accessible through Twitter and we are a company that really cares what our fans think. We are going to be creating new content, and there are endless ideas on what we should be doing with this.”

Some are calling it over saturation, but the UFC believes it’s simply offering further opportunity for the very best fighters to compete in the industry-leading organization.

Zelaznik continues: “The other thing we learned in this focus group is there’s a perception – and I think rightfully so – that there’s a lot of talent that exists out in the world but we don’t have the shelf space for this talent. These fights are going to give opportunities to fighters who might not have ever had the opportunity to get discovered.”

Indeed, even the likes of champions Jon Jones and Cain Velasquez fought on early prelims when they started out inside the Octagon. The bottom line is that there will be, and have been, teething issues at the start, but Zelaznik is insistent the UFC will be listening.

“We are prepared to hear people’s comments and any issues they have. We know how to put on events; Joe Silva and Sean Shelby know how to find fighters. We’re very bullish on what this could be and when you talk about saturation I do think I know what the territory heads are saying in Asia and Europe, and it’s not going to stop here.

“This isn’t the year of six events in Europe, six events in Asia, and we sit back… It could easily be 18 in EMEA and 12 more in Asia next year.

“Those are sort of the aspirations that we have and this new Fight Pass we have launched will give the opportunity to get all the events on there. This thing is going to continue to morph and grow. Right now, it’s a seedling. Watch it grow in to an oak.”