Issue 061
April 2010
The printed paper you hold in your hands is one of the few regular and readily available media sources that cover MMA. MMA is still growing, and we cover international MMA as best we can, but there is simply too much going on around the globe to be able to pack into the pages of one magazine (one of the reasons we’ve got so many international, regionally specific editions).
Hardcore fans have to work quite hard to see MMA that isn’t UFC – with TV deals in over 150 countries and territories worldwide, UFC programming is available in half a billion homes. For many fans the UFC is MMA.
Many regional shows and international events reach very few people when compared to the UFC. So how do people get to see these events that aren’t on pay-per-view or local TV?
Internet piracy, of course.
Events get ripped off local broadcasts, compressed and encoded into video files you can watch on your computer. They are uploaded to the Internet and shared among a few tech-savvy fans privy to a few highly clandestine invitation-only sites. Obtaining an event takes a few clicks of the mouse, and is often for free.
As we move into 2010, we’re about to witness a showdown of potentially epic proportions. Dana White has declared war on the pirates who distribute UFC pay-per-views on the net for free. It’s not hard to see why, when you consider the amount of money it stands to lose through lost revenue. Lorenzo Fertitta recently said that there were over 160,000 illegal live streams of one of the UFC’s latest events.
MMA has always had something of a love-hate relationship with the Internet. During the late ‘90s, a period known as the ‘dark days of no cable’, the UFC had no TV exposure at all – it relied purely on ticket gates and video sales.
Fans kept the sport alive by building online communities around forums and websites. The Internet acted as a tool for positive growth, and helped MMA develop where sports such as boxing were left behind. The Internet is still massively important to MMA, and the sport has embraced it like few others – for a simple representation of how much new technology matters, look at how many fighters and personalities are on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
But there is a dark side to the Internet. Truly, where there is a yin, there is a yang. When MMA grew and the UFC started to hit its stride in the early half of the last decade, they found that the Internet (or more specifically, the people who use it) can be just as negative when they so feel. Opinions matter when they’re made public, and the Internet has given a voice to every idiot with a keyboard and an ISP. For an example of how powerful dissent among Internet users can be, look at the proposed rematch between Dan Henderson and Rich Franklin, scrapped because disgruntled fans let their feelings be known on a massive scale.
Dana White has often spoken about his issues with websites and forums, and regularly posts on sites such as the Underground (UG).
In typical Dana White style, he has declared war on the pirates, recently stating “When people start going to jail, people will stop doing it.” There is a lot at stake here: The UFC was estimated to have brought in $350 million in pay-per-view revenue in 2009, so it stands to reason that it would tackle a problem such as this.
But there is potential for this war on piracy to go bad. Dana, who never does things half-heartedly, is likely to make it a big deal. Fans (ironically, not the ones paying any money to support the UFC) could turn against him, much like music lovers did in 2000 when Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich tried to take legal action against websites that allowed his music to be illegally shared. The backlash against Metallica was a PR nightmare, although it didn’t knock them from their position as one of the top heavy-metal bands in the world.
Dealing with Internet piracy is a logistical nightmare. Like a hydra, you can cut off a head but another pops up in its place. Shut down one website and another will shortly replace it.
The ongoing battle between the music industry and the pirates forced a major rethink on the part of the record labels – traditional methods of distribution were revised and it gave way to a new culture of buying music online. The UFC has begun to adopt new methods of distributing its events with streams on its official website, and the ability to pay for, and watch, entire events or single fights.
For all the lawsuits and fines, there is no cure for Internet piracy. Measures can be taken, but are akin to putting a plaster on a severed artery. The UFC may have to accept that piracy will always exist and concentrate its efforts on providing a service people will be willing to pay for. After all, would you prefer a jumpy, pixelated pirate-copy of an event in a foreign language, or to watch it in glorious high-definition with Goldie and Rogan?
