Issue 060

March 2010

The ambition of Zuffa, the erudite company behind the success of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, knows no bounds, and rightly so. We are looking at a new world order – global domination by the UFC.

Already in 2010, Sydney, London, Montreal and, potentially, New York are slated for events. Zuffa are empire building on a grand scale. But are there dangers in moving too quickly? Do they need crossover stars in each territory? Will the UFC fighter roster become too thin, too quickly?

The company – sometimes Machiavellian, sometimes experimental – yet clearly on the money in decision-making, has taken the sport from niche popularity to mainstream acceptance. No question. They are credited with owning in the region of 90% of the entire MMA industry. In that sense, the sport is in very good hands. 

And to give the small-staffed, entrepreneurial group their dues, in a time of global strife and world recession, when governments have been propping up banks and institutions as if they were inebriated barroom drunks swaying bellyful with beer, any pin-pricks aimed at the UFC bubble have bounced away like rubber off glass. 

In short, the UFC as a business entity appears impregnable, and has enjoyed 20 months of unprecedented growth and expansion, impervious to the worst world recession in 70 years. Dana White and the Fertitta brothers have pressed on with their plans, seeing pathways to viral growth online and expansion on planet Earth – and what plans they have. We all heard Dana White’s remarks last year that those plans included expanding UFC as the sport of MMA so that it matched association football worldwide. We’ll see.  

In the last 30 months, there has been a near 60% increase in UFC shows, and alongside that an increase in the roster so expertly handled by Joe Silva, the matchmaker without whom many of these explosive events could not be so compelling. It makes sense to expand, but there are also reasons to believe that the UFC is also moving at too fast a pace. Too fast, that is, if it wants to put roots down properly in other territories it intends to expand into.  

Unlike other American sports – if we classify the UFC for a second as an ‘American’ sport – such as baseball and gridiron, MMA has crossed continents as a neophyte sport. Bringing gridiron around the world now is simply too late. The detail and development of the sport has gone far beyond other nations catching up.  

It is not so with the UFC. But new fans, not fighters, are the key to its expansion. The fighters will come anyway. UFC 105 in Manchester last year showed how quickly British fighters have come on, yet it is disappointing to see that the UFC did not detail at least four events in the UK this year. Instead, we have more in mainland Europe, Sydney, and Abu Dhabi.  

Is it imperialism from Zuffa? Some people have said so, but I see it more as opportunism. In the plans for global domination they will need secure media bases, and local fighters to become crossover stars.  

Brazil has Wanderlei Silva, Canada has GSP, and the US has a roster of fighters to choose from alongside the likes of Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell. British fighters Dan Hardy and Michael Bisping are sports stars in their own right, but will not become crossover stars in the UK if they fight once a year on home territory, and twice elsewhere. Something will have to give at some point, and how it is handled is the key to the UFC’s worldwide success.  

I spoke to Marshall Zelaznik, the UFC’s European president, about this. He told me, “The local-hero element cannot be underestimated in our plans. There is a patriocentric element in overseas territories. As you become an MMA fan, you want to see the best fighters in the world, but fans in other countries do root for a local hero, and that is a key element to success in other markets.”  It is something I will watch with interest.  

Will UFC bring WEC into its mainstream mix?

Remember that Zuffa also own World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC), an organization that showcases lighter weight-classes. It could be a solution to the UFC’s rapid expansion to bring in two lighter weight-classes. It would also open the market to South American and Asian nations.  

Has TUF run its course?

And talking about global growth, incremental development and world business forecasts, let us remember it was TUF which created the oxygen of publicity for the UFC to mushroom in the US when Stephan Bonnar vs Forrest Griffin captured the public imagination, and the sport suddenly crossed over into the mainstream. TUF 10 was dire, the worst series yet. Has TUF run its course? We’ll find out after the next series. If a series with Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell as coaches bombs, then it really is all over.