Issue 175

January 2019

ONE Championship is making some bold moves...

Smart moves afoot from ONE Championship. Really smart growth, razor-sharp strategy. Not just the swap-shop signing of the former UFC flyweight record holding Demetrious Johnson, the headline-grab- bing deal with brawling fan-favorite Eddie Alvarez, or the acquisition of Miesha Tate (pictured), the former UFC and Strikeforce women's bantamweight champion, who has been appointed in an executive role as Vice President for the Singapore-based fight promotion. Those three are all well and good. Same as when kickboxing and Muay Thai were added to the live MMA events, same as when ONE co-promoted WBC and Ring Magazine super flyweight world boxing champion, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai on its 'Kingdom of Heroes' card in Bangkok.

But it is the other expanding portfolio, the newly-minted investment into eSports which has completed a rapid case of business chess, and sent a message about its real boldness.

The pieces are certainly moving in an upwardly mobile direction. ONE Championship, which is Asia’s largest martial arts company, with its fight league and media arm, has seen the value in aligning with competitive video gaming. For good reason. The figures suggest its worth, particularly in ONE Championship traditional grazing grounds. Asia currently has 50 per cent of the global eSports audience, with the projection that the eSports industry will be worth $1.4 billion globally by 2020. Those are huge sums. And when there are fallow periods when fight stars are thin on the ground, you can always throw in some new whizz-bang eSports stars.

ONE Championship invested $50 million to hold eSports tournaments, bouncing off the back of martial arts events, which was broadcast live in 2019. The move – branded under ONE eSports – partnered with established game-device maker Razer. Smart, smart move. Generation shifting, and a clear flexing of the intellectual and business muscle that has typified the acumen of One Championship CEO, Chatri Sityodtong.

The eSports-related content includes a raft of innovations, documentaries, weekly magazine shows, and even Reality TV-type series. But marrying up the youngest generation of gamers with the traditional martial arts ethos which Sityodtong has long espoused could yet prove to be one of the most innovative steps taken by any MMA league on the planet.

Martial arts may have thousands of years of history in Asia, with eSports a mere neophyte, yet with growth of almost 40 per cent and close to a billion dollars in revenue expected to be generated by the eSports industry this year – 20 per cent of which is in China – there is clear investment potential. Newzoo, a gaming industry research firm, sees southeast Asia as the fastest-growing eSports market in the world. No-brainer then, really, for Sityodtong. Stretch out a long arm, and wrap it round a growing trend.

Some may say it is not 'a sport'. Yet eSports became a demonstration sport at the 2018 Asian Games, and will become a medal event in 2022. There are signs everywhere that the more sedentary gaming generation are being sought on platforms by the investors.

Amazon recently bought gaming streaming site, Twitch for close to a billion dollars in 2016. We know that ONE Championship’s viewership growth has been exponential. Eyes are on it, certainly. In 2018 alone, it has surpassed a billion video views on its Facebook page, which puts it into the big leagues. In time, who knows, eSports could very well make it the league leader.