UFC: The business of bliksem

They say there’s no better prize than winning in the name of your country. While that’s certainly a sweet sentiment, I’m willing to bet that Dricus du Plessis is equally happy about the reported $1 million that he just won in his fight against Sean Strickland.

The majority of us probably had no exposure to the UFC before we sat on our couches at 05:00 on Sunday morning, bleary-eyed but totally ready to watch two half-clad men beat each other up in the name of national pride. For the sake of transparency, I’ll make no secret of the fact that I knew nothing about the UFC (or MMA as a whole, for that matter) until the swelling chorus of support around Dricus “Stillknocks” du Plessis and his quest for the world championship caught my attention.

With the fight won (well done Dricus!) and my curiosity piqued, I set out on a little Sunday-afternoon research expedition, which then turned into a full-on dive down the rabbit hole that is competitive fighting.

Here’s what I learned:

There’s a market for combat

For as long as human beings have existed, we’ve wanted to fight each other. And practically for as long as we’ve wanted to fight each other, we’ve also enjoyed watching other people fight. Thus, we not only invented things like boxing, wrestling, karate and jiu-jitsu for self defence, but also, to some degree, for showmanship.

In the early 1990s, a man named Art Davie decided that he wanted to monetise this showmanship in a new way. Now, charging an audience a fee to watch a fight was not a new idea by a long shot. But usually when people fought in the ring, fight organisers would do their best to make sure that the opponents were evenly matched in terms of their size and skill. Art Davie reckoned the only way to inject some real excitement into competitive fighting was to turn that tradition on its head.

Art was fascinated by the “Gracies in Action” videos that he had seen. This was a video-series, produced by the Gracie family of Brazil, which featured Gracie jiu-jitsu students defeating martial artists of various disciplines such as karate, kung fu, and kickboxing in unarmed, full-contact matches. With this seed planted in his brain, Art approached director and producer John Milius and jiu-jitsu master Rorian Gracie with the idea to host an eight-man single-elimination tournament called “War of the Worlds”. The competition would showcase martial artists from diverse disciplines engaging in unrestricted combat, with the goal of determining the superior martial art.

In other words: a classically trained boxer could take on a karate master in the ring, with no weight classes separating them. Obviously, there was massive entertainment potential here. Davie spearheaded the business plan, and a group of 28 investors chipped in the startup cash for WOW Promotions, all geared up to turn the tournament into a television sensation under John Milius’ direction. Fast forward to 1993, and WOW Promotions was on the hunt for a TV partner, which they found in Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG).

Reading through anecdotes of how that first WOW event came together really gives you a taste of how unrestricted the 1990s were. For starters, the event was marketed to both investors and potential audiences as “a real-life version of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat”. And then there’s the creation of the signature Octagon, which came about because organisers Davie and Gracie were unhappy with the idea of a traditional roped ring.

Claiming that a roped ring would give fighters too many opportunities to “escape” their opponents, they instead suggested such alternatives as 1) a moat full of alligators, 2) a razor-wire barrier, 3) a line of men in togas or 4) an electric fence. While all of these sound like they have spectacular viewing potential, it is perhaps best for all fighters involved that set designer Jason Cusson came up with the much tamer chain-link Octagon, which is the shape still associated with the sport today.

The moer the merrier

This inaugural WOW match – which was retrospectively dubbed UFC 1 – was met with massive amounts of enthusiasm and almost equal amounts of criticism. In 1996, US Senator John McCain was appalled when he saw a tape of an earlier UFC fight. He thought it was abhorrent and decided to lead a campaign to ban the UFC and what he called “human cockfighting.”

McCain went all out, sending letters to the governors of all 50 U.S. states, urging them to hop on the ban(d)wagon. 36 states heard the call and enacted laws banning the “no-holds-barred” action, with New York dropping the ban hammer right before UFC 12, forcing the UFC to pack its bags and relocate to Dothan, Alabama. But still the show went on, airing on DirecTV PPV, even though it was playing to a more intimate crowd compared to the cable pay-per-view giants of the time.

While UFC 1 was promoted under the tagline “There are no rules”, a slew of injuries led to the introduction of new rules after practically every UFC event. In the face of constant criticism, the UFC decided to play nice and teamed up with state athletic commissions, making a few tweaks to its rulebook to keep things classy while holding onto the essence of striking and grappling.

By UFC 12, weight classes were in and fish-hooking (the practice of sticking fingers in an opponent’s mouth or nostrils and pulling outwards) was out. Fast forward to UFC 14, and gloves became a must-have, while kicking someone’s head when they’re down became a must-not. After UFC 15, some limits were put on hair pulling, as well as on strikes to the back of the neck and head, headbutting, small-joint manipulations, and groin strikes.

For the UFC and their TV partner SEG, it was a long and arduous battle to transform from a spectacle to a full-fledged sport, all without losing the interest of a rabid fanbase that wanted nothing more than the no-holds-barred violence they had been promised. After doing the hard yards to get sanctioning, SEG found themselves teetering on the edge of financial ruin.

Then, in 2000, the dynamic trio of Station Casinos bigwigs Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, along with their business partner Dana White, swooped in with a proposition to buy the UFC. Fast forward a month to January 2001, and voila! The Fertittas sealed the deal, purchasing the UFC for a cool $2 million and giving birth to Zuffa, LLC, the proud parent company overseeing the UFC.

Nowhere to go but up

Fast forward past many, many milestones – including a merger with World Extreme Cagefighting in 2010, a seven-year broadcast deal signed with Fox Sports in 2011, the signing of Ronda Rousey (the first female UFC champion) in 2012, the 2016 sale to WME-IMG for $4.025 billion and the subsequent 2021 buyout of Zuffa by Endeavour – and it looks as though the history of the UFC is as nailbiting as the final round in a championship fight.

On September 12, 2023, Endeavor and WWE decided to join forces. They fused into a brand-new, stock-market-hyped company under the symbol “TKO,” with Endeavor’s CEO, Ari Emanuel, calling the shots. WWE’s shareholders snagged a 49% slice of the action, and Vince McMahon was named executive chairman. The UFC was valued at a whopping $12.1 billion at the time of the merger.

Not bad for a business that was built on bloodlust and tamed by sanctions, wouldn’t you say?

About the author:

Dominique Olivier is a fine arts graduate who recently learnt what HEPS means. Although she’s really enjoying learning about the markets, she still doesn’t regret studying art instead.

She brings her love of storytelling and trivia to Ghost Mail, with The Finance Ghost adding a sprinkling of investment knowledge to her work.

Dominique is a freelance writer at Wordy Girl Writes and can be reached on LinkedIn here.