Let me lay my cards on the table right now: I believe that nobody can successfully compete with the UFC.
Not Strikeforce, not Mark Cuban and certainly not M-1. As far as the western world is concerned, world-class mixed martial arts is the UFC.
Their champions are considered the undisputed world champions, and their fighters are the only ones that matter to 95% of the buying audience.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this, what is the biggest story in MMA today? Is it who will fight the best heavyweight fighter in the world? No.
Is it pin-up/crossover star Gina Carano’s upcoming fight on Saturday night? Again, no.
In fact, the biggest story is Anderson Silva’s demolition job over Forest Griffin at UFC 101 and what the future holds for the reigning middleweight champion.
Think about that for a second, if you will. Such is the UFC’s complete dominance over mixed martial arts that their major competitor cannot garner more interest in the supposed world’s best heavyweight than the world’s best middleweight.
A skinny guy from Brazil is more interesting to casual Americans fans than a good-looking all-American girl.
This goes against everything that should hold true about promoting sports or entertainment in the western world.
But why is competing with the UFC so difficult?
To begin with, you have to look at what the UFC had to go through to become a profitable organization.
Even after the Zuffa buy-out they went years without making a profit and even tried to sell the organization in 2004. It was with an attitude of total desperation that they managed to beg Spike to put The Ultimate Fighter on TV and begin the current boom.
You see, it is very easy to hold an MMA event. All you need is a venue, a ring and some fighters. That’s why local promoters across America and Europe are doing decently by promoting minor-league shows that appeal to a local audience.
But running a national promotion is much harder. The scale of the enterprise becomes so much greater. To run a big-time event you can’t rely on the gate alone, you will need it to be a success on PPV as well.
The fighters that will draw on PPV don’t come cheap and pretty much all of them are under contract with the UFC. But even if you somehow get a marketable fight to headline your show, if you don’t have TV exposure then you won’t be able to tell enough people why they should buy the show.
For a perfect example, look at the upcoming Carano-Cyborg fight. Strikeforce has done nothing to promote that fight and any interest left in it is just residual from their days on CBS.
And then there’s the issue of TV production. It’s alright just sticking a ring or a cage in some smoke-filled hall if you’re just looking to hold a small event for the local MMA fans, but if you’re looking to impress casual MMA fans nationwide then your fights need to look good on TV.
Nothing ruins the experience of watching sport on TV faster than poor production; it reduces the impact of the action on screen and makes the whole thing seem small-time.
And that’s a big problem because top-notch television production doesn’t come cheap and if your crew is inexperienced all the money in the world won’t stop them from screwing up.
Look at Affliction: they spent a fortune on producing their first PPV, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump and Michael Buffer from screwing up the names of the fighters. Nor did it hide the fact that their commentary team was so awful.
And this really comes to the heart of the problem.
At the moment no promotion can put together an event that will be better than what the UFC does on a monthly basis. Most of the fighters who Zuffa haven’t got under contract are either old (Frank and Ken Shamrock), unknown to the casual fans (Fedor), unreliable (Nick Diaz, Josh Barnett), untested (Bobby Lashley) or have all sorts of crazy baggage (Fedor).
And nobody can get a regular, high-profile TV platform that will help them hype their events. Because of this their events don’t draw and they can’t generate enough revenue to afford the production values that make UFC events such effective TV shows.
And the thing to remember is this: it took the UFC years to reach this point, and they weren’t up against an already established market leader. We’ve already seen how Dana White has turned on Strikeforce. If a local promoter gets too big for Zuffa’s comfort, they will go after them with all their might. UFC will do its utmost to undermine any rival promotion, whether by counter-programming or signing their biggest ‘stars’.
But the biggest problem is that nobody succeeds by being second-best. As long as the UFC is thriving then nobody is really going to be interested in a rival promotion. The fighters will be wary about wasting their time with another Affliction and sponsors will be leery about supporting a promotion that is constantly disparaged as minor league.
And this will all get through to the fans leading them to wonder why they should bother watching when the UFC, the premier division of MMA, is on the other channel.
Even if a promotion could somehow give the UFC a run for its money in the United States the UFC is so synonymous with MMA in other markets such as Canada, Australia and Europe that Zuffa could always retrench and run more shows outside of America.
As I’ve said before, the logic of sports is monopolistic. People want to see the best fighters competing in the same league/promotion and the resources needed to establish a rebel group make sure an adventure not worth the risk. Unless there is a huge game-changing moment (i.e. boxing free agency rules being applied to fighters or the UFC leaving Spike) then trying to compete with the UFC is impossible. It is no accident that fifteen years after it debut on PPV it still has never been challenged by a rival, national American MMA promotion for a significant length of time.
It’s too late. The UFC is world-class MMA in the western world.
