For thirty years, three letters have been synonymous with the sport of mixed martial arts. UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has long been the home of the world’s greatest fighters and the biggest names in the sport. Is the UFC’s time at the top coming to an end?
The promotion might be posting bigger numbers than ever, but are seemingly junior players like ONE Championship and PFL hot on the UFC’s heels?
Is the Dana White & UFC’s Reign At the Top In Jeopardy? ONE and PFL Are Coming
It’s clear that the UFC and its parent company, Endeavor, had a great year. The UFC, thanks in no small part to a $1.5 billion deal with ESPN, reported record profits last year. As Endeavor looks to finalize their acquisition of WWE, the UFC reportedly made more money in 2022 than all other MMA and boxing promotions combined.
Much of the UFC’s major growth in the last decade has come from the launchpad of superstars like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey. Rousey wound up in the WWE – and may, post-merger, return to the promotion that made her a household name – and McGregor has been sidelined for two years.
ONE Championship is far behind the UFC in terms of revenue, at about 10% the size of the leading promotion, but ONDE’s foothold in the enormous Asian market is undeniable.
ONE’s ultra-modern approach involves serious social media marketing, with over 7 billion organic views on its videos across various platforms.
UFC champion Francis Ngannou revealed that ONE FC’s online presence, by some measures, outstrips not only the UFC, but the biggest sports on the planet: “more views on YouTube than Premiere League, than NFL, than NBA.”
For the younger generation, raised by gaming and online culture, and increasingly economically disenfranchised, could this be more appealing than UFC’s pay-per-view model?
While the UFC is still undeniably the biggest promotion in the sport, ONE’s surge in popularity has the Asian promotion hot on their heels.
So, too, is the Professional Fighters’ League, or PFL, which just signed former UFC heavyweight Francis Ngannou to an expansive contract. PFL has plans to expand globally, adding specific African and European arms to their organization.
Perhaps, in an increasingly globalized world, the UFC’s primary focus on the US will see them fall behind rival promotions in other, equally lucrative territories.
Why would African or Japanese fans tune in to a weekly UFC Apex card with nameless American fighters when they could see their local heroes? McGregor’s meteoric success came in no small part thanks to the Irish diaspora throughout the world, including the United States.
Could similar global communities – say, the Chinese diaspora, at about 2 billion individuals – echo that success for a promotion more accessible to them?
It’s clear that the UFC won’t be falling behind any time soon, but other players in the market are making major moves. This can only be good for the sport, as competition spurs all the promotions to outdo one another. Only time will tell if the original MMA promotion will stay at the top.