Red turns to green: UFC capturing big bucks

Dan C. Weil / Special to FOXSports.com
December 30, 2006

With the popularity of mixed martial arts, a combination of karate, judo, boxing and wrestling, seemingly growing by the day, the activity is gaining a foothold in the sports market place. The Ultimate Fighting Championship bout Saturday in Las Vegas between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz (UFC 66) is expected by UFC officials to draw 1.2 million viewers on pay per view — at $39.95 a pop. That would be a record for mixed martial arts and would be the most broadly watched pay-per-view broadcast since the 2002 boxing match between Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson.

"If they can get 1 million viewers at $40 a person, that conveys a real interest and legitimacy in the sport. We still won't know if this is just a fad or if it has legs, but that will put it more on the map in terms of national scale," said Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a Chicago-based sports business consulting firm.

Lee Berke, president of LHB Sports, a TV sports consulting firm in Scarsdale, NY, was even more optimistic. "This has the potential to become the boxing for a new generation. There are very few sports on pay per view that can generate that level of subscriptions. This seems to be unlocking that opportunity. The only others that come to mind are professional wrestling and boxing."

Mixed martial arts has come a long way from its bare-knuckle roots. While violence still plays a central role, the sport has toned down and slicked up to attract a wider audience and mainstream corporate sponsors.

The strategy has paid off. The February UFC fight with Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture at the MGM in Las Vegas produced $3.4 million in gate revenue, thanks to a paid attendance of 10,301. While top-notch boxing dwarfs that output with gate revenue as high $15 million, clearly the sport is growing traction.

The number of TV viewers is rising as well. The first bout between Ortiz and Liddell in April 2004 chalked up about 105,000 buys on pay per view, which was deemed outstanding at the time.

Early last year, The Ultimate Fighter reality show debuted on Spike TV, which is part of Viacom's MTV Networks. Spike's broadcast of the two-hour UFC fight card in October of this year drew an average of 4.2 million viewers, including 1.6 million in the coveted male 18-34 demographic. UFC topped Game 1 of the Tigers-A's ALCS showdown in that demo by 500,000 viewers.

Spike, with its core audience of young men with a thirst for action, is a perfect medium for mixed martial arts, says John Korff, head of New York City-based Korff Enterprises, which has organized triathlons, tennis and golf events. "Spike is probably as close as they're going to come to the demographic they're trying to reach without costing a fortune. It's not like you're going there to see My Friend Flicka there."

And Korff believes UFC is on the right track with its pay-per-view events as well. "They can probably make more money broadcasting on pay per view," he said. "It's not like you will get a whole lot of converts for mixed martial arts. If you're a fan you know who you are. You're not going to get a mother clicking through the dial to see if she can watch Leave it to Beaver , Ice Capades or UFC. You probably have high testosterone 19-year-olds eating their 93rd Twinkie and drinking Red Bull out the yin yang. That's your audience."

While some may question whether mixed martial arts is truly a sport, Korff isn't one of them. "If they get 1 million viewers, whether they call themselves a sport or an ATM machine, they're doing something right," he said. "ESPN is broadcasting poker. I don't know if that's a sport, but it makes money. If a guy's out there sweating and getting beat up, it sounds like a sport to me."

Korff noted that the idea of what constitutes a legitimate sport has changed greatly over the last 20 years. "We started with baseball, football and basketball, and then we had the proliferation of new activities, which some would call activities, and others would call sports," he said. "A few years ago, no one would have thought that the X Games were legitimate, and now half of those events are in the Olympics."

Korff doesn't see mixed martial arts as too dissimilar to NFL football. "This is just another offshoot of a violent sport. If we saw what some of the guys in the NFL do without their helmets on, I bet there are a fair number of fingers being stuck in places they don't belong. This isn't far from that."

To be sure, the idea of football is to outscore your opponent, while in mixed martial arts, the winner is the only man left standing. "In football, violence is incidental to the ultimate goal," Ganis said. "In the UFC, violence is the ultimate goal."

Of course, many young men (and some women too) are attracted to violence. "The young males and females who watch Spike are prone to want violence," Ganis said. "They have grown up with animated violence in video games and staged violence in wrestling entertainment. This is the real thing."

For the parents of these youngsters, on the other hand, the appeal of violence doesn't always have such a positive note. "A lot of them would agree that it's not a great commentary on our culture," Ganis acknowledged.

For a generation weaned on the internet, mixed martial arts offers more than a vicarious thrill of violence, said Kathleen Davis, president of Fort Lauderdale-based Sports Management Research Institute. "Fringe sports, whether it's rock climbing, para-sailing, paint ball or mixed martial arts, provide an interesting way for people to add entertainment to their leisure time," she said. "Social interaction is limited on the internet. People are looking for more excitement and socializing opportunities."

But mixed martial arts has the potential to be a lot more than a fringe sport, said Paul Swangard, director of the University of Oregon's sports marketing center. "They've found themselves in an opportunity where the main competition — boxing — is a vulnerable sport that targets a similar audience," he said. "They are offering something that's getting people to switch over. It's a statement to boxing that it doesn't own anything in terms of the market."

Dan Weil is a frequent FOXSports.com contributor, and can be reached at his e-mail address: dancweil@aol.com