I have been involved in MMA since 1999. I have watched the sport grow substantially. I was present for countless great moments, witnessing many of the most iconic highlights our sport has ever seen. Over more than a quarter-century of involvement, the sport has exploded, become mainstream, and brought fame and riches beyond the wildest dreams for some.
But everything in life changes. Nothing is permanent. In our case, the sport also has verticalized to an extreme at which some fear about its long-term health.
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What I mean by this is that worldwide there are more and more people practicing the sport, training in all its aspects with the dream of one day becoming the star that inspired them. For many years, this really happened and was a viable path to fertilizing new talent. Kids would watch fights and be enamored by them. They would start training, and a few years down the line, they had a real chance of becoming something for their efforts. But as time has gone on, this has become decreasingly desirable.
With UFC 1 less than 35 years old, an argument can be made MMA is still in its infancy compared to other major global sports. But if we consider the amount of people watching and the amount of money that has been generated (and the lack that has been fairly distributed below the top levels), I do not think we can continue to argue MMA is still in an embryonic stage.
From my perspective, we are approaching a crisis. Scratch that: We are already in a state of crisis.
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The UFC, for example, has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. From its move from FOX to ESPN to Paramount, the sport’s leading promotion has continued to flourish, and likewise for the revenue going into the pockets of the shot callers. But here is where I think things have started to fall apart.
The sole focus of UFC is not prioritizing athletes or the sport itself, but instead a paranoiac effort to make more and more money, with no comparative effort to improve the sport or the wellbeing of the athletes. On the contrary, what I see is more efforts to cut costs. I find this crazy. While overall revenue for UFC steadily grows year over year, the money put back into the sport and its athletes, which are the lifeblood, remains stable at best.
If you look at what a beginner or mid-level fighter is making and the quantity of fights they manage to get into, and what it costs for each fighter to prepare for a fight, they are selling their product at a loss. Fighters work their asses off, make all kinds of sacrifices to fulfill a dream without most of them realizing how distant that dream is now from reality. Sponsorships? They are nearly impossible to secure for my fighters at a level that would subsidize these fight purses. Why would a company sponsor an athlete when they cannot promote the brand on any UFC platforms when it matters most? The Reebok deal in 2015 killed all that, and that part of the sport’s enocomy remains burdened by the current Venum deal.
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Before these uniform sponsorships came into place with UFC, and has since been followed by other MMA promotions, there was a flourishing ecosystem investing in MMA and the fighters. But they were put out of business overnight, never to return in a sustainable way.
Besides all this, there are no other events outside of the UFC that come even close to generating significance at a similar level, increasing the verticalization I describe. The major ones that are out there besides UFC, which are becoming fewer and further between, are all upside down financially – pretty nuts if you consider how much the sport has grown at the base.
I do not own the truth. I do not know how this will play out, other than being able to see this crisis rising. We have become a sport based more on clicks and social media following than on athletic merit. All that is sought is notoriety and profit. Comparatively very little effort is being made to better the sport. This imbalance is catching up.
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I feel MMA is losing its identity to the bottom line. This has happened before in other sports. In surfing, for example, brands like Quiksilver and Onbongo were profitable and sustainable. But they were acquired by investment entities whose only interest was profit, and they lost the very thing that made them profitable and sustainable in the first place: their identity.
I see similar happening here with the UFC.
I do not have a crystal ball. Hopefully, other investors will come in with concrete and sustainable projects, with longer-term views, and the sport will democratize. But unfortunately, at least I cannot see that happening at the moment.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: The UFC has pushed MMA into ‘a state of crisis.’ This is how.
