The Heat and the Shine

It's no secret that UFC is short on star power.  Ronda may be gone.  Conor is definitely on hiatus.  Jon Jones is suspended, and calling him a major star was a stretch to begin with. UFC, which operates more like a pro wrestling promotion than a sports organization, is taking a tried and true tact: they are trying to create new stars. Creating new stars isn't easy, or even simple.  One reason is obvious: nobody knows who the public will embrace.  Another reason is less obvious: people who aren't Chosen can get jealous. Tyron Woodley appears to be a chosen one for UFC.  He accompanied Dana White to the Super Bowl and he has gotten panel time on UFC studio shows.  In many ways, it makes sense.  He wants to be a star.  He doesn't mind hyping his fights.  He is explosive.  His public persona is not reckless. Woodley also has the good fortune of being in the right weight class with the right set of competing Champions.  The Welterweight division has a reputation for

WWE Monday Night Raw ratings took a header this week, in every respect.  Compared to last week, total viewership was down 15%, ratings in the 18-49 year-old demographic were down about 20% and 18-34 ratings were down even more than that. There are reasons, of course.  The previous week opened in the glow of a well-received Royal Rumble show, opened with Paul Heyman on the stick and closed with Triple H.  This week opened and closed with Samoa Joe. Samoa Joe has his fans, but he's not a star.  That's important right now because WWE is facing new competition on Monday nights from another star-driven business: professional basketball. Sports fans in the United States may have heard about the National Basketball Association (NBA) receiving a lucrative new television contract.  They may not have heard that the NBA only received an incremental increase in rights fees for existing broadcasts.  The big money increase was due to allowing television networks to air more hours of l

On Saturday, UFC drew their best viewership for a Fox Sports 1 (FS1) special since last year.  Even more impressive, the show featured a main event of The Korean Zombie vs. Dennis Bermudez, two fighters not known for their star power. Unfortunately for UFC (and FS1, for that matter),  the underlying numbers weren't so good.  Compared to the previous FS1 show (BJ Penn vs. Yair Rodriguez on a Sunday night), ratings in the 18-34 year-old demographic fell by nearly one-third.  Compared to last year's pre- Super Bowl special on FS1 (a show originally scheduled for pay-per-view, headlined by Johnny Hendricks vs. Wonderboy) fewer than half as many 18-34 year-olds watched. This is not good for UFC or FS1.  Both organizations want viewers, but they want those viewers to be relatively young.  Last Saturday's telecast pulled a strong audience among people over 50 years-old (roughly even with a year ago; up over one-third compared to last month).  Soon-to-be-unfortunately for Your

The fifteen year anniversary of Vince McMahon's ill-fated foray into professional football has spurred renewed interest in the XFL.  ESPN ran a "30 for 30" documentary on the subject last week.  Dave Meltzer recapped the XFL's history on Wrestling Observer Radio this morning. Conventional wisdom is that the XFL was doomed before it began.  The league's 50% owners, NBC, showed signs of abandoning the project after the second of its twelve weeks.  (Key quote: "We are absolutely committed to [the XFL] for the full season," with no mention of the second contracted season.)  Television viewership collapsed almost minute-by-minute following a blockbuster opening week debut.  Vince McMahon's penchant for publicity stunts (bikini'd cheerleaders in swimming pools, Jim Ross as lead television announcer, promises of punt returners getting Jacked Up , et al. ) turned off mainstream sports media types and, likely, many football fans. The greatest sin

The death of pro wrestling territories was authored long ago.  Maybe it's time for a rewrite. Credit Vince McMahon, blame cable television , whatever.  They're gone.  For now. Conventional wisdom is that advances in technology preclude a return to the territory days.  Information technology is too cheap and production technology is too expensive.  The former allows people to explore beyond their local wrestling product.  The latter makes it too impossible for local wrestling to compete with WWE. Perhaps.  Conventional wisdom is often wise, but sometimes it's off base.  (I'd insert a line about politics, but I don't want to be banned by Indy promoters.) Conventional wisdom goes awry when it masquerades as fundamental truth.  Is it fundamentally true that, when people are allowed to sample a "major league" product, they ignore their local product?  Does flashier television production fundamentally disqualify simpler productions from being emb

UFC is expected to set a company record for single-night revenue on November 12, 2016.  That is the night that Conor McGregor chases the UFC Lightweight (155 lb.) Championship at UFC 205 in New York City. In digesting the previous paragraph, three things stand out.  One: UFC's business model is largely based around massive revenue intakes for single-night events.  Two: With rare exceptions, there is little to distinguish one UFC pay-per-view from the other.  A new number pops up every month or so, some fights happen, and the company moves on to the next one.  Three: A man who has never competed as a UFC Lightweight is about to challenge for the UFC Lightweight Championship. Maybe there should be a fourth: UFC fans love it.  UFC is having no trouble making money right now.  Their business model works. Does it work well enough, though? UFC's new owners, WME-IMG, used a very large loan to purchase UFC: $1.8 billion, to be exact.  The new owners are going to have to increa

UFC made headlines in the financial news world yesterday, and not in a good way.  Bloomberg reported that the United States Federal Reserve admonished Goldman Sachs over WME-IMG's purchase of UFC. The story was circulated by the usual cadre of anti-UFC folks in the MMA world, but that doesn't mean that it's benign. Let's go through exactly how the UFC sale went down and what the Fed was complaining about. Some time ago, UFC's former owners, Zuffa, LLC (led by the Fertitta brothers) approached Goldman Sachs about brokering a sale. Approaching a bank about brokering a sale is standard operating procedure when the seller wants to go on the open market in order to attract debt-driven buyers.  The idea is that Zuffa didn't want to limit themselves to selling to only people/companies who have billions of dollars of cash on hand.  Zuffa wanted to be able to sell to people/companies to are willing to take on billions of dollars in debt, and then pay Zuffa with