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--:-- Host: Two years ago, as Black Lives Matter protests reached their peak, professional sports leagues nationwide began embracing social justice activism. But one major sports league stood out for its decision not to promote a political stance in their programming. In contrast to the NBA, NFL, and others, the UFC, or Ultimate Fighting Championship, instead allowed individual athletes to speak for themselves.
--:-- Host: When the UFC stood up to COVID lockdowns, going so far as securing an island in the Middle East to ensure they would be the only sport continuing on through the pandemic, they reached new levels of popularity and claimed the mantle of fastest growing sports league in the world.
--:-- Host: In this Sunday episode of Morning Wire, we take a closer look at the rise of UFC. A great team can quickly adapt to a changing world. But how do you quickly build a great team? Well, for that, you need Indeed. With Instant Match, over 80% of employers get quality candidates the moment they sponsor a job. Sign up for Indeed now and get a $75 credit towards your first sponsored job. Plus, earn up to $500 extra in sponsored job credits with Indeed's virtual interviews. Visit Indeed.com slash wire to learn more. Claim your credits at Indeed.com slash wire. Indeed.com slash wire. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.
--:-- Host: Here to discuss UFC's skyrocketing popularity is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. Hi, Cabot.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, John.
--:-- Host: Now, earlier this month, you got a behind-the-scenes look at the UFC operation. Yeah, the UFC went from being viewed as sort of a fringe sports league to a multi-billion dollar business incredibly quickly. And I wanted to see how they did it and how their political and cultural decisions played into their success. So I went on to UFC 274, their latest pay-per-view event in Phoenix, for an all-access experience. I talked with fans. I talked with UFC fighters. I even sat down with their president, Dana White. And I also sat ringside for a doubleheader championship bout.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Okay, but it sounds like a really tough work trip for you. You took one for the team there.
--:-- Host: That is me screaming in excitement. I got a little caught up in the moment, but someone's got to do these tough work trips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, we're glad you did because we want to hear what you learned about this private island and what Dana White had to say about their approach to politics. But first, just how big is UFC?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, they are huge. I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn how big they are. So last year, if you looked at the list of highest paid athletes in the world, you might expect to see NBA star LeBron James or soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo top the list. You probably wouldn't expect to see a mixed martial artist. But according to Forbes, UFC star Conor McGregor brought in $180 million last year, 50 million more than any other athlete on earth.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And the success of McGregor, who's now really become a household name, in many ways marks the culmination of the UFC's rise. Last year alone, they brought in $5.1 billion in revenue. For context, that's more than the NHL earned last year and just below the NBA, which brought in $6 billion in revenue in 2021.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So not bad for a sport that was still illegal in some states just 20 years ago. Yeah, can you give us some quick background here on the history of the UFC?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: When the UFC started back in 1993, it first off looked very different than what you see now. Fighters stepped into the cage wearing just about everything from karate and jujitsu geese to sweatsuits and wrestling shoes. Some wore nothing but tiny little spandex. And it was brutal at times. One of their early slogans was literally, quote, no rules. Fighters were allowed to do just about anything but eye-gouging, biting, or groin strikes.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And in those early days, the company was growing a cult following, but they struggled to garner any mainstream appeal for obvious reasons. Most states found the action too violent, and many even lobbied to keep MMA events from being sanctioned in their states. And more importantly for the UFC, advertisers stayed far away. And as a result, by 2001, the company was nearing bankruptcy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But then something shifted. What was the turning point?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, it's not as much a what as it is a who. The real turning point was a person, Dana White. He's now a massively famous sports figure, but at the time, he was just a trainer for a few fighters. In 2001, he convinced two of his childhood friends to pay $2 million to buy the fledgling company and make him president of the UFC.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, when he took over, the company was so poor, they'd actually sold the rights to UFC.com to a company called User-Friendly Computers. You're kidding. Yeah, they were really strapped for cash. But White was a great businessman, and more importantly, a great promoter. He helped rebrand the company. He implemented new rules and procedures to protect his fighters. And soon they were able to reach a much broader audience.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, the numbers show that in 2020, UFC really exploded in popularity. What happened there?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, this appears to come down to two main things, political protests and more importantly, COVID lockdowns. So we all remember the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matter protests were at their peak following the death of George Floyd. Not only did pretty much every major corporation and brand wade into things and start embracing some of that pro-BLM messaging, but so did almost every sports league.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We might be desensitized to it now, but remember, for 2020, sports were really one of the few places where there were no politics, or at least they weren't prominent. And that's part of why people loved them. But that year we saw the major sports leagues in the U.S. officially embrace BLM and social justice messaging.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Remember the NFL put political slogans on jerseys, helmets, and even painted them on the field. The NBA led broadcasts of playoff games with segments on how the league was standing with Black Lives Matter while the MLB had BLM patches on their jerseys and even stamped on mounds. And we all remember the footage of players in all those leagues kneeling in protest during the national anthem.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right. Well, many fans loved the decision, but there were plenty more who were turned off. Not only did calls for boycotting the NFL and NBA trend on Twitter and other social media platforms, but there did appear to be a corresponding dip in ratings. The NBA, for example, which had players boycotting playoff games and protests of police brutality, saw historic drops in viewership.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, the NBA Finals, which drew well over 12 million viewers per game in 2019, fell 51% in one year, hitting record lows in 2020. But as these leagues continued embracing political messaging, the UFC, as a company-wide policy, refused to engage in any top-down political messaging.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They chose instead to promote free speech for their fighters, and that was intentional, according to Dana White. He now says that he could tell in 2020 that most Americans were tired of politics and just wanted an escape. So he went the opposite route and told his fighters they could say whatever they wanted, but that he would not be forcing them to partake in any political statements.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And he would not, more importantly, be using the UFC platform to push any political stance one way or the other. These guys all have their own causes, things, you know, their own beliefs. We don't muzzle anybody here.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So while the UFC itself has intentionally avoided politics, their fighters are actually incredibly vocal on just about everything, which the fans have come to love. While most athletes in other sports have heavily curated social media timelines and avoid hot-button issues that could offend people one way or the other, UFC fighters are notorious for saying just about anything.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Some athletes, like former champion Tyrone Woodley, for example, wore anti-Trump attire at press conferences and answered every question before a fight by simply saying Black Lives Matter, while others took a knee in protest inside the octagon.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, that type of behavior might not be surprising given what we've seen in other sports. That's kind of par for the course for a lot of athletes. But what makes the UFC different is that there's been just as much activism from athletes on the other side of the political spectrum.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, top-ranked welterweight Colby Covington called Black Lives Matter a complete sham that was anti-American at a press conference. And while other sports teams avoided the White House during President Trump's tenure, Covington took his belt to the Oval Office and met with President Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Others, like former champion Rose Namayuna, spoke out against communism ahead of a bout with a Chinese fighter. Yeah, it's better dead than red, you know, and that's a huge motivating factor of why I fight and I fight for freedom.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We saw a similar message from Benil Dariush, the number four ranked lightweight in the world. Here's what he had to say to Joe Rogan in the octagon after his last victory. I want to dedicate this fight to all the people who've been hurt by Marxist ideologies. There are millions of you and I know it.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I got the chance to sit and talk with Dariush about the environment specifically the UFC's created and how that free speech the fighters enjoy has actually helped them grow an audience. Dana has fallen into the trap that a lot of these other sports are falling into which is getting into politics. He really is just trying to stay out.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And he recognized the best way to stay out is just let the fighters do what they want. When I sat down with Dana head of UFC 274, he explained why he was so intent on keeping the UFC corporate side out of politics, but why he wanted to make sure that fighters had free speech.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Because this is America and it's a free country. And my guys come out and say negative things all the time. They say how they feel. That's what this country was built on, was free speech. And I would never, ever tell somebody what they can or can't say.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So in 2020, while many sports appear to have lost viewers, in large part because of their overt political stands, according to White, the UFC exploded. But it wasn't just their embrace of free speech and their lack of social justice messaging that brought people to the table. It was also the stand they took during COVID lockdowns.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, that's the other big part of this. How did the UFC handle COVID and how did fans respond? Well, in the early days of COVID, when leagues were shutting their doors indefinitely and requiring personnel to stay away from facilities, Dana White and the UFC, again, took a very different approach.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They signaled almost immediately within a week or two of those first lockdowns in March of 2020 that they'd be doing everything in their power to keep their doors open. And after just a month and a half without an event, they returned to action in Jacksonville on May 9th, months and months before any other sport returned.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And according to Dana, that brought an audience that was hungry for live action, and they capitalized. You know, there was nothing else to watch, so they started watching. And once you start watching this, there's no way you go back.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, what about this private island? Yeah, Fight Island, as they call it. It got a lot of attention over COVID. As Dana tells it, when it became clear in April of 2020 that, in large part, foreign fighters were going to have trouble crossing borders during lockdowns, he announced that they'd be setting up operations on what became known as Fight Island.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It was a six-square-mile island in Dubai where a bubble was created that allowed for a complete quarantine. Soon, fighters around the world were flocking to the island, and high-profile fights continued throughout the summer, again, when there was almost no other action on TV.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here's how White describes why he wanted to continue through COVID lockdowns and how the island functioned. This is America. Americans don't quit. We don't give up. We don't hide in our houses. We get out there and we find solutions to problems. We built really the only true bubble that existed during COVID. And it was super successful.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Nobody got sick. Nobody died. And our business grew 46% during the pandemic. So it was a great time for the company.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, given all these factors, it's not hard to see why this sport grew the way it did. Exactly. Cabot, thanks for the reporting. And maybe bring me with you next time you get front row.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I'm not making any promises. Let's see what I can do, though. Okay.
--:-- Host: That's Daily Wire Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips. This brings us to the end of our episode today. As always, thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We look forward to hearing your feedback. Plus, leaving a review and a comment really helps our show. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
