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Thursday, March 28, 2024

ONE beats UFC in Asia

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THE Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is widely regarded as the premier organization in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. However, the landscape drastically changed when ONE Championship arrived in the scene nearly six years ago.

ONE Championship has taken the sport in Asia to new heights as it broadcasts to one billion homes in over 118 countries all around the world.

Since its humble beginnings in late 2011, ONE Championship has grown from a mere upstart with dreams of bringing MMA to the mainstream, into a sporting and entertainment powerhouse taking key Asian markets by storm.

The promotion, which is led by former ESPN Star Sports senior executive Victor Cui, has undoubtedly risen to greater heights in the past few years alongside achieving its goal of making MMA a household name.

“ONE Championship is popular because we built this organization with the Asian people in mind. Asia is the birthplace of martial arts and we felt it was right to showcase all the local talent here to the rest of the world,” Cui said.

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Aside from having the best and brightest MMA athletes from across the globe like Bibiano Fernandes, Ben Askren, Roger Gracie, Brandon Vera and Shinya Aoki, ONE Championship has also been pivotal in the development of local and homegrown MMA talents like the Philippines’ Eduard Folayang, Singapore’s Angela Lee and Myanmar’s Aung La N Sang.

The biggest local and global brands in the world have been attracted to the organization and a number of key partnerships have formed over the years. The list includes Disney, Marvel, LG, Kawasaki, Panasonic, Haier, NagaWorld, Universal Music Group and Tune Talk, to name a few. The company’s ability to form deals that are mutually beneficial to all parties has been essential in its growth.

In 2016, a measure of ONE Championship’s rapid ascent was seen following the announcement of the promotion’s eight-figure investment from Heliconia, a subsidiary of Singapore’s financial giant Temasek.

Cui is of course a multinational himself, born and raised in Canada but with Filipino origins. He embodies both Eastern and Western cultures and is incidentally the perfect gentleman for the task of bringing the immense popularity of MMA over to Asia.

ONE Championship is on the cusp of greatness, having held successful shows in countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Indonesia, where MMA is not yet a staple.

In line with ONE Championship’s strategy of building local homegrown Asian martial arts heroes from the grassroots, the promotion is set to take advantage of venturing into new markets like Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea as well as multiple destinations in mainland China including Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing.

With the company’s success in the region, Cui takes pride in ONE Championship being the top dog in the East while acknowledging its western counterpart.

“You’ve got UFC in the West, while ONE Championship as biggest in the East. You see the storyline of East versus West play out in almost every industry you can think of, from Apple versus Samsung, YouTube versus Youku, Twitter versus Weibo to Facebook versus Renren,” he said.

“If you compare, UFC has got a 90 percent market share in the states. We’ve got a 90 percent market share in Asia. UFC is 90 percent Caucasian, we’re 90-percent Asian, 10-percent non-Asian. We’re filling the biggest stadiums. We’ve got the biggest gates, biggest attendance,” Cui said.

With UFC trying to play catch-up, Cui is plotting to lock up Asia to secure ONE Championship’s ground and pole position.

There are a plethora of MMA promotions currently operating in the Asian region, including various smaller leagues, but it is ONE Championship that has been able to maximize the potential of the sometimes complicated market.

“We’ve been working hard. This is the first time in the history of sports in Asia that you are seeing an Asian-based sport property exporting its content worldwide and the rest of the world wants to watch it,” Cui said.

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