With a seemingly never-ending stream of exciting projects on the horizon, ONE Championship CEO and Chairman Chatri Sityodtong held a Facebook Q&A on Thursday, 2 April, which touched upon a wide-ranging number of topics including the rationale behind launching The Apprentice: ONE Championship Edition.
“Ultimately, The Apprentice is global general entertainment, and we feel that this is going to be a great way for fans all over the world who love ONE Championship to watch some fun stuff,” said Sityodtong.
“But more than that, mainstream audiences all over the world will finally get introduced to ONE Championship for the first time and this is our first foray for ONE Studios doing general entertainment content. So, there’s business reasons, as well as just for fun reasons for doing this.”
Up for grabs is a US$250,000 job offer and a chance to become Chatri Sityodtong’s protégé at ONE Championship. From what’s been divulged so far, the structure certainly sounds entertaining.
“These 16 people are going to compete on both the business challenges; so solving business problems in real-time, in real life – much like The Apprentice show you’ve seen all around the world,” said Sityodtong.
“But the twist is, they’re also going to have to compete in physical challenges — endurance challenges against our world champions. It’s not martial arts-based. You don’t need any martial arts to apply. It’s basically testing your warrior spirit, testing your mental strength, testing how badly you want to work at ONE Championship.”
There appears to be plenty of excitement among the general public for this upcoming show, with questions flooding in from fans around the world. For his part, Sityodtong sounds confident that the project will be a gamechanger.
“Our goal is to make it the biggest Apprentice in history. So…sorry Donald Trump, but we’re going to beat your numbers,” Sityodtong said.
The company has become increasingly multi-faceted over the years, and Sityodtong has good reason to anticipate big viewing figures.
ONE’s YouTube channel, in particular, has been delivering exceptional growth for the company. In January and February alone, their main martial arts content stacks combining ONE events, ONE Warrior Series, and ONE Weekly Shows saw viewership +54% higher than the same period in 2019 with viewing hours by fans around the world climbing +79% versus January to February last year.
The company’s first-ever Dota 2 event — ONE Esports Dota 2 Singapore World Pro Invitational — achieved a staggering total of 88M viewers globally.
Along with its foray into the world of esports came the news that it will be launching its own video game, and Sityodtong offered fans some intriguing updates on that front.
“Next quarter, we launch our first video game. But our big, big video game is just going into production right now, and I predict it will be out in two years. It’s going to be a home run, with all your favorite athletes in the game and there are going to be a lot of cool twists,” revealed Sityodtong.
With the COVID-19 crisis still causing major issues for businesses around the world, the immediate future looks uncertain. But despite these challenges, the team at ONE Championship appears to have plenty of cause for optimism.