Fight club

BLOODIED bone visibly juts out of his ring finger but Josh Emmett keeps on fighting. At the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), broken bones need not stop the spectacle. Violence sells. And in the case of the UFC, a mixed martial-arts league, it sells for $4 billion—the largest sale of a single sports organisation in history.

For Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who bought UFC for just $2m in 2001, this month’s deal is a thumping victory. Back then, mixed martial arts (a free-for-all of boxing, ju-jitsu, wrestling and other disciplines) was banned in New York state and branded “human cockfighting” by Senator John McCain. Now, the UFC dominates the field. It claims to be in 1.1 billion homes in 156 countries and to be the world’s largest pay-per-view event provider. It has a $100m annual contract with the Fox cable-TV network in America and boasts a growing digital-streaming platform.

The new owners are a group led by WME-IMG, an American talent agency. Their executives are thought to be bullish on the future of UFC’s $10 a month digital-streaming platform, Fight Pass, and future opportunities in Asia. The two may go together. Digital streaming will be central to winning new fans and earning fees from new viewers in China and many other new markets, says Dan Singer of McKinsey, a consulting firm.

Still, $4 billion for a bit of fisticuffs might seem rich. This year Comcast bought a whole film studio for $3.8 billion. But the deal signals three trends in sport and media. Live sports are commanding ever-higher premiums for broadcast rights, as networks fear losing viewers’ attention to the internet and smartphones. Second, UFC’s rise as a social-media phenomenon shows that it pays to be savvier in this area than other media firms. UFC even gave bonuses to fighters making creative use of Twitter and now has 46m followers across social-media platforms. Lastly, owners and marketers of content are also becoming distributors of it, creating more opportunities to turn athletes into mainstream celebrities.

The only real headache for WME-IMG is that fighters are demanding more. Kajan Johnson, a lower-level UFC fighter, claims his pay has left him “struggling to eat”. Six former combatants are seeking class-action status for a lawsuit that alleges the UFC has restricted competition for fighters by buying up rival leagues. Athletes and owners alike want more bums on seats. But a (fist-free) tussle over who benefits most from them may ensue.