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The latest update on PRIDE
By Zach Arnold | June 2, 2007
Sam Caplan has a very good posting about what the climate is like in this post-PRIDE world. He’s one of the few MMA writers who understands the picture pretty clearly, although I disagree with his conclusion that UFC will be successful in running a satellite office in Japan. The Japanese marketplace is an entirely different animal than any other foreign country for Americans to understand, especially if you have an aggressive attitude. The real winner, in my opinion, is BodogFight. They are doing co-branding deals with Pancrase right now and are slowly building a presence in the Japanese marketplace. By working with Pancrase, BodogFight will be able to use a native face to the Japanese public when doing business in that country. A 100% win-win for both parties. It’s a very crafty move.
On Thursday in Clark County, NV. court, judge Timothy Williams denied without prejudice DSE’s motion to dismiss the case against Fishman Companies in that lawsuit. The lawsuit is moving forward.
Topics: Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 22 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Thanks for the article zach, it seems that your theory that due diligence wasn’t complete at the time of the pride-ufc joint announcement , may offer a potential context for some of the events we’re seeing now with pride.
Zach, I’m not sure I said that running a satellite office and doing 3-4 shows a year under the Pride name would definitely be successful. However, I do think because of the market potential, it’s worth a shot. And it’s a lot less riskier than trying to run a full-scale operation with a huge office and 12-14 shows a year.
That’s interesting that you mention Bodog is working with Pancrase now. That definitely seems like a good strategy and I definitely think there’s a golden opportunity for an MMA promotion to win major market share in Japan in a hurry. God knows Bodog Fight needs to start bringing in some revenue.
Do you think Bodog can get the talent needed to make things work in Japan? Does Pancrase have much of a roster at this point? And if the UFC signs most of the major old Pride names, will Bodog/Pancrase still be able to succeed?
If you’re a Japanese fighter, your options are very limited at this point outside of HERO’s (which is not a stable deal). Pancrase has been around forever. You know what you are getting with them each time they run a show. It’s always been a pretty tight-knit operation that does things the right way. They never try to get too big or too small.
With Bodog pumping money into Pancrase, suddenly they will be able to attract more Japanese talent and keep it at home rather than having it go to UFC or WEC. That’s the storyline to keep your eye on – how much money Bodog sends over to Pancrase and how Pancrase manages it, because they may try to turn around and get themselves a decent television deal. In turn, Pancrase is more than willing to send fighters over to work for BodogFight as it’s the perfect recruiting tool for both sides.
Do I think the Pancrase/BodogFight alliance will shake things up in the next year or two? Not entirely, but it’s a much more solid deal than anything else outside of Zuffa in the industry.
If UFC tries to run a show in Japan without a major ally (like K-1), they will immediately run into interference from people on the ground trying to cause trouble. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Japan has a first-class image but a set of third-world politics when it comes to the geinokai (world of Japanese entertainment).
Zach, another question I have is can Zuffa be successful doing 3-4 shows a year in a one-off fashion. I hate to use a pro wrestling example, but I know that the WWE goes to Japan a few times a year. I have no idea what the attendence figures are for those shows. But suppose Zuffa went into Japan for a few one-off shows with a stacked card (something like Fedor vs. Cro Cop II or Silva vs. Liddell) do you think they could at least draw decent houses on a short-term basis? I know the Japanese might not be too accepting of an American-run business, but if the card promises big-time matches they want to see, do you think they would support it?
I could see the UFC having 8 Events in Europe and 4 Events in Japan each year. With all of those shows being on HBO (if that deal ever went through).
If memory serves me right, WWE basically did sold shows + % of gate deals with Total Sports Asia to run in Japan. They ran mid-sized buildings (Yoyogi National Stadium Gym I drawing around 12,000 and Yokohama Arena drawing around 11,000). When WWE first ran shows in Japan, the Japanese press went into panic mode as far as what it meant for the future of Japanese pro-wrestling. WWE ran Saitama Super Arena and drew 18,000 in a modified configuration. However, the more WWE ran shows in Japan (including a bad one at Hiroshima Sun Plaza), the smaller the crowds got and the more the novelty wore off. You don’t see WWE, the world’s largest pro-wrestling company, running in Japan anymore for a reason.
WWE had television (Fuji TV) for their Smackdown show. Once the TV got cut off, so did WWE in that market as far as free-to-air coverage. UFC has no TV deal (their basic WOWOW deal expired and Rampage/Liddell did not air live) in Japan and it will be next-to-impossible for them to manage any serious deal if they want to run PRIDE-branded shows… unless they bought time like an infomercial to air on TV-Tokyo, the smallest of the free-to-air networks on a Sunday afternoon. In other words, the political and financial obstacles of Japan make it extraordinarily difficult for a foreign company to do consistent business there. 3-4 shows a year is actually consistent.
So even if they went in there with a stacked lineup you don’t think they could sellout a couple shows a year?
Heck, Pride was getting huge ratings and couldn’t get a TV deal. So the actual fights have very little to do with the coverage they get in Japan.
UFC’s past forays into Japan… they had Maurice Smith vs. Randy Couture and Sakuraba winning the tournament at Yokohama Arena over a decade ago and then had some UFC-J shows that didn’t do so well.
The problem with UFC is that their product is not all that marketable for the Japanese audience. The Japanese fans like storylines, spectacles, and overall entertainment. UFC is more about presenting fighters as who they are, here’s a fight, and here’s the outcome. Japan has always been about larger-than-life characters and UFC rarely produces those. UFC’s new top-star, Rampage Jackson, was a mid-carder in terms of drawing power for PRIDE.
Plus, to run in Japan, you have to have strong Japanese drawing cards. Yushin Okami is not that guy. Hidehiko Yoshida may or may not be that person, and fans don’t want to pay to see him lose. Kazushi Sakuraba could be that guy, but that requires working with K-1. So who are you going to use as Japanese drawing cards? UFC would have to modify their matchmaking strategy and entirely customize their product for Japanese tastes. My opinion is that they have little patience or stomach for it (let alone an understanding of the Japanese market).
Aren’t Fedor, Cro Cop, and Silva still pretty big drawing cards in Japan?
I realize spectacle is more important than sport when it comes to fight promotion in Japan, but wouldn’t Fedor vs. Cro Cop II have a decent storyline? And wouldn’t the long-awaited first-ever meeting between Silva and Liddell have some drawing power?
And if the UFC signed Lesnar, could he be a potential draw in Japan since they are already familiar with him from his stint with New Japan?
All of this is very interesting conversation indeed. How does Deep, ZST and Shooto play into all of this? I understand they are minor players in the Japanese market but do they have any sort value, marketing-wise, that would interest any potential partners.
What exactly is the status of Deep, ZST and Shooto with the downfall of the scene in Japan. What is the pecking order with these organizations in correspondence to Pancrase and K-1? With so much talent it’s hard to imagine these guys having little or no options for their careers.
The gaijin draws only have major juice if they have a mainstream presence in Japan. The build-up for Fedor vs. Mirko was incredible on television, but that match with no TV would draw maybe 10,000 fans. Remember, PRIDE has not been on free-to-air Japanese TV in over a year now. Memories fade fast.
Brock Lesnar was not a draw for New Japan at all. His debut match (a 3-way against Kazuyuki Fujita and Masa Chono) was one of the worst Tokyo Dome show bombs of all time. They were lucky to have 10,000 total in the building.
Shooto, ZST, DEEP, etc. will always continue to draw what they draw. Never anything substantially more. Mid-sized buildings on the lower end of the scale.
Respect to both of you, Sam and Zach. I’ve wanted to follow this story as it has (d)evolved and Zach, you have been the only resource for information. Sam, thank you for posting your opinion. I believe Zach’s criticism of MMA media not covering this story is still valid despite the rest of the media having the experience and resources Zach has. Opinions, speculation, and predictions are 90% of the fuel that keeps these websites going and the ignoring of this story is criminal. I don’t know whether it is a credit to the charisma of Sakakibara, the reverence for Pride under DSE, or a laziness for stories that involve business deals and legal maneuvering but it has been disappointing to not hear Zach being interviewed on more radio shows or other Japanese MMA media writers being probed to cover this story more.
That being said, I disagree with your speculation that Zuffa doesn’t understand the Japanese market. People have been disputing Dana and Lorenzo’s accomplishments as businessmen for years now but the proof is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. With each obstacle, Zuffa have been able to overcome it through shrewd business acumen and sometimes unpopular decisions. When the company was losing money hand over fist they got rid of the expensive pyro and elaborate entrances. When opportunities like the one at Fox Sports arose, Zuffa worked quickly to put on a quality card on short notice, 37.5 was it? I too thought the MMA media ban a couple years ago was an unfortunate move but hearing Steve Sievert talk about a crowded press row filled with mainstream media shows that Zuffa made the right choice.
The WEC purchase looks to be another amazing business decision – by crowding the market with MMA product with Zuffa product it makes upstarts like IFL and Elite XC challenged to find an audience. If the quality of the fighters in WEC, by infusing it with Pride fighters, begins to come close to UFC I may just have to figure out a way to work from home so I can find time to watch all this great MMA. It’s already getting tough.
All this leads to my opinion that Zuffa will properly build their Japanese product. Even at $40 million, with the profit Zuffa is making from each of their shows, they can afford the venture and is a small investment in the long term. Zuffa has shown creativity when building their product and I think we will be surprised to see what successful business plan they come up with.
Dana has said they plan to take this product global so I don’t think they will fold the Pride fighters completely into WEC and UFC. There will be a satellite office in Japan – look for Cro Cop’s Japanese management to be involved. I’m not surprised to hear DSE’s staff have been laid off. That company is such a mess due to their mishandling, not to mention the reports of using the DSE offices for Hustle promotions – what manager wouldn’t find those firable offenses?
As you both have pointed out, there is a large hole available in the Japanese MMA market due to K-1 and Pancrase’s respective limitations. This hole will be (re)-filled with Pride but will require our patience and our patience tested as fans before victory is achieved again.
Shooto is it’s own ball of wax. They never get huge crowds, and are rumored to pay many of their fighter’s peanuts. Yet when a Shooto fighter like Hatsu Hioki gets a generous offer from the WEC, he actually turned it down because he wanted to win the Shooto Title. There is a weird kind of loyalty there. on a side note, Hioki then lost his next fight after the WEC offer.
DEEP gets larger crowds then Shooto, but nothing close to what K-1 or Pride would get. Don’t forget Pancrase as well. They seem to have a deal with Bodog going. Ever since their dominance in the sport in mid 1990’s, they haven’t done much in terms of cultivating talent. They have produced Misaki & Marquardt, but that is about it.
You see a lot of Sherdog.com type of fans complain about the UFC, and how it isn’t Pride. There is a real denial about Pride at this point. Pride was running shows they couldn’t financially afford. They ran their company in a horrible way. They constantly kept fighters down like Paulo Filho & Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, who deserved title shots and never received them. They would alter their tournament brackets to give a Heavyweight Fighter like Mirko Filipovic a roster of fighters (who were all smaller) such as Minowa, Silva, & Yoshida in order to get to the finals and make him look better then he honestly is.
Basically, they were very much like what boxing is here in the US. They ran their business into the ground, and built up phony stars that even the US MMA Media bought into. Guys like Rodrigo Nogueira, Henderson, & Rampage got gift decisions against Ricco Rodriguez, Yuki Kondo, & Murilo Rua respectively. This was all to preserve their star status.
The reason why I bring this up is because this is completely against how Zuffa runs their business in the UFC & WEC. Yes, they do try to build stars, but they still give competitive fights, and at the end of the day are trying to show who the best fighter is. This is completely different then the Japanese way. These two styles of matchmaking just do not mix. The UFC can make it in Europe, because they view sports much like America does.
For Zuffa to be successful in Japan, they would have to become an American Boxing like organization and start to coddle their stars. That just isn’t going to happen.
And this is why we probably won’t see the UFC break out in Japan in a major way anytime soon.
Zach, outside of K-1, does any other MMA promotion have a solid TV deal?
You also mentioned that w/o a major ally the UFC will have a hard time running shows in Japan successfully to win over the Japanese fans. How about forming alliances with smaller groups like DEEP and Shooto? Will that increase their chance?
And how about the scene in Brazil? Is that place more 2nd class image with 3rd world politics? Is corruption just as rampant there as it is in Japan?
“DEEP gets larger crowds then Shooto.”
Eh, not really. Both organization’s standard shows are run at Korakuen Hall. Good DEEP shows sell out Korakuen Hall, and good Shooto cards sell out Korakuen Hall. However, Shooto have drawn 4200+ at Yoyogi’s Second and Pacifico Yokohama, which is bigger than anything DEEP have done in a while.
As for TV deals in Japan, no one really has an outstanding one. All the organizations are on Samurai TV. Shooto and Smackgirl are on J-Sports/ESPN. ZST is on GAORA. Pancrase is on Sky-A. The ‘best’ TV deal is GCM/CAGE FORCE, who air on TV Tokyo, the smallest of the sixth major networks.
Also…
“And how about the scene in Brazil? Is that place more 2nd class image with 3rd world politics? Is corruption just as rampant there as it is in Japan?”
Brazil has its own forms of petty corruption. You may not see huge organized crime ties, but perhaps the biggest problem you see in the Brazilian events is when a gym promotes an event, has all their guys fight, and the referees and judges are closely linked to that gym.
For instance, I know one of Daniel Acacio’s recent losses in Brazil, the guy he fought (I THINK it was Luis Sapo) was a teammate of the referee. None too surprisingly, Acacio complained about stand ups, and other stuff like that which played a role in the outcome of the fight.
Brazil, despite its stature of a fighter factory, something which will continue for years to come, doesn’t seem to be viable as the home base of an A level show. At best, promotions like the UFC or bodog could run a show there every so often and draw a very good crowd.
45,
How the hell with a straigh face can you even try to say that UFC doesn’t protect/coddle their stars or have gift decisions unlike big, bad old PRIDE?
It’s a completely ludicrous statement! Chuck Liddell and Franklin are two picture perfect examples of guys who they had in mind to be their “faces” or “stars” and made matches to “preserve their star status”. When they finally went up against “world class” talents and not guys from TUF or fighters who played to their strengths or were downright overrated or didnt belong there (I’m looking at you Tito Ortiz and Jeremy Horn) they were made to look pretty pedestrian.
Bonnar and Tito Ortiz (re: Griffen) were given complete gift decisions to preserve their star status – Tito’s in order to justify a completely unnecessary and ridiculous rematch with Liddell who had already proven Tito didn’t belong in the upper echelon of fighters much less fighting for the belt again!!
As for guys deserving shots and getting held down – I direct you to Mr. Matt Lindland who was a picture perfect example of getting completely F#cked over b/c he was nowhere near as “poster boy-ish” as Franklin.
I could go on and on and find tonnes of other examples but these are just off the top of my head.
It’s the fight game and it doesn’t matter what organization or sport – they will find guys that are marketable and do everything they can to make their stars look good.
But of course why am I surprised at your shilling attempts on behalf of Dana and the boys?!?!
Griffin admitted he lost that fight to Ortiz. So much for the UFC protecting their fighters. not to mention that Ortiz will likely lose to Rashad Evans. The UFC promotes fighters. This means giving them an easy fight once in a while. Like Hughes getting to fight Lytle. But overall, they force their fighters to compete at a high level. Very different then Pride, which gives it’s champions non-title fights, changes tournament brackets to alter outcomes, and held back great fighters from titles because they weren’t marketable. The UFC might do that for a fight or two, but Pride would string fighters along for a few years or more.
Since this conversation is more alive then the one below it, I will post this info here…. From The Wrestling Observer….
The following fighters got bonuses for their UFC 71 fights:
[LIST]
[*]Din Thomas – $30,000 for his submission. Ended up receiving $58,000 overall
[*]Kalib Starnes – $30,000 for great fight. Ended up receiving $40,000 overall
[*]Chris Leben – $30,000 for great fight. Ended up receiving $40,000 overall
[*]Houston Alexander – $30,000 for knockout. Ended up receiving $38,000 overall.
[*]Quinton Jackson – $30,000 for knockout. Ended up receiving $255,000 + more.
[/LIST]
Quinton Jackson & Chuck Liddell both received a portion of the PPV Revenues. Therefore, each probably received between $1 Million to $2 Million Plus….
The Japanese fans like storylines, spectacles, and overall entertainment. UFC is more about presenting fighters as who they are, here’s a fight, and here’s the outcome – well said Zach.
I feel like these comment sections just turn into a revolving door
I would love to be in Japan right now and to see whats going on.What combat sports are doing well over there.Hows Kickboxing,MMA,Boxing,Sumo and Pro Wrestling doing.
That’s a laughable argument. “Griffin admitted he lost that fight. So much for the UFC protecting their fighters.” Well I guess to you that ends the argument right there, I’m sure Griffin doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d tow the company line if told to do so….
Everyone and their dog that watched that fight know that Ortiz got a GIFT decision and got a pretty generous decision against Belfort (who conveniently was in the last fight of his contract). The UFC protects their fighters and stars as much as everybody else. There was a reason they gave Leben to Silva, Sanchez to Cro Cop and O’Brien to Herring etc etc. It was just bad luck that you had guys like Serra and O’Brien ruining their plans and making them look stupid b/c they were supposed to be tune-up fights and their big boys lost.