Mark Cuban on the other hand has a net worth of $2.8 billion, worth more than both the Fertittas combined ($1.3 billion each). It’s also fair to say that Cuban is a lot more competent than Ayre and seems a lot more serious about promoting MMA. Ayre only really cared about selling the bodog empire brand name.

Cuban is also playing it smart. He’s not rushing to compete head-on with the UFC. We’ve seen what happened with Bodog when they had the Fedor x Lindland disaster. Fedor costed Bodog seven figures but they brought in like 14,000 PPV buys. Cuban is building up HDNet Fights slowly.

Just because the UFC has 90% of the market share or whatever they have in American MMA, doesn’t mean that Cuban’s promotion can’t compete with them in the future. I bring up the examples of WWF in pro wrestling and Nintendo in video games. Both businesses had a huge market share in their industry (Nintendo for one had 95% of the console gaming). Both brands were synonymous with the type of product they sold (pro wrestling and video games). But then both businesses got dethroned for a period of time as seen with WCW beating out WWE for 2 years and Nintendo being absolutely mauled by Sony for over a decade. Only recently has Nintendo made a comeback and even then, their Wii system has a 43% market share compared to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. I don’t know about you but going from 95+% market share in the late 80s to 43% in 2007/2008 is huge.

It shouldn’t be assumed that the UFC is invisible just because their brand = MMA in North America right now. Nintendo’s brand was (and still is) synonymous with video games but look how much things have changed in that industry. Whose to say that the MMA industry won’t have their own Sega, Sony or Microsoft to compete with their “Nintendo” (the UFC)? Why is it automatically assumed that the UFC will coast along easily without competitive threat just because they were the first brand to break out in American MMA?

You could also look at the case of PRIDE. PRIDE was the #1 MMA promotion internationally and Japan was the Mecca of MMA. Great Mainstream free-to-air network television ratings (there’s no money to be made in PPV in Japan so free-to-air TV is where it’s at over there), poaching international talent from around the world (including UFC and America in general) and drawing impressive live gates. And then a Yakuza scandal changed all that.

Unless some idiot puts millions into the IFL, it will be gone before the end of 2008. I think EliteXC will still be in business by the end of the year, but it will be interesting to see how they are doing. First, they need to minimize their internet website. I don’t care what type of goals they have for the future, that thing is just eating cash up, and really isn’t gaining any steam in the MMA community. There is only so much money to go around, and people are more willing to spend that on a UFC PPV (which you can see on your TV) compared to a smaller show telecast being streamed on your PC.

Additionally, they have to find a way to make money with the PPV market. This is their key. Without it, they are either a minor league feeder system to the UFC, or just waiting out their time to go out of business. Potentially both.

With HDNet, it is still going to be an uphill battle. The UFC IS MMA in North America. That is the view of the general public. HDNet could have a lot of fighting on their channel, but to break that cycle is going to take a miracle. Even a Couture/Fedor or Mayweather MMA fight won’t break that. It might give them some good revenues for a PPV or Two, but to the casual fan, if they want to see the best, it is still a UFC PPV to see it.

But I don’t think that ProElite is going to be successful either. They are a lot more financially stable than the IFL (which isn’t saying much) and ProElite will survive longer. But like I said, they are losing a lot of money and their stock is going down. Mark Cuban on the other hand I think will eventually emerge as UFC’s competition in America. Dana White can say what he wants about eating billionaires for breakfast but Cuban and his resources and connections is no joke. The problem with HDNet Fights is that it’s on HDNet, which apparently only has 9 million subscribers (and even that might be an inflated number) whereas Showtime has 15 mil and HBO has 30 mil.

EliteXC is currently losing a lot of money. At their current pace, it will cost Showtime a good amount of money per year to subsidiaze the company and make it work. Showtime does it with boxing, but do they have the budget to do so for both boxing & MMA with only 15 Million Subscribers? My initial thoughts are no.

Either way, that current business model does not allow for enough shows per year to really make it work. The UFC use to run 5 to 6 shows per year, and it just isn’t enough at that low level. (I’m not counting the lesser shows, because they really don’t do much to attract fans).