There are substitute products: Other sports; within combat sports: boxing, kickboxing.

If the UFC allows itself to stagnate, it will lose market share to other sports and open the door to new competitors.

Barriers to entry is high when they provide a compelling product, but low when their product stinks.

Having one dominant player in MMA sport is not the same thing as having a monopoly. Don’t listen to the Sherdog forum. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Monopolies exist only when there are no alternative within an industry MMA is not an industry in itself.

1. They have to protect against becoming like boxing. From that alone, we will get stacked cards at least a few times a year (like we do now).

2. The UFC isn’t EliteXC. They don’t pay guys purely to stand and strike. They have an appreciation for grappling and finding out the best in the world. There is a reason why they went after Fedor with a $1+ Million contract despite his market value being substantially lower. At the end of the day, The Fertitta’s still want to see the best fight each other.

If the UFC did that they would lose the fans and be out of business. Without competition the UFC would still have to provide a product that is more interesting to the 18-35 age demographic than anything else they are wanting to spend their money on or they would fail as a company, the UFC will never be without competition because their competition is every other sport and tv show and leisure entertainment out there.

All professional sports are businesses, their goal isn’t to destroy their competition it’s to sell their product to as many consumers as possible. Even if we woke up tomorrow and the UFC was a complete global MMA monopoly they would still have to sign and pay the star fighters that draw fan attention and deliver a quality product or people would stop watching and Spike would replace them with another tv show.

Ha what fantasy world are you living in? Without any competition Zuffa can feed you UFC 89 over and over and over again and let the top paid talent fall to the wayside. They’d promote the new Tuffers as the best fighters ever and the Fedors/A.Silvas/GSPs/BjPenns as the past who could never compete with them.

They already do this with Fedor, Barnett, Sylvia and AA.

All we would get from this is Tuf fights from garbage domestic US fighters making pennies and being sold to the rubes with the UFC making 95% of the profits.

Right off the bat there is the fact that even if the UFC was the only game in town they still would have to push a interesting quality product; their competition isn’t just other MMA organizations it’s every single other leisure entertainment out there that is gunning for consumers money. If their product is crap then it doesn’t matter if they are the only org the casual fans will go buy a video game or watch another tv show or find anything else that interest them instead of paying for a UFC ppv. Casual fans are what pays the bills and they are a fickle lot, if you don’t keep their attention they will move on to something that will. Buying MMA ppvs isn’t a necessity it’s a entertainment luxury and there are plenty of those out there.

It should also be point out that what is good for MMA fighters isn’t necessarily good for the fans. Fighters are a product expense that gets passed on to the consumer. Also for fans it’s great if they get to see all the best fight the best but for fighters it’s better if their are multiple organizations bidding for their services(another cost that gets passed on to consumers). A fighters union would work the same way, it could be good for the fighters(key word “could”) but that doesn’t mean that it would necessarily be a good thing for fans.

What is best for the sport is just a very complicated question and depending on what angle you are looking at it from there can be several different answers.

A two promotion sport will never happen as long as the UFC runs things the way they currently are. I’d be willing to bet a union happens first.