Thank you. Interesting and informative.
Rather than live shows, maybe if they could tap into India via tv. I just looked this up and India today has 780 million TV- viewing individuals. I'm only "stuck" on India because the last fight card I watched had that Canadian/Indian fighter winning his fight and it made me think about the potential market of India. I don't know the purchasing power of the Indian population tv viewing demographic (in terms of advertising revenue for tv shows). I assume WME/UFC has people who deal with global expansion/international markets but this is just an assumption on my end.
Enough of India, lol. There is still Canada, South & Central America, Europe, Russia, etc.... I'm not really worried about the UFC from a US domestic point of view. I think the tv deals will work out and "stars" will be developed. Many fans just seem nostalgic for the old days and don't seem to realize that change/evolution is all just part of the process. The coveted tv demographic IIRC is the younger market (18-35 year old) which includes males and females (anyone with money to spend on the crap advertisers try to pedal to us). Personally, moving away from the PPV model (less cards) makes sense since they likely lose a lot of money by those streaming them for free whereas is they have fight cards on non-PPV tv they* would generate money via the sale of ad space. *Hmm, I'm not sure of who they are composed (a complicated, imo, partnership between WME/UFC and whatever tv network(s) they are "partnered" with). I'm in over my head on the business aspect of this so apologies for my ignorance. lol, plus I just woke up.
On a different note, retaining majority control of a company before opening the rest of the stock up for public purchase makes sense to me but again, I'm not a business person (worked as a healthcare provider and just had a minimal role in the business aspect of the institution).