Are MMA and combat sports in general still growing sports?

[You Will Vote For Dreyga]

MMA is a small niche sport. The UFC is the largest MMA organization and it got sold for 4,5 Billion dollars. When the sale happened, a lot of gullible people were like: "Wow! This is big!".
I have news for you: Real Madrid FC alone is worth more than that. Manchester United, Barcelona, Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Milan, Liverpool... every large European city has at least one of these Billion dollar football clubs.
Getting the picture now? MMA will never get even remotely close to football.

Billion? You sure about that???

 

[TRT Champion]

Billion? You sure about that???

View attachment 815520

Yes, I am sure about that.
4,239 Million = 4.239 Billion.

However, Real Madrid is worth more than that.
Last time I checked, they were worth 4.5 Billion Euros which is more than 5 Billion US dollars.

 

[JoeHiden]

The 3 names that really got the interest of English and other British fans were Randy Couture, Anderson Silva & Chuck Liddell, after this when Brock Lesnar debuted it absolutely blew up in the UK (because WWF guys where household names in the UK), it was on tv all the time, everyone tuned in for the ultimate fighter etc, then it started to die off, especially when Brock retired, Conor & Ronda did cause a resurgence after, but nobody is interested anymore, Bisping has gone, Till is mediocre, its mainly because they don't have any decent British fighters who are in title contention, and there wont be many because its not a British sport.

Conor was popular because from this end of the world and had that British kind of trash talking which was fun, but now hes sorta gone, the interest has died with casuals.

It dont help that UFC moved from free tv and put their events behind a paywall, that was the final nail in the coffin with casual fans, thats a bad move by the UFC to put their events behind a paywall in a country that don't give much of a shit about MMA and prefers boxing in general. (i'm the opposite)

Eddie hearn put on PPVS like every month, what are you on about paywalls?

 

[Morris88]

UFC is dying bro. Fucking Suga Sean O Malley and Greg Hardy, Jesus christ. Bring back that fat fuck who wore a nappy

 

[TheChosenKing]

The sport has seemed to have completely died off

 

[wolfss]

I don't get why Americans think 'Soccer' is only popular in Europe, i think every country geographically under the USA would have something to say about that, not to mention the Africans, its by far the most popular sport in the world, as for American sports, nobody gives a shit about them outside of America except the odd strange person wearing a basket ball shirt as a fashion item with no clue on who any of the players are and probably never played or watched basketball in their life, kinda akin to a European having a Chinese tattoo.

haha. True. The reason Americans sports aren’t popular around the world is because only in America we pick the biggest baddest mofos to entertain us.

 

[AnotherOldGuy]

I'm European myself bro, I call it soccer because we are on an American forum.
Of course, soccer (or football) is big everywhere but especially in Western Europe, Italy, Germany, France, England and Spain alone have won around 70% of the world cups...

How about South America? Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay have won 8 out of 21 World Cups between them -- that's 38%.

MMA is never going to hit the levels of any of the major team sports. Team sports keep their identity even when players retire (ie if you're a Yankee fan you'll still be a fan when Babe Ruth or Derek Jeter retires), individual sports gain and lose popularity with the coming and going of big stars (boxing lost a lot of fans when Tyson retired etc).

 

[AnotherOldGuy]

American sports is where the money is at though. The NFL, MLB, and NBA are the top 3 most lucrative leagues on the planet.

Premier League soccer is only 20% lower than the NBA, and there are a lot of soccer leagues -- 6 out of the top 10 biggest money sports (according to Wikipedia) are soccer, and 12 of the top 20. Total money per pro-sport probably (too lazy to add it all up) probably has soccer number one.

 

[asdf122345]

yes. BKFC (Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship).

 

[BoTyson]

Eddie hearn put on PPVS like every month, what are you on about paywalls?

For british fighters, which the british public knows.

 

[Bowel-forged Stool]

Still growing...but the lead promotion has to he careful about not neglecting the sport side of things for entertainment..there riding a thin line imo currently...

I am a martial artist myself and i wanted to do my first mma fight this year but covid hit... But if im.honest i would have hard time picking between bellator, PFL, and the UFC if i had to because of some of the choices the UFC has made recently has got me torn about what would be the best choice career wise if i did pursue fighting further then 1 fight...

The way i see it

UFC - is in an identity crisis currently as a sport league or a sport entertainment promotion

Bellator - Is a sport league but lacking wide spread talent some divisions are quite thin needs a bigger roster to be consider a more prestigious sport league

PFL- Pure competition based MMA league, a fighter friendly promotion, but it too lacks roster strength and salaries but is getting bigger every season and payouts will go up as celebrities are backing it and other big companys...also 1 mil for 1 year of fights is way better then 12/12k entry level contract the UFC is pushing even with bonuses..

So im torn but the sport itself is growing...for sure
As of today id go to PFL or UFC

Hopefully you’ll get KO’d stiff and won’t have to worry too much about it.

 

[BoTyson]

It looks like you made your whole argument moot. You're basically saying that the only reason American sports are more popular is because more people watch them On a side note it's not really fair to compare The U.S. to single European Countries like Germany or England. I think you almost have to compare all of Europe to get a fair comparison, as the US is a very big and diverse place.

The guy is comparing the English top football division to the 3 top american divisions of 3 different sports, not every European division.

If you add up the worth of every top football division then pit it against any of the american leagues, you are looking at football as a whole being worth like 10x more of all american sports.

use your brain, the info is out there.

Add up the 4th place English league, to the Spanish la liga, the German bundesliga, the Italian serie a etc, then look at which franchise is worth more, so pick your poison.

If english football alone = 4th pretty much tied with the NBA, you work it out.

Football does not equal England only, its a world over sport.

 

[Paolo Delutis]

Hopefully you’ll get KO’d stiff and won’t have to worry too much about it.

If i do get k.o stiff ...id still would of accomplished more then u have in do so...internet tough guy

 

[Bowel-forged Stool]

If i do get k.o stiff ...id still would of accomplished more then u have in do so...internet tough guy

I’m just looking out for you bro. Also, in the shadow realm you’ll fit right in

 

[Paolo Delutis]

I’m just looking out for you bro. Also, in the shadow realm you’ll fit right in

We mortals are but shadows and dust.....

Shadows and dust!!!!!!

 

[Bowel-forged Stool]

We mortals are but shadows and dust.....

Shadows and dust!!!!!!

Indeed we are! I’m rooting for you my friend!

 

[560ti]

Their finals game drew less than half as much as a Jessica Eye headlined fight night card on ESPN.....

My local team didn't make the finals last year but the finals of there league was a sold out crowd of 69,000 people

 

[Graves The Elder]

Except for elite level boxing, combat sports in general are slowly fading IMO.

Comes from greedy promotions, shitty match ups and low level performances from 'touted' fighters.

And over saturation of course.

Thank god it's all for free on streams.

Haven't paid for any of if since 2012.

 

[HHJ]

I feel like 4 or 5 years ago, MMA was growing super fast in terms of number of practitionners. Same thing goes for bjj.
Conor and Honda had that huge impact so that there were dozens of noobs who were trying combat sports. There always were some new guys coming to the gyms I was training at. I was genuinely thinking MMA would become bigger than basketball in the US and eventually bigger than soccer in Europe.
Nowadays, I don't feel this enthusiasm among the population anymore (and I talk about pre-Covid, in a post6covid world, it can only become worse). The fact that the UFC has lost a lot of its superstars over the past years doesn't help too I guess.
What's your take on that?

The old are replaced with the new. As it ever shall be. People thought chuck and matt hughes retiring was the end.

 

[kflo]

My local team didn't make the finals last year but the finals of there league was a sold out crowd of 69,000 people

The tv deals are more important than gate.