News [ONE 172] : Generates $2 million gate and 15,000 fans in Japan

[Ara tech]

One was struggling everywhere in Asia but was very profitable in Thailand in the last years, and now is starting to be profitable in Japan.

According to the bangkokpost article, One managed to cash out 2 millions dollars from gates only and had managed to sold 95% of tickets, for more than 15K seats.

"ONE Championship drew its largest ever gate in Japan with Sunday’s ONE 172 card at Saitama Super Arena, sources told the Bangkok Post.

The show, which was headlined by a highly anticipated kickboxing super fight between Rodtang Jitmuangnon and Takeru Segawa, brought in an excess of US$2 million in ticket sales.

The event was also 95 per cent sold out, sources say, with 15,000 fans in attendance for a stacked card which also boasted four title fights."


"More than a million fans tuned in live to the post-event press conference, where chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong addressed members of the international and Japanese media alongside the big winners from the card – including Rodtang, who knocked out Takeru in just 80 seconds."

For those who bought the PPV, many couldn't access it. To solve the issue was to check one's mail boxe in spam contents, but for others it still couldn't work. This issue won't happen twice about non working PPVs.

"Sunday’s event proved so popular ONE’s website even crashed, and some fans experienced issues trying to order the pay-per-view on the promotion’s in-house platform.

The show was eventually made free on ONE’s social channels including YouTube outside Japan, where local broadcaster U-NEXT streamed the PPV without any hitches.

“We hear you,” read a post on ONE Championship’s official X account. “Due to overwhelming demand for ONE 172, we experienced technical issues.

“We sincerely apologise for the issues and are working to make things right. Refunds will be issued, and we will provide further details as soon as possible. Please stay tuned."



Long live Chatri. Clearly one of the best kickboxing/muay-thai card of the year at One 172, Thailand against Japan with stars and superstars clearly sells in both kickboxing/muay-thai and MMA.

This is the beginning of a new era. Curious to see how One will manage to expand and maintain a good pace. The 150 millions from Qatar indeed helped.

Nadaka Yoshinari is the best signing of 2025, the perfect pawn among many to conquer the japanese market.

They could build him as the next Tenshin Nasukawa, or even as the next Saenchai.

Link of the article --> Here

 

[EndlessCritic]

I don't trust any of ONE's numbers.

The fact is it was an absolutely fantastic card, and ONE deserves success.

 

[Monte Moku]

It was a good card, but idk why ONE has to lie about their numbers so much. The Saitama Super Arena holds 19k people in its smallest format and 37k at its largest, so at best, they filled 79% of its capacity in its smallest orientation. That's still good, but there isn't really a need to inflate it to 95%. I guess their PPV numbers don't really matter now since they had to refund so many people, but if they had managed to generate a lot of PPV buys, I have a strong feeling Chatri would have been boasting about that too (i.e., "we had x xx k buys and it crashed our website" or something to that effect); the website crashing is likely because their website sucks. They managed to hit similar numbers that RISE and K-1 produce for their attendance, but they needed significantly more starpower to do it. I don't think Takeru has many fights left in him, and if I were a betting man, I'd wager most of the crowd at ONE 172 was there to watch him fight. I don't really see ONE succeeding in Japan in the long term unless they pull off some great marketing and build up Japanese stars, but their track record in that department is pretty rough.

 

[Ara tech]

You can't trust the rhetoric and never the propaganda.

All organizations either hide or lie about their numbers in order to give to themselves an image of being a safe secure investment for potential investors and to attract fighters and spectators, no-one would want to be involved in a drowning ship or in a trashy boat, that is of course understandable, it is for their own interests to lie or hide and we would had done the same if we were in their shoes.

Never believe in numbers if you didn't falsifty them yourself is a classic.

Logistic and treasury appear to be the main concern with One, and certainly they will fix that issue.

Therefore I believe One to be profitable in Japan, but why ?

Takeru always was a huge star in Japan, when he fought Tenshin another star they made 25 millions gate in tickets sale. This is far superior than the highest UFC gate who was 21 millions. See Here.

Chatri and his henchmen are smart. They didn't charge for 90$ or 70$ for the PPV. They made more affordable prices, to reach a larger audience, middle class and poor people.

Just in Japan and Thailand, One 172 certainly did more numbers than Gervonta vs Roach (270K PPV).

This is the beginning of profitability, in muay-thai and kickboxing. The MMA roster right now is a bit far away from being profitable.

 

[Monte Moku]

You can't trust the rhetoric and never the propaganda.

All organizations either hide or lie about their numbers in order to give to themselves an image of being a safe secure investment for potential investors and to attract fighters and spectators, no-one would want to be involved in a drowning ship or in a trashy boat, that is of course understandable, it is for their own interests to lie or hide and we would had done the same if we were in their shoes.

Never believe in numbers if you didn't falsifty them yourself is a classic.

Logistic and treasury appear to be the main concern with One, and certainly they will fix that issue.

Therefore I believe One to be profitable in Japan, but why ?

Takeru always was a huge star in Japan, when he fought Tenshin another star they made 25 millions gate in tickets sale. This is far superior than the highest UFC gate who was 21 millions. See Here.

Chatri and his henchmen are smart. They didn't charge for 90$ or 70$ for the PPV. They made more affordable prices, to reach a larger audience, middle class and poor people.

Just in Japan and Thailand, One 172 certainly did more numbers than Gervonta vs Roach (270K PPV).

Tenshin vs Takeru is a bit of an anomaly since they're both the biggest Kickboxing stars in Japan since Masato. If I remember correctly, they sold out the Tokyo Dome and generated 500k PPV buys (also helped that the matchmaking was awesome, there were a number of fights on that card that were incredible). It definitely shows the potential the Japanese market has, though. With enough starpower on a card, it could happen again. Where did you get those PPV numbers for ONE 172? Not saying it's wrong, I just haven't seen any figures for it yet.

This is the beginning of profitability, in muay-thai and kickboxing. The MMA roster right now is a bit far away from being prprofitable.

At least in Japan, K-1/KRUSH and RISE have been doing well for a while. Their attendance numbers are consistently doing about what ONE 172 brought in (idk about their gate profits since they don't really publicize those, or maybe it's just in Japanese news outlets that I'm not aware of). RISE has been doing a lot of co-promoting with GLORY and have been putting on incredible cards, as well as having a lot of Muay Thai stars cross over and compete. K-1 has been bringing over lots of Chinese fighters to compete since ~2023 and their MAX tournament last year was really impressive and had some banger fights. Now that I'm writing it down, they've been doing what ONE has been trying to do for a while, and they haven't needed a bunch of venture capital money to do it either (as far as I can find through articles in English and Google-translated Japanese ones). It seems to me that ONE needs Japan more than Japan needs them. It's going to be a lot of work to build up stars that can consistently put numbers on the board for them and make going to Japan regularly worth it. They can do one-off tentpole events, I'm just doubtful of their long term profitability if it's a market they really want to break into. Chatri will have to drop his ego and co-promote with RISE or K-1, or find some other way to get them to open up their wallets.

 

[Ara tech]

Chatri is too aggressive in Thailand. Prevented fighters from competing with Karate Combat.

Right now Chatri in Thailand has almost no competition at all, he is appreciated by the Thai military brass, who are part of the ruling class. They told him to organize Lumpinee bouts if I'm not mistaken. Chatri being a Thai himself and not a foreigner, he used his soft power brillantly.



Japan is not hostile, but has fiercer competitors. K-1, Rizin, and Rise. Chatri is too ambitious to make co-promoting as it would mean a step down and not a step up. One is not a small organization but a giant, that at least is what he want the world to believe.

Rosters are the pillar of success outside of marketing and promoting. Right now there is not a lot of depth in chinese athletes to make mass events in China, but I believe that China has a huge hidden potential.

Asian countries by asian countries, Chatri is trying to conquer them all. The problem is that as the opposite of the US who is mostly middle class and rich, most of those asian countries have low salaries (because of PPP), he better watches his steps.

Glory will never compete in asia, their lower division rosters is dead, and they are milking what they can of the heavierweights, in a dying sport.

One will probably emerge as the leader.

 

[SandisLL]

It was a good card, but idk why ONE has to lie about their numbers so much. The Saitama Super Arena holds 19k people in its smallest format and 37k at its largest, so at best, they filled 79% of its capacity in its smallest orientation. That's still good, but there isn't really a need to inflate it to 95%. I guess their PPV numbers don't really matter now since they had to refund so many people, but if they had managed to generate a lot of PPV buys, I have a strong feeling Chatri would have been boasting about that too (i.e., "we had x xx k buys and it crashed our website" or something to that effect); the website crashing is likely because their website sucks. They managed to hit similar numbers that RISE and K-1 produce for their attendance, but they needed significantly more starpower to do it. I don't think Takeru has many fights left in him, and if I were a betting man, I'd wager most of the crowd at ONE 172 was there to watch him fight. I don't really see ONE succeeding in Japan in the long term unless they pull off some great marketing and build up Japanese stars, but their track record in that department is pretty rough.

website really sucks under heavy workload. Maybe they will improve.

As for Japan live gates are very important.
Will see..

 

[Monte Moku]

Chatri is too aggressive in Thailand. Prevented fighters from competing with Karate Combat.

Right now Chatri in Thailand has almost no competition at all, he is appreciated by the Thai military brass, who are part of the ruling class. They told him to organize Lumpinee bouts if I'm not mistaken. Chatri being a Thai himself and not a foreigner, he used his soft power brillantly.

View attachment 1088685

Japan is not hostile, but has fiercer competitors. K-1, Rizin, and Rise. Chatri is too ambitious to make co-promoting as it would mean a step down and not a step up. One is not a small organization but a giant, that at least is what he want the world to believe.

Rosters are the pillar of success outside of marketing and promoting. Right now there is not a lot of depth in chinese athletes to make mass events in China, but I believe that China has a huge hidden potential.

Asian countries by asian countries, Chatri is trying to conquer them all. The problem is that as the opposite of the US who is mostly middle class and rich, most of those asian countries have low salaries (because of PPP), he better watches his steps.

Glory will never compete in asia, their lower division rosters is dead, and they are milking what they can of the heavierweights, in a dying sport.

One will probably emerge as the leader.

As much as I dislike the way ONE does business, they are pretty much the only Asian promotion trying to reach global dominance. I love RISE and K-1, but they seem to be pretty happy in their niche. Only time will tell how ONE grows

 

[Ara tech]

There is clearly a cold war in Japan between One against Rizin and K-1.

Rizin is since 2024 a bit more hostile to One. Rizin's CEO gave critics to One model.



“There are many casinos getting built in Incheon and they just finished building an arena that holds 15,000,” Sakakibara said. “Bring the heat to Asia first. ONE struggled in Qatar. As far as we know, they’ve been burning a lot of cash and have running for the past 10 years. They’ve burnt hundreds of millions of dollars. We have a different approach. We’re not operating off a fund-based scheme. It’s like being on life support and once the pipe is detached, you can’t live on your own.

“From this point on, RIZIN will continue to promote events that will provide the emotional rollercoasters. Delivering events like that will eventually result in a sustainable business.”

Chatri had beef too with K-1 CEO

 

[JohnMc]

$2 Million gate for 12,000 fans? Just how much was a ticket?

 

[Tayski]

$2 Million gate for 12,000 fans? Just how much was a ticket?

An average of $167 if those are correct numbers. Simple maths. Considering what ring side usually cost at such events, I wouldn't be surprised if that's indeed the average ticket price.

 

[Snubnoze707]

An average of $167 if those are correct numbers. Simple maths. Considering what ring side usually cost at such events, I wouldn't be surprised if that's indeed the average ticket price.

That seems crazy high for an average ticket. I don't know much about costs in Japan though.

 

[Monte Moku]

That seems crazy high for an average ticket. I don't know much about costs in Japan though.

Tickets for most RISE events range between $35 - $45 USD, and about $70 for ringside. K-1 tickets are usually $50 - $70, and around $200 for ringside

 

[JohnMc]

An average of $167 if those are correct numbers. Simple maths. Considering what ring side usually cost at such events, I wouldn't be surprised if that's indeed the average ticket price.

Not a cheap trip.

 

[Ara tech]

Tickets for most RISE events range between $35 - $45 USD, and about $70 for ringside. K-1 tickets are usually $50 - $70, and around $200 for ringside

When you've got Takeru the best japanese kickboxer, and Nadaka the best muay thai figher in the same card, you are already clearly deluxe edition.

 

[Monte Moku]

When you've got Takeru the best japanese kickboxer, and Nadaka the best muay thai figher in the same card, you are already clearly deluxe edition.

Takeru is the most  popular, but in his current form, not the best imo. Nadaka is the best Japanese nak muay for sure though. The big RISE cards like their El Dorado events or their GLORY cross-promotions have a similar or more stacked level of talent though, and they still don't charge the premium ONE does

 

[Killer Kadoogan]

let them bang