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K-1/FEG find financial backers for attempted Asian expansion
By Zach Arnold | July 16, 2010
Watch the wacky Kamipro writers comment as they see the press conference
They held a press conference in Tokyo today with Michael Chen, who represents PUJI Group (PUJI Capital). This means an in-road for money support to try to get into Shanghai and Beijing, something that Godfather Ishii has been trying to do for years.
Tanigawa denied that FEG was sold. However, he did say that the money will help DREAM and K-1 compete against the likes of UFC because Dana White was able to offer fighters more fight money than the Japanese promotions. He noted that the entire environment of the Japanese fight scene has changed and now the focus is to run all over Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, China) and focus there while maintaining the network TV support they have with Tokyo Broadcasting and Fuji TV.
(This really isn’t a new philosophy, as Ishii has always been about keeping the rights fees from the TV broadcasts but allowing others to promote shows elsewhere if they wanted to use him as a pipeline.)
“I want to establish (us as) the world’s largest fighting company again.” That was essentially the theme of today’s press conference.
As with most Japanese press conferences and statements, I’m sure there is a bit of exaggeration at play here so don’t take things at 100% face value.
Topics: DREAM, Japan, K-1, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 31 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
China is a huge market, but a very special maket.
When i hear the UFC is going to make the try, i was thinking on google, and the situation of the american companyes on China market.
I read an interview of Zhang Tie Quan, mma chinese fighter, and he say the money in China combat sports are in Xan-Da.
here is the link: http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/7/12/1560925/exclusive-interview-with-chinese
A request, Zach, you can do a post, explaining more deep the situation in the combat sports on China.
I like the Nick Diaz shirt lol
I remember when Pride went over to the US and more then a few fans thought it was a sign of how well they were doing.
Organizations go abroad for two reasons:
1) They have maximized growth within their native country and are using foreign nations as a mean to expand.
2) They are fincially hurting in their home country and are looking to find a new market to become profitable again.
The UFC is #1. Pride was #2. DREAM is likely #2 as well, but time will tell.
“I remember when Pride went over to the US and more then a few fans thought it was a sign of how well they were doing.”
LOL…WHUT?!
Nobody save the biggest marky-marks thought this meant they were doing well. No one…it’s nice that you said “few” trying to make it sound as if anyone rational actually thought this, but this is a pretty BS statement.
Everyone and their dog knew this was a hail mary based on the fallout from the yakuza scandal, basically it was the only avenue they had to try to keep their heads above water…and it was a miserable failure.
Stop rewriting history in your mind. Mr. Arnold was in the minority of people who were talking about the demise of Pride a year before it happened. Most of the hardcore fans were still in shock when the UFC purchased them.
45 Huddle,
I got to agree with the Gaijin. I am not sure what history you are remembering, but everyone in the MMA media knew that Pride coming to America was a last ditch effort. Go listen to the radio shows on Sherdog and read the websites.
I am a big fan of Pride and everyone could see the writing on the wall when the SHukan Gendai article came out. I do not know what Zach Arnold was writing, since I did not read FightOpinion, back in the day, but a lot, if not most MMA sites were talking about how desperate Pride was coming to America.
How do you remember it happening exactly?
P.S.
Don’t use this as an opportunity to put over the UFC and how mega-awesome they are. If that is what you are trying to get us to do, then please just don’t post. If you do not post a response, I will assume that is what you are going for.
Actually 45 Huddle is correct on this point, most Pride fans were in denial up until it was announced that the UFC had bought the company.
I’m glad that you managed to back up 45’s point by citing specific facts or evidence “most Pride fans” (where? who? when?), instead of just reiterating your worthlessness on this board as a UFC cheerleader, incapable of providing any insight or analysis other than shaking the pom-poms. Thanks, EJ!
What do you want? It’s hard to dig up stuff from 4 years ago, but if you want a whole thread of Pride fans in denial of Pride going under, here you go.
http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f44/pride-not-any-financial-trouble-what-their-planning-425448/
Also, let’s be perfectly clear here. I’m not saying it was a widely held belief, but there were plenty of idiots that thought Pride was going to rebound.
In that thread, there are people talking about the demise of Pride. Were there some holdouts, sure, I’ll grant you that. But as that thread shows, there were alot of people talking about how Pride was dead, and that the US was the last ditch effort / hail mary pass to see if they could find some sort of lifeline.
Here’s Breen answering a question from todays chat:
[Comment From George from Atlanta George from Atlanta : ]
What does Dream’s decision to raise capital mean for global MMA?
Jordan Breen:
It means FEG are in the poor house. So, in short, it means that big-money MMA in Japan is fragile, which is only a good thing, since Japan is the country most ill-suited for big-money MMA.
Zach,
I have a request, can you add MMAPayout to your RSS feeds. I noticed that it was removed recently. Appreciate it.
[…] focusing on the Asian market first, and then expanding into Europe and other international markets. Zach Arnold points out that with PUJI’s backing, FEG should be able to compete with the UFC for high-value fighters […]
I could probably come up with a few other countries “most ill-suited for big-money MMA.”
Liberia > Japan for MMA
Iraq > Japan for MMA but not IEDs!
I agree with 45 on this one. Arnold was all over the crumbling Pride Empire long before any fans would admit it.
Since I lived through the whole history of PRIDE’s collapse and what went down, let me be the first to say that I was the one person who said for nearly 18 months (Nov. ’05 starting with Kawamata coming back to Japan to look for money) that PRIDE was dead-on-arrival. Why? Kawamata, the admitted yakuza-fixer, wouldn’t have come back to Japan from ‘hiding’ in Hawaii if he didn’t think he could get money and do so safely.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, thought PRIDE was going to die except me (and those in the business in Japan who knew what was up). Even when PRIDE lost the deal with Fuji TV, there were people in America hyping up PRIDE and then came the Ed Fishman situation and all of a sudden the narrative in the media turned to “PRIDE conquering Las Vegas.”
The irony, of course, is if Sakakibara hadn’t had used it as an excuse to negotiate with Zuffa at the time for a sale and actually bothered to pay Ed and the LV folks that PRIDE could have ran successful shows there in Vegas sporadically for a long time. But that was truly never the end game for Sakakibara (getting out was), much like I suspect what’s going down with K-1 is here.
(In the case of K-1, Ishii’s mantra always has been to get the TV money and control the pipeline and focus on that rather than focus on live gates. If someone wants to put up money ala Yarennoka to promote their own show and he gets the TV revenue, then he’ll do that all day long.)
As far as MMA Payout, I have their RSS feed in the sidebar programmed but it fails to load most of the time. (bad feed on their part, perhaps they have Google Analytics code interspersed in, which breaks my caching program.)
Say what you will Zach, but you were not the only ones thinking that Pride was dead. I remember Jordan Breen and Josh Gross talking about this subject long before it happened. Now I tried finding the radio shows where they said that, but I had trouble doing that, since, well, there are alot of radio shows to go through. I tried going to subfighter.com, but I guess it got sold.
I can see (and understand) why you say that you were the ONLY guy outside of Japan, but I do not think that it is true. And you were not the only one who lived through it. Alot of us did, since I am assuming everyone here is over six years old.
Ed. — On the PRIDE issue, this is the one issue I’m willing to confront anyone on because I lived through many years of this and suffered a lot for it. So I know what the deal is. I said 18 months before the collapse of the deal that it was coming and you wouldn’t believe the laughter I got from people. But once Kawamata started suing people in court for money, and then his ex-yakuza henchmen got arrested a few months later, that was a very strong sign that the police were going to get involved. I was the only voice who said PRIDE was collapsing long before it happened. There may have been people who said PRIDE would collapse once they lost their Fuji TV deal, but that was many many months after Kawamata resurfaced, almost a year in fact.
Please explain what you mean by “lived through” and “suffered a lot for it”
To me, it looks like you are trying to take credit for breaking the story on PRIDE dieing and at the same time making yourself out to be some type of martyr for all of the “suffering” that you experienced.
I do not get it, so if you would, please explain it to me. You can reach me here, you know my e-mail address, or you can contact me on Facebook if you so desire.
It was a story where I put my entire credibility on the line. I learned a lot from it as far as what the public thinks. They laughed at me for the longest of time and got pissed at me for ‘making up stuff’ because, hey, who wants to hear bad news? And of course, once the bad news happened, the loudest talkers just simply faded away.
It was a mafia scandal story. What do you think were some of the things a person would go through?
I’ve been around the block a few times with scandal stories, but there will never be a story that tops of the collapse of PRIDE, who was behind it, and why it happened. Many things that have never gone public have stayed that way for a reason.
I can remember very little Sherdog coverage at the time. I think Zach even questioned they lack of coverage at the time on this issue.
Well I think Vadim et al have found a new money mark…er, um…partner!
From what I remember not many sites were actually saying Pride was dead. Even when they lost there tv deal u never saw the MMA sites actually saying it was game over. The whole Yakuza scandal was ignored for a long time.
The fans especially on sherdog seemed to think pride could just upsticks and move to America and everything would be ok. It was laughable!!
[…] As Zach Arnold notes, the Puji money should help FEG offer its fighters more competitive purses, but this is a plan we’ll need to observe in action for some time before fully understanding how (or if) it can truly succeed. […]
This is typical Japanese promotional bluster, you see it in all forms of media in Japan. I don’t think even Tanigawa believes they can really challenge the UFC at this point. Using local promotional partners to put on Dream MMA shows in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea is basically a win/win situation. They provide the name and the fighters at a fee above the fighter’s salary, and the local promoters basically absorb everything but the tv production cost. Dream would make an immediate profit off shows like that. Furthermore, promoting themselves as Pan-Asian really widens their market.
The problem is finding partners willing to promote their shows. I don’t know how feasible that is. Furthermore, if someone said that they [Dream] was going to “go to war with the UFC,” they better be prepared to reap what they sow. Just that comment alone might have Dana White sending out feelers to every major fighter in Dream to see what their contract status is.
It would be stopid for K-1/DREAM to go to war with the UFC…it would be stupid to say it without even meaning it, just to get meadia attention.
I would love to see MMA take off again in Japan, but any MMA company would be foolish to think they can ride the wave os UFC’s growth and try to overtake them.
For another company to surpass the UFC it would take many things, but the two primary things would be:
1) Time (and paitence)
and
2) The idea to just try to do smart business.
A company can possibly become a bigger promotion, but it is something that you just can’t will to happen. It would take time (like ti did the UFC) and a smart business model ( the UFC learned along the way, just like any other company would need to do).
MMA is such a niche market, its not like a software company, or an automobile maker. Marketing is probably more important in MMA then most businesses.
It’s a play out of the 48 laws of power. That’s all it is.
how big would ufc be if it wasn’t for payperview?
Not as big as it is, but it was mostly the exposure on Spike TV (ala The Ultimate Fighter) that put UFC where it is today. It sure as hell wasn’t their time on Fox Sports!
Dream need’s a new Masato now. Fast.