UFC Owners are Certified Billionaires
Published by on March 8th, 2008 in History

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FERTITTAS ARE CERTIFIED BILLIONAIRES

The Fertitta brothers are billionaires – Forbes magazine says so.

Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III, co-founders of Zuffa LLC and owners of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, have each achieved a listing of #897 among “The World’s Billionaires” as it is compiled in Forbes magazine. Their reported net worth is placed at $1.3 billion each, mostly derived from the ownership of Station Casinos Inc., though Forbes acknowledges that the UFC’s pay-per-view events average $30 million in revenue.

The brothers are designated as “self-made,” though father Frank Fertitta Sr. got the ball rolling in 1976 by purchasing a small venue that later became the Bingo Palace Casino. The company, which became public in 1993, later went private with $9 billion financing.

Lorenzo is a graduate of the University of San Diego and got his masters at New York University (NYU). Frank III is a USC graduate.

A newer entrant into the MMA business, Mark Cuban, is listed at #446 on the list, with a net worth of $2.6 billion, which would put him about even with the Fertittas. Cuban sold an audio portal named Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999. He owns a film production company, as well as a DVD distribution company and a string of movie theaters, as well as the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and of course, the high-definition television network HDNet.