More Options:  Print This Post  Email This Post  RSS Feeds Share:

By Zach Arnold

A month after Zuffa LLC purchased the assets of PRIDE and held a press conference in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, to announce their business deal, the company lost their long-time television deal in Japan with the WOWOW network.

WOWOW had been a partner for UFC programming in Japan since April of 2002, and the network told its viewers that the last telecast would feature Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Mirko Cro Cop from England. The much anticipated Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Chuck Liddell fight would not air on the pay channel, due to what network representatives said was UFC’s request for higher rights fees to air programming. UFC programming on WOWOW was limited to the major PPVs and not any of the Spike TV shows.

The lasting image that hardcore UFC fans in Japan have of the company involve PRIDE icon Mirko Cro Cop getting his head kicked in by Gonzaga. It was a symbolic and ironic ending of the UFC/WOWOW relationship that a PRIDE icon got blasted by a relatively unknown fighter.

Now comes word that UFC has reached an agreement with WOWOW to start broadcasting PPVs again on the pay channel. To put WOWOW into perspective, it’s long-been Japan’s answer to HBO except nowhere near the subscriber base. WOWOW has a long history of airing fight-related programming. The network first got in bed with SWS, which was a big-money pro-wrestling gamble led by Gen’ichiro Tenryu (who left All Japan to go to the new promotion). SWS and then-WWF worked together on shows and WOWOW aired those events. The TV coverage simply didn’t translate into good business for SWS and the promotion closed its doors within a couple of years.

However, the crown jewel of all combat-related programming on WOWOW was RINGS, the promotion owned by Akira Maeda. RINGS started in 1991 and had a decade-long relationship with WOWOW. When Akira Maeda held his retirement show at Yokohama Arena a decade ago (his fight was against Aleksandr Karelin), he stayed with WOWOW and let the network air the show. There had been several rumors that big free-to-air broadcast networks in Japan were interested in airing the show, but Maeda reportedly turned those offers down due to his loyalty with WOWOW. After Maeda’s retirement from RINGS, RINGS went into more of a shoot-mode with their King of Kings tournament. However, there wasn’t enough support for RINGS from WOWOW and the promotion would soon collapse.

Given all of this back history, what does UFC’s new deal with WOWOW mean for business in the Japanese marketplace? Not a lot.

While it’s not a 100% accurate analogy, the best comparison to describe UFC being on WOWOW is K-1 having DREAM shows air on HDNet Fights. If anything, the only real benefit UFC is getting by airing on WOWOW involves rights fees. Nothing more, nothing less, would be our best guess.

In an interesting way, UFC re-upping with WOWOW is (in our view) the equivalent of throwing in a white towel on the Japanese MMA marketplace. Remember, Zuffa LLC got burned over the PRIDE deal and they never even managed to run a single show there. With all of the aggressive talk from both Dana White & Lorenzo Fertitta about expanding their business operations, you never hear them address the Japanese marketplace these days, do you? Wonder why?

Let’s say that for argument’s sake that UFC did, in fact, want to run in Japan within the next five years. What kind of promotional options would they have on the table if they wanted to run a show in Japan?

a) Cut a deal with K-1 to do a 50/50 revenue split involving a co-promotional UFC/DREAM event

This is likely the most solid option for doing business. K-1 would be able to get UFC fighters over with the mainstream Japanese audience by using their free-to-air TV deals to put over the foreign stars. K-1 handling the promoting-end of the house show would alleviate a lot of pressure on UFC’s end to have to deal with questionable or shady characters trying to screw them over.

The flip-side to this option is that many ex-DSE employees work under the DREAM banner… the same ex-DSE employees that Zuffa LLC failed to keep around when they tried to run shows under the ‘shinsei’ (newborn) PRIDE banner.

b) Cut a deal with Total Sports Asia to do a sold-show (w/ or w/o % split) in Japan

This is the option that WWE chose to use for several years this decade in Japan. When Smackdown aired on Fuji TV (free-to-air television), WWE had a platform to basically run cookie-cutter sold shows in the Japanese marketplace. By allowing TSA to handle the promoting end of the deal, it was a simple business transaction. Very much cut-and-dry.

The problem with this kind of deal is that UFC likes to have total control over their promotional operations. Sure, if the numbers made sense and added up for a small-scale event (like a Spike TV special), UFC would be foolish not to work with TSA. However, UFC has no free-to-air TV deal in Japan and there may not be enough money on the table for TSA to spend energy promoting a UFC event in Japan.