Dana White: UFC Media and Business Landscape

0:00Dana White: If you are in business, any type of business, I don't care what it is, and you're not on social media, you're out of your mind. Everything is headed to social media. That's the future of everything and the Internet. The way we grew up with cable television, it's all going away. You have to embrace it. There's obviously a lot of negative things about the Internet and social media, but there's way more positive. And it will do wonders for your business if you dive in and start to really figure out how to use social media to your advantage. That's UFC president and CEO Dana White. I'm Dan Coughlin with Sports Business Journal.

0:40Welcome to this episode of SBJ On Stage. No executive has become more closely identified with a sports property than Dana White with the UFC. Over more than two decades, White has helped transform mixed martial arts from a fringe attraction into a global media and entertainment business. serving as the organization's promoter, spokesperson, strategist, and public face. His leadership guided the UFC's rise from a$2 million purchase in 2001 to one of the most valuable properties in sports. Admired by some, criticized by others, and impossible to ignore, White remains one of the most influential figures in the industry.

1:17As TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro has said, Dana White is the UFC. Recorded at SBJ Media Innovators in November 2024, this conversation between White and SBJ publisher and executive editor Abe Madcor explores the growth and future of the UFC through the perspective of the man who helped build it. Let's go on stage. Dane, I want to start with Saturday night. It's been quite a run here for you. What were your takeaways from MSG and Saturday night?

1:45Dana White: It was a good night. You know, obviously, the card was really good from top to bottom. but at the end of the day what has to deliver is the co-main and main event and they absolutely delivered so it was a good night we right now when you think about how hard it was for us to get into new york we are seven of the top 10 all-time gates in uh at madison square garden so it's been awesome that's got to be pretty gratifying because you're right took you a while to get into this state yeah that's very gratifying so you know daniel we've been talking about media and media rights all day here in new york your media rights are coming up very soon You've been with ESPN since 2019.

2:23Your deal ends in 25. Give us a lay of the land of how you see your next media rights deal unfolding.

2:30Dana White: Yeah, it's interesting. As you start to see these streaming services pop up, and I've been saying this for a while. When I grew up, it was Channel 3, Channel 5, Channel 8, Channel 13. Then we ended up with cable when I was in high school. It was 33 channels or something like that. And now we're at a place where when you look at our business, right, what's the ceiling on our business? So we have the right fight and the right place at the right time. The answer to that question is 8 billion people, 8 billion people. And now, you know, Lorenzo and I, when we first got into this, we used to dream about a day where everybody could watch the same fight on the same channel at the same time.

3:05Dana White: And that's happening over the next several years. I don't know who the players are going to end up being, but, you know, is it going to be Amazon? Is it going to be YouTube? Is it going to be Disney? But there's going to be, you know, channel three, channel five, channel 8 and channel 13 globally here in the next several years um my rights are up the end of 25 i have a really good relationship with espn yeah we've sort of caught our stride and uh i've been happy with the relationship so we'll see how this thing plays out you seem to be looking at both distribution reach but also revenue because there's a lot of people in the marketplace who feel your rights are very undervalued.

3:43I would agree with that.

3:47Dana White: But, you know, it's been, you know, we started on Spike TV, and then we graduated from there to Fox, then we went to ESPN, and I feel like the UFC has finally caught its stride, you know, as we've grown the sport over the years. I mean, we're in 170 countries right now. I could get fighters from anywhere. We're the biggest pay-per-view provider on the planet. And, yeah, I think we're going to do very well going into this next deal. A lot of conversations here today, Dana, about Friday night and Jake Paul, Mike Tyson, and Netflix and the performance of Netflix in delivering mass audience. What did you take away from Friday night?

4:28Dana White: I always believed and I always thought that Netflix was crazy not to get into live sports sooner than they did. um you know those guys truly have a global footprint and uh you know i think they're late to the game but uh it was a big success but the performance of the broadcast did that give you pause to do business with netflix at all no i thought it was i i actually thought it was smart of them to do you know listen i'm not gonna i didn't i didn't think the event was a great event but they needed to do that. They knew Mike Tyson was going to bring in big numbers. Mike Tyson was going to pull a big number, and this was a good test for them before they start airing the NFL.

5:14Dana White: I mean, when you have – they're saying it was like over 65 million people tuning in at the same time. I was in a hotel room in New York, and I didn't have a bad experience. You know, it was a little grainy here and there, but I didn't have a horrible experience. I've seen some other people say they did, but I didn't. I've been with you in your office in Vegas. I see this global map behind you, Dana. As you look at growing the UFC, what pockets, what parts of the world do you see the biggest opportunity for growth in your sport? Well, it's always star-driven. You know, we got a guy right now, Ilya Teporia, who is our featherweight champion.

5:54Dana White: You know, and he's big in Spain. We've never been to Spain, so we're going to go to Spain. I just opened a performance institute down in Mexico, cultivating lots of Mexican talent down there right now. Mexico is going to be big for us over the next several years. I'm looking to go into Africa for the first time. We have a champion from South Africa. So I'm looking to go everywhere, everywhere on this planet. We're going to end up doing a live event. I've taken some criticism over the last couple of years for not traveling my fight nights as much as I used to because I built the Apex next door.

6:27Dana White: But I had reasons for that. We're going to start going into cities that we haven't been to pre-pandemic. We're going to start going back. We're going to do Chicago in 25. We're going to go back up to Seattle and hit a lot of other places that we haven't been in a while. So we're going to move around a lot in 25. You mentioned Africa. I've been hearing a lot about the growth opportunities in Africa. Are the venues suitable? Do you have enough good venues to host matches in Africa in your mind? It's a great question. That is the problem as we travel around and start doing these things. I love arenas because at the end of the day, one of the things that I always like to do is on Saturday night, whether you came to my event, bought tickets, flew in, or you stayed on the Washington pay-per-view, I want people to walk away with a good experience and not feeling like they wasted their Saturday night.

7:19Dana White: So I don't do outdoor venues because there's so many different things from the weather, and it can be rain, wind, hot, cold, humidity, whatever it is, bugs. I mean, there's so many different things that can affect your event, like a fight. Soccer games and football games, that stuff doesn't matter, but fights are very different. And I just like the feel of an arena. I feel like everybody has a good seat, everybody can see well, and there's just a great energy in it. But as you start to travel around the world, you know, soccer is massive, and they have these huge stadiums, and a lot of them are outdoors.

7:58So the long-winded answer to your question is no, no, and I'm trying to figure that part out right now. No, you're not alone in that. A couple questions from the audience I want to get right to. One is, piggybacking off your comment, Dana, What is your formula for building superstars in the sport? What is the formula?

8:18Dana White: Well, the first thing that we do is, you know, I have a lot of grassroots. You know, we get out there and we find young up and coming talent. I have a show on ESPN called the Contender Series. And, you know, most of our talent like this right to the right of me here is our board where we do all the matchmaking. Right. Most of this board, there's little blue boxes next to them. that means they came off the contender series red boxes means they came off the ultimate fighter most of the board is blue now so a lot of our talent is coming off uh the contender series i'm also flying out to korea here in the next couple of weeks uh the korean zombie one of our our fighters who retired just started a uh his own mma organization and i do this show called dana white looking for a fight where i go out and travel and look for fighters and i'm going to his show so i'm always on the road always coming up with new uh new ideas to see fighters now when you see these young up-and-coming guys um you may you know it like in the contender series the best fight the best the best unsigned guys they come in they show us what they got and then we sign them to deals and we slowly start to build these guys up over the years we we've done a really good job at cultivating talent here also you know opening up these performance institutes we have one in Vegas now, we got one in Mexico, and we have another one in China.

9:38Dana White: And, you know, we create a lot of good talent there, too. So, is there anything you can't teach a young talent? You can't teach them charisma. You can't teach them stage presence. You can't teach them humor. Is there anything you can't teach them? I don't care about any of that stuff. As long as you're... You can be a deaf mute, okay? As long as you're a great fighter, nobody cares. Nobody's there to see people give speeches and talk they're there to see people fight they want to know who the best in the world is and but if you end up with a guy like a conor mcgregor or ronda rousey or some of these people that have these great personalities that's that's just it's a home run and some of those people are what i call unicorns and and they pop up every once in a while to deal with tko group and how you've been a driver in the performance of that company what how have you benefited from being part of the TKO group.

10:32And a lot of questions here, how are you benefiting with synergies with the WWE and TKO group?

10:38Dana White: Yeah, since we kicked off the whole TKO thing, it's been great. I mean, the synergies are basically between, I'd say more of the sponsorship and production, how we figured out with both companies to streamline some of the expenses that we had when we were separate. And, I mean, you can see the stock is, the stock in the last, like, three days has gone up, like,$10 or$11. So it's on fire right now. But it's been a great, great experience. I wasn't very excited about going into a public company. It doesn't seem very fun to me, but it's been all right. I do what I do. They do what they do over at the WWE.

11:20Dana White: And then Ari does his thing. So it's actually been really good. And we have a good working relationship between us and the WWE, which we did not have before TKO. And WWE, of course, with Raw, is starting in January on Netflix. Could you see yourself learning from that deal or trying to replicate something like that deal? Well, I think as we go into our negotiations in 25, this thing can play out a lot of different ways. Obviously, we could be with Disney and ESPN for however many years. or you could see all of our content chopped up and like WWE and NFL does and and different products going to different networks so I don't know how that's going to play out as we get closer to getting into these negotiations but it is a possibility.

12:07A couple questions here Dana on your fan base similar to this it goes what are the current demographics of your audience that would surprise us i.e male female split any audience you want to see an increase in just besides more fans

12:23Dana White: but any segment of an audience yeah obviously our fan base is uh is very uh very male uh 18 to 34 but we're getting into this gap now where when we still we bought this thing in 2001 so a lot of the fan base was you know is my age so we we've done a great job while we got older at bringing in the younger the younger demo and you know i'm very big into social media and i've created a lot of alliances with a lot of these these young influencers um and and you know through that it has definitely uh kept our our fan base the youngest in all of sports when you and i chatted in, I forget when that was, maybe April or something, but you talk, talk a little bit about if you were to start a new sport today, a new sport from the ground up, like you've little deal with power slap, what are the attributes that you would look for?

13:20Dana White: Yeah. I mean, I, I literally just did it in 23 with, with, with power slap. Um, so I saw this thing. I am very heavily invested in social media and YouTube. I mean, any of these young people right now, they're all watching YouTube. They don't watch traditional television the way that you and I did when we were growing up. And I noticed that. And I noticed that I feel like the two most hated people right now on the planet are politicians and the media. Nobody trusts the media anymore. The media does not have the influence that it had 15 years ago. These young influencers do. And Power Slap was literally built on social media and on the internet and uh you know when you when you think about it it hasn't even been two full years yet right and we have over 20 million followers on power slap right 9.6 billion views in less than two years 22 months um you know when we go up against any of the sports out there including the super bowl we beat them on social media and and just for the record uh our rights are up right now too.

14:29Dana White: Power Slap's rights are up in January. So we'll be out looking to do new deals with Power Slap too. But I saw this stuff on like in 2018, it was coming out of Poland, Russia. And I was like, this is crazy. But what I what I was fascinating about it is I wanted to see who would win the fight. So I watched this thing play out. So I took a deeper dive into it and started looking at it and you know they look like they filmed it on a flip phone production was terrible they're literally slapping over a barrel um and it had 450 million views on youtube i said what would happen if i did this turned it into a real sport and did it the right way the answer is 10 billion views that's the answer what do you value power slap at right now in terms and what do you think it's valued at?

15:23Dana White: Well, it's going to do$25 million in EBITDA this year. And then when we re-up our rights next year, it's probably an$850 million business in 22 months. And just to be clear, when Dana White talks about the media not having any influence or respect, he means other media besides Sports Business Journal. I just want to say that. Well, I'm here. I was in New York yesterday. Somebody that I love very much messed up the dates and thought it was Tuesday instead of Wednesday. And Sports Business Journal is the only, only people that I would do this for and the only people I talk to about the business of sports.

16:00Well, I appreciate that. I didn't even set that up. But I did kind of. Now, I do want to ask, boxing, are you interested? You said you could maybe do something in boxing, but you want it to be from the bottom up.

16:12Dana White: Yeah, so, you know, there's no secret that I'm in talks with boxing right now. Now, hopefully, if this happens, we'd have a deal done and announced in January or February. But, yeah, I'm interested. Obviously, boxing is so messed up, it took Saudi money to make some of these fights that people wanted to see and to sort of get the sport moving again. And you think you can move it again, but you said you almost have to level it to the ground to start it from the bottom. Yeah, I don't know. But yes, I think you knock the whole thing down and you rebuild it from the ground up, just like we did the UFC.

16:54Dana White: I mean, when we bought the UFC in 2001, we had like 13 contracts, you know, an old wooden octagon. You know, this thing wasn't even on television. It wasn't allowed on pay-per-view. So you literally had to build the thing from the ground up and start all over. And yes, I think that's what you have to do with boxing. I'm also getting involved in grappling and jujitsu. and we're literally launching a reality show and then going to start putting on shows. TKO Umbrella will have everything Combat Sports under it by the end of 25. And Combat Sports is seeing growth around the world so that's the bet.

17:32That's the doubling down on Combat Sports with TKO Group.

17:36Dana White: 100%. I mean, listen, if you look at what happened with SLAP and how everybody was negative on it and it's the most successful thing I've ever been a part of in such a short amount of time. People love combat sports. One of the conversations came up, piracy. Do you think piracy is still a huge issue in your business, Dana? Huge issue for us. We spend the most money probably fighting that and have for many, many years. Yeah, it's always going to be a problem. It's something that's never going to go away, and it's just something you always got to battle. Do you want to be part of an NBA ownership team in Vegas?

18:07No. Do you want to, can Vegas sustain another sports arena? because there's like two or three different ideas for arenas in Vegas. Yes.

18:17Dana White: Vegas has become an unbelievable sports town. It makes all the sense in the world. If you're going to an away game for any sport that you love, you're going to Vegas. The problem is with Vegas, what Vegas needs to figure out is the airport. Everything here is growing and getting bigger, but the airport isn't. That's the biggest problem. You literally right now, if you're coming in for Formula 1 here this weekend, if you're flying in private, you have to get a slot to get in here, into Vegas. It's insane. That's the only problem they're going to have. You can bring every... Baseball, basketball, they're going to have ping pong here pretty soon.

18:49Dana White: I mean, every sport on the planet's coming to Vegas. And it makes sense. And you're doing a major renovation or an addition to your venue, which you showed me. The campus that they have at UFC is very, very impressive. Yeah, we're doing like a$30 million renovation at the Apex. Yeah, to obviously make it bigger, bigger capacity. Yeah, listen, the Apex is one of the greatest things we've ever done, building that. It's been a game changer for us. We had an event there. If you haven't gone to take, you know, do yourself a favor and see the Apex of Vegas. A lot of questions here from the audience.

19:25Here's some. I love it. I love it. Here you go. Even though you have many years left, can the UFC still grow at the same rate without Dana White?

19:35Dana White: Yeah. We've built a business that will go on with or without me. you know the only thing with having me here is it would just be different it would be somebody else's vision I run the UFC top to bottom you know so yes it will go on and live forever it will just be different what is the one wish you still have for your sport for the UFC even though it's been so successful one wish I have for my sport hmm I don't know I mean everything is gone as good as you could expect it to go. You know, we continue, we believe that this thing would work all over the world. We continue to find talent everywhere.

20:17Dana White: Young people are training in mixed martial arts. You know, when we were growing up, your parents would put you in karate or taekwondo. This is the martial art that men and women and children are taking all over the world. So it's just going to continue to get bigger. I mean, I don't even know how much more I could ask. I want PIs everywhere. I would love to have PIs set up all over the world to continue to train fighters and take the whole thing to another level. We're always reinvesting in the sport. Biggest upset in UFC history was what? Nate Diaz over Conor McGregor? If I had to pick one, I'd probably say Juliana Pena when she...

20:59Dana White: Huh? Yeah. Juliana Pena when she beat Omnina Nunes. Okay. Yeah. That would be it. And then when you and I chatted, you were kind of going through a little, I won't say like just a different lifestyle change, Danny. You found yourself changing diet, changing exercise. Talk a little bit about that and how it's kind of revitalized your approach. Yeah, no doubt about it. You know, anybody out there who's 50 plus, when you hit 50, the wheels come off the bus. It's like when your car hits 50 ,000 miles. It's like, should I just get a new car or should I get this stuff fixed? That's what my life was starting to feel like.

21:36Dana White: Met this guy, Gary Brecka. Once you hit your 50s, the party's over. You got to change your whole lifestyle and start taking care of yourself if you want to continue to perform at the level you performed in your 30s and 40s. and I did that and I literally can't take enough stuff on now. I keep piling more and more on my plate and I feel better than I've ever felt in my whole life. You have to change your lifestyle and you have to get healthy when you start to get older. You had told me that you used to badge of honor not to sleep, but now you realize how important sleep, rest, diet, all those things have become.

22:12Dana White: Yeah, diet, exercise, and doing all these other things. I mean, it's a lot deeper than that. This guy got me off all doctor's medicines. I'm only on supplements now. I was on doctor's medicines that I didn't need to be on. So it's much deeper than that, yeah. But I still don't sleep much. Sleep is still a problem. I bet. You told my colleague Adam Stern you have no political aspirations. You will not be part of a Trump administration. Is that true? That is a fact. I'm in the fight business, which is the dirtiest, nastiest business. We all hate each other, and we're all fighting every day. there's nothing dirtier than politics it's disgusting it's gross and uh i want nothing to do with it okay that sounds like it's pretty adamant when ufc was just starting and everything was an uphill battle what kept dana white going forward and fighting i well that's just me that's what i do you know whether whether it was building the ufc power slap uh going through covid whatever it is any challenges that come along i love that stuff i love people saying that something can't be done i like people saying you can't do this you can't do that i love to do what people think can't be done and luckily i've built a team around me that feels the same exact way my my i got the best team in business never mind sports i say it all the time my my team are a bunch of killers i love it that that segues well to this one dana i would love to work at the ufc what is dana looking for and people that want to work for him?

23:43Dana White: I want people that are passionate about what they do. You know, I don't want people to come here and have like, oh, this is my nine to five job. It's okay. And I hate to go to work. You know, we have a really, first of all, you said it earlier, the campus here is incredible. It's an amazing place to work. You know, we have a great time. Every Saturday, there's an event. We travel all over the world and we work really hard, but we love what we do and we love the people we're doing with. So it really is, you know, I saw some CEO recently saying that, oh, any guy that you work for that tells you your family, it's not true.

24:24Dana White: You're just a no. No, you're not just a number here. We are family and we all take care of each other. And I've been saying this to my team for like 20 years. And then when COVID hit, the universe gave me the opportunity to prove it. So we've never been tighter than we are right now. And last one here, Dana, from me. I love this quote. You said the older generation never gets the younger generation. We got a lot of, I'm not going to be disparaging here, but we've got a lot of older people in this room, me included. How can we do better understanding the younger generation in your mind? Well, if you look at throughout history, you know, I say it all the time, too, about the younger generation right now.

25:05Dana White: We don't understand them. You know, oh, it wasn't like this when we were younger. It was better. It was this, that. The world is always going to change. It's going to keep changing, and things are always going to be different, and it's not going to be the same as it was when we were growing up. And you have to remember that. And you have to, for instance, I mean, I said it earlier, but I'll tell you again. if you are in business, any type of business, I don't care what it is, and you're not on social media, you're out of your mind. Everything is headed to social media. That's the future of everything and the internet.

25:38Dana White: The way we grew up with cable television, and it's all going away, and you have to embrace it. And, you know, there's obviously a lot of negative things about the internet and social media, but there's way more positive. And it will do wonders for your business if you dive in and start to really figure out how to use social media to your advantage. Well, we thank you for joining us today. We got to know a lot is on your plate. Best of luck in 2025. We'll see you down the road. Give it up for Dana White, everybody. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of SBJ On Stage. We heard Dana White in 2024 foreshadow the expiration of UFC's media rights deal with ESPN and the impending negotiations to determine who would hold the rights going forward.

26:25Of course, in the summer of 2025, the UFC struck a$7.7 billion seven-year media rights deal with Paramount. We also heard White say that he doesn't do outdoor venues, preferring indoor arenas, despite their generally lower seating capacity than large-scale outdoor stadiums. The allure of staging a UFC fight this summer on the South Lawn of the White House, perhaps the most famous of outdoor venues, seems to have let White break that mantra, or at least make a one-time exception. As the UFC continues to grow, we'll see if arenas can hold whatever White has in store for the future. We're back in two weeks with another conversation from the stage featuring leaders shaping the future of sports business.

27:04Until next time, stay tuned and stay ahead. This is On Stage.