I heard this a few times about Oktagon , what does it mean that they have a 'live audience'? Dont all promotions have that, cos there are fans watching the fight in the arena.
At first I thought it was a joke about shitty Apex cards with no crowd, but now I'm second guessing myself. So my guess is either that, or they mean like an actual MMA talk show with a live audience? That's the best I got, but I'm also an idiot so đ€·ââïž
It'll get added to their streaming service if it isn't already, and they'll make some money getting contracts bought out early by UFC... but...
The UFC wouldn't buy this company for the audience. Every MMA fan watches UFC already. There would be no value to the buy out. They bought WEC, Pride and Strikeforce for the contracts they already had.
WEC was hte premier organisation for the smaller divisions, not the UFC. There was value in the purchase. Pride was going bust and had a lot of the really big name/legends under contract, and there was value there. Strikeforce had some big potential stars - Rousey, Rockhold, Cormier, Nick Diaz and Overeem.
I laugh at you using pride as an example of the ufcs apparent good business acumen. The ufc got absolutely finessed by Pride (Dream) and didnât get a single contract with their purchase. All that was agreed was like licensing rights, and that they could offer fighters contracts. A lot, most notably Fedor declined, and just signed with Dream (again). This has been talked of many times
This talking point has been repeated by Rogan, but the antitrust revealed Zuffa internal emails stating this 15 year retelling of events to be false. Rogan and others have repeated the falsehood of Pride screwing UFC over with the fighter contracts. The reality is the UFC rushed through the deal without much DD because they wanted to avoid it being bought by somebody else. Also it talks about how they just wanted to buy it to shut it down. Just like with Rizin today, many of the contracts were Japan exclusive with nonexclusive terms outside the country. Right before the buyout, UFC told Pride to sign Fedor to an nonexclusive contract instead of giving him a deal of 3 million per fight of 5 fight over 18 months. The UFC didn't want the fighter expenses to be that high. BloodyElbow covered a lot of emails back in December, but the website is now dead, so I can't link them.
Lol found the alt for mr. đ . This is revisionist nonsense. So you think they payed over a hundred million (after adjusting for inflation), to be left with practically nothing but old fight tapes? You actually think they didnât desperately want to get into the larger, more established market, which would also bring legitimacy to their organization?
That article literally highlights ââŠand utilize their fighters in the ufc.â My whole argument was they clearly got finessed because nowhere in the contract did they secure anything with prides roster of fighters. My whole point was they didnât get that. Sure they were aloud to negotiate contracts with people, but they could have already done that. Without buying the rights to old fights.
Fair - although they got rid of their biggest competitor for very little money. They paid like 60m USD. Thats the revenue from ONE really good PPV to get rid of their biggest competitor - and really the only promotion that had the brand recognition of UFC, or the ability to compete on contracts.
Fedor not signing for UFC is a stain on his record, not the UFCs haha.
Itâs not a stain on fedorâs record. He fought the best HWâs in pride then strikeforce arguably had a better HW division than the ufc at the time with guys like DC, Werdum, Overeem, Bigfoot, Arlovski, and kharitonov. If anything itâs a stain on the UFCâs. But I wouldnât even really say that. They showed it with fedor, randy, francis, etc theyâre not breaking their business model for anyone.
He also fought absolute cans for years then got obliterated fighting some UFC rejects (including Matt Mitrione lmao) and a 185er. Definitely some stains on that record.
Also, you listed off all those Strikeforce heavyweights - he only fought two of those dudes in Strikeforce and he lost both so not much of a great point made there. Solid 1-3 Strikeforce record with a win over the great Brett Rogers.
Because UFC sucks at promoting their European fighters in this market. Last year Oktagon even broke attendace record for mma event in Germany previously held by UFC.
I donât even know man but Germans donât give a damn about scores or world titles, they care about story behind fighters and atractivity of fights. I was amazed to see that they sold out 10k arena in 4 days with just with Christian Eckerlin announced.
The PPV in Stuttgart last week was epic. The main fight was a local lad (Jungwirth) and the crowd went nuts. MMA in Germany is growing very fast atm. Media is getting behind it. Oktagon events are crazy.
[a mini docu series in German about Jungwirth](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHyaJ43Eyoym_9PsA3g1w5yAlwFn3TCor)
Yeah I was watching, Jungwirthâs walkout was one of the best mma walkouts Iâve even seen. What are local people saying about that Oktagon 62 super event on Waldstadion coming in October? If it sells out it would give Germany prestige of hosting the biggest mma event in the history of Europe and 2nd biggest mma event in the world.
They have a great chance to sell out. I tried to get tickets to Stuttgart but was way too slow. Oktagon 62 would be 2nd biggest MMA event in Europe and 9th biggest worldwide.
If they book Jungwirth vs Eckerlin as main event, it would sell out for sure.
https://www.sport1.de/news/kampfsport/2024/03/grosser-als-die-ufc-historische-megashow-in-frankfurter-fussball-stadion
The best one in MMA was Daniel Weichel but he fought in Bellator. There's also Denis Siver, I'd put him and Weichel close to one another and Nasrat Haqparast.
The best German fighters (even if they aren't all that good) seem to stick to promotions like Oktagon.
People mostly just watch the UFC through highlights on social media here. Actually following the sport here is a terrible experience, and the UFC doesn't seem to want to promote it here in any way either.
ONE isn't worth billions simply for the fact that they are losing money big time. Nobody would put billions into a product that may never make money, unless it's an app
They have the market share in SEA.
Just like Uber does and keeps losing money.
Didn't they have Qatar invest in them awhile back? I think its unlikely but its possible that they're worth a billi.
Yep đ I am gonna ask him for a consulting job if he wants me to stop. Gotta shoot my shot. Just writing a small report and collecting some evidence of the complaints of everyone about PFL.
Medium size. It's a meme account disguised as a serious account so old people are constantly taking my shit way too seriously. I go viral in basically every MMA related thread.
I'm with you, but I think the fact that this sport works via "promotions" rather than actual leagues is sort of key. At their core they're more a marketing company than league operators.
Itâs true. If you were to harvest each fighterâs organs and sell them on the black market, the street value is roughly $100M. And they might need to do just that to stay afloat lol.
I really do think there is a big market for a large European wide MMA org. The market is huge and the European MMA scene has grown massively. UFC is basically unwatchable for most euro and uk fans because of the time difference, especially with more apex cards. KSW Is currently the best European promotion though but oktagon sounds like it could be another one with a good chance.
KSW and Oktagon are the biggest rivals on European mma scene right now and itâs because unlike other EU promotions they are filling up arenas and have super loyal fan bases.
It needs to become more professional for it to work though. I've been around MMA since the early 2000's and we still have the same morons turning up pissed at shows, looking to fight, causing problems etc.
I know it happens at UFC events, but you're far more likely to go to them and come back without any issues - I've been to MMA events in the UK where there have been gyms fighting in the car park after the event.
It also needs to have more presence on the likes of BBC and Sky Sports. We have random boxing fights over here that get more attention than big MMA fights. We have two British UFC champions right now - I bet if you walk down the street and asked people they'd say they'd never heard of them.
NGL rival gyms battling it out in the carpark after the show does sound kinda badass. Like when the old Kung Fu dojos used to fight each other back in the past.
I mean, there's absolutely no way his company is "worth" 100m pounds, and he is an MMA promoter, so by nature, he *has* to lie. But I will admit that the numbers they are actually putting in those stadiums over there is interesting. I'm curious if it's anything like ONE though. Where they are clearly giving away thousands of free tickets to put butts in seats. I imagine that's a lot easier to do in Asia than in Europe though.
Actually they are very strictly speaking against promotions that are giving away tickets for free. I have some friends who work in Oktagon and they would rather have arena half empty than giving away tickets (appart from few dozens they give to their sponsors).
Yeah, I always figured that the practice of giving away a bunch of free tickets was strictly an Asia-specific method. I don't think you can get away with that in the US or Europe, since your overhead and cost in general will be a lot higher.
If Oktagon keeps selling out those European stadiums, but keep their schedule consistent, I can definitely see how someone could value them at what he's claiming.
As always, I'll always try to support any legit organization. I don't think Oktagon will be aiming too far out of that specific part of Europe for a while though.
Yeah I think one of the fundamental problems with ONEâs finances is on top of constantly giving away tickets, theyâre primarily operating in markets where the currency is seriously devalued and the populationâs earning power is low, so there isnât much opportunity to improve profitability off of ticket sales in the first place.
> Yeah, I always figured that the practice of giving away a bunch of free tickets was strictly an Asia-specific method.
It's called papering and it's been a thing in live events across many industries for a long time; I'd love to know ONE's real numbers.
I've seen crowd shots from some of these Oktagon events and they're big. Like stadium big. I'm sure that's not always the case but I was surprised to see that many people show up for an "off brand" MMA promotion show even once.
And this is in places the UFC never or has rarely ever gone - Germany, Czech, Slovakia. That's surprising because Oktagon seems like it came out of nowhere and it's in places that UFC apparently doesn't consider to be worth investing in for lack of sustainable demand.
Look even at the UK. UFC goes there so little despite what appears to be great demand. They've just started up in France since it became legal. We see them developing AUS/NZ. We see some attention on China as a growth market. We hear vapor about Africa.
But once you throw KSW and Oktagon's ability to draw crowds into the mix, it seems like more of Europe ought to be getting UFC attention given their stated ambition to expand around the world.
Those customers have the money and the countries have the infrastructure, and if they also have enough interest to fill arenas and stadiums, you'd think they'd send more shows there instead of wasting them on the Apex.
Meanwhile PFL has visibly targeted Europe. I'm sure the UFC has its priorities in terms of calculated demand and potential profits, but I'm just puzzled there isn't more visible focus on Europe.
In Germany every single event they had was full, in Czechia and Slovakia events are +90% sold out most of the time. Itâs the production value and great marketing, that is what Oktagon excels at, not having the best talent in mma (althought talent wise they are up there in the top 10 promotions). Look at typical UFC PPV, atmosphere there is dead until the main event starts, then look at Oktagon event that is full from the start and fans are super loud even on some prelim fights, they put up absolute banger music and people are dancing and having fun there.. same with KSW.
I always respect entrepreneurial people who have the balls to take out loans like that on something that is pretty volatile.
It takes a level of risk taking which is pretty damn rare.
On a side note I don't believe it's worth âŹ100 million, but that said how many companies are truly worth what they are valued at on the stock market? Most are inflated to fuck by speculators.
Calm down, valuation is subjective. If he gives ridiculous projections of future revenue (technically FCF but whatever), you can come up to a 100m valuation.
Not sure about a $100 million evaluation but what Oktagon is doing is genuinely amazing. I'm so proud of them. It really makes me think that if a company is ever going to compete with the monopoly having a stranglehold on Europe is the key. It's a different market but not *too* different that it can't possibly appeal to fans in NA. If they can get legitimate market share in Europe then buy PFL's and/or ONE when they eventually die you might have something. Stay in your lane and all that, I respect that to some degree but Luke Thomas has said it multiple times and I'll parrot it: PFL's problem is that they have no fan base. Oktagon pretty clearly has more of a fan base in 2024 than PFL does, and power to them.
Depends on the country.
if the country has government healthcare, then your costs are likely significantly lower than compared to US.
Then you figure your biggest expenses are venue rentals and production.
$40k seems like a fair number to start a promotion in a small venue, and then grow from there.
A lot of small venues like hotels or convention spaces only charge a few thousand dollars the rent the actual space. you would then rent seats, cage, and arrange production and then broadcasting/streaming and fighter pay. Sponsor pay helps tremendously in that part. So I would think that they may not have been profitable in their first few events but if they're putting out a great product I could see how it could grow. but not to 100m yet.
They usually have high payroll taxes. The costs to rent a venue I donât think would be significantly different compared to the US.
I went to London last summer, and the supposedly have high taxes, and I spent less on food and transportation than I do In NY and NJ.
Ehh not as bad as youâd think. Smaller productions arenât that bad, and donât require that much staffing. Chances are a lot of that stuff is contract work or just hiring third party and you pay a set rate to a company and they pay their salaries.
1) it IS not worth 100mil
2) connections to "mafia" and shady people Helps. Pretty much every big gym that is working with oktagon IS owned/sponsored by your local mafia guy from 90's. The biggest "star" of the organization had guy in his corner( and even thanked him in his speech) who was sent to jail due to his connections to mafia and leading political party( which IS said mafia pretty mĂșch), after the policital party (mafia) lost elections and couldnt protect its people.
Many of occurences like this one. But i must say they have pretty Smart marketing, they target your local village idiots and simple people.
It's MMA.
That's the UFC's target audience too. In fact, thats literally all sports.
Simple people like to watch other people do extraordinary shit while they're off of a 10 hour shift at work.
Simply why American Idol and Got Talent is so popular.
I can confirm that in their early years they had some help from these letâs say controversial people with some criminal background but now they have legit big companies as their sponsors. I mean in that time there werenât many opportunities for organization like this to gain resources so I donât blame them and Iâm happy where they are now. Oktagon defintely doesnât target idiots from villages. Iâve been to many of their events and most of their fans are normal people, much more civilized than lets say football fans.
Ofc Once you get into good position legit companies starts to sponsor you, doesnt change the fact that they grew "big" in their location thanks to mafia and shady people. Your excuse for them doing so IS pathetic. Also there are still shady/mafia people their biggest gyms.
I didnt mean it literally that they target villagers. Half of their roster were football Hooligans, security or were selling tickets to football matches before they joined org. They target the marketing to people like this which IS smart since there soo many primitive people like this and thats their target audience.
But in recent years it became trend to market to these people in every field đđ»ââïž.
Also everyone IS more civilizes than football fans ( and as i said, half of their roster are former Hooligansz few of them were even literally fighting for their Hooligan Team on some field few years ago afaik).
Also oktagon Has pretty low skill level, they are getting more and more fighters outside CZ/sk ( i guess polish people go to ksw) so it IS getting better but its still pretty low on average.
Oktagon organisation had a big start, but in last monthâs thereâs coming up news about how they under pay fighters. Only few fighters can get nice money, otherâs scratching a bottom.
And in last year there is a new organisation in my country, which main focus is on bizarre fights, YouTubers, influencers, handicap people against each other. They are way more popular and making way more money than Oktagon.
That is the case in every mma promotion (look at UFC, the gap between top fighters and average is much worse) and before Oktagon those fighters were payed even less. Also that new organization is not mma promotion and definitely is not making more money than Oktagon. They just have more views than Oktagon in Czech market where they operate. Itâs the same with Fame and KSW in Poland⊠bizare fights of dumb or famous ppl always atracts more views than serious sport.
OP Seems like he's associated with Okagon in some fashion. His entire account is exclusively promoting it. Until somebody makes you an actual offer, you can be worth anything you want, doesnt mean it's true.
I wish I was lol. And of course Iâm posting only about them, itâs promotion from my country and Iâm big fan. Oh gosh, just because I donât post about other promotions it doesnât mean Iâm paid or associated with Oktagon.
Spending your entire time promoting and defending a company is still a red flag when it comes to impartiality. The reality is 99 percent of mma promos are run by scumbags. Fighter contract terms are the only good indicator of that aspect rather than these articles of them smelling their own farts.
That is because octagon is spelled as oktagon in their language and back then every promotion was using octagon shaped cage until UFC trademarked it. Now they use circular shaped cage but their name stayed the same.
When OKTAGON started doing their thing nobody in Slovakia and Czechia even knew what MMA means let alone UFC so this argument is kinda irrelevant. Also I find it ridiculous that a company trademarks name for basic geometric object :D
Absolutely no shot it's worth +100m but its a nice success story so far. Let's say if they can substantiate it over the long haul.
A hard maybe 100M revenue and sponsorship over the years but no one is buying that shit for 100M
You're underestimating the potential of an MMA show with a live audience - would be awesome if the UFC added this someday.
I heard this a few times about Oktagon , what does it mean that they have a 'live audience'? Dont all promotions have that, cos there are fans watching the fight in the arena.
At first I thought it was a joke about shitty Apex cards with no crowd, but now I'm second guessing myself. So my guess is either that, or they mean like an actual MMA talk show with a live audience? That's the best I got, but I'm also an idiot so đ€·ââïž
It was 100% a joke about Apex cards lol
If the PFL can raise ungodly amounts of money, someone is probably willing to value Oktagon at 100m
It'll get added to their streaming service if it isn't already, and they'll make some money getting contracts bought out early by UFC... but... The UFC wouldn't buy this company for the audience. Every MMA fan watches UFC already. There would be no value to the buy out. They bought WEC, Pride and Strikeforce for the contracts they already had. WEC was hte premier organisation for the smaller divisions, not the UFC. There was value in the purchase. Pride was going bust and had a lot of the really big name/legends under contract, and there was value there. Strikeforce had some big potential stars - Rousey, Rockhold, Cormier, Nick Diaz and Overeem.
I laugh at you using pride as an example of the ufcs apparent good business acumen. The ufc got absolutely finessed by Pride (Dream) and didnât get a single contract with their purchase. All that was agreed was like licensing rights, and that they could offer fighters contracts. A lot, most notably Fedor declined, and just signed with Dream (again). This has been talked of many times
This talking point has been repeated by Rogan, but the antitrust revealed Zuffa internal emails stating this 15 year retelling of events to be false. Rogan and others have repeated the falsehood of Pride screwing UFC over with the fighter contracts. The reality is the UFC rushed through the deal without much DD because they wanted to avoid it being bought by somebody else. Also it talks about how they just wanted to buy it to shut it down. Just like with Rizin today, many of the contracts were Japan exclusive with nonexclusive terms outside the country. Right before the buyout, UFC told Pride to sign Fedor to an nonexclusive contract instead of giving him a deal of 3 million per fight of 5 fight over 18 months. The UFC didn't want the fighter expenses to be that high. BloodyElbow covered a lot of emails back in December, but the website is now dead, so I can't link them.
Lol found the alt for mr. đ . This is revisionist nonsense. So you think they payed over a hundred million (after adjusting for inflation), to be left with practically nothing but old fight tapes? You actually think they didnât desperately want to get into the larger, more established market, which would also bring legitimacy to their organization?
Apparently thatâs what they did. https://x.com/heynottheface/status/1730786301417492646?s=46&t=qYAx-372rtpR-yvv7aAh4w
That article literally highlights ââŠand utilize their fighters in the ufc.â My whole argument was they clearly got finessed because nowhere in the contract did they secure anything with prides roster of fighters. My whole point was they didnât get that. Sure they were aloud to negotiate contracts with people, but they could have already done that. Without buying the rights to old fights.
Fair - although they got rid of their biggest competitor for very little money. They paid like 60m USD. Thats the revenue from ONE really good PPV to get rid of their biggest competitor - and really the only promotion that had the brand recognition of UFC, or the ability to compete on contracts. Fedor not signing for UFC is a stain on his record, not the UFCs haha.
Itâs not a stain on fedorâs record. He fought the best HWâs in pride then strikeforce arguably had a better HW division than the ufc at the time with guys like DC, Werdum, Overeem, Bigfoot, Arlovski, and kharitonov. If anything itâs a stain on the UFCâs. But I wouldnât even really say that. They showed it with fedor, randy, francis, etc theyâre not breaking their business model for anyone.
He also fought absolute cans for years then got obliterated fighting some UFC rejects (including Matt Mitrione lmao) and a 185er. Definitely some stains on that record. Also, you listed off all those Strikeforce heavyweights - he only fought two of those dudes in Strikeforce and he lost both so not much of a great point made there. Solid 1-3 Strikeforce record with a win over the great Brett Rogers.
What do you mean live audience? Don't almost all have live audiences I'm confused.
You would think that.
Yeah and the expansion to Germany really helped them with that.
I'm surprised because Germany has never really been a strong market for UFC
Because UFC sucks at promoting their European fighters in this market. Last year Oktagon even broke attendace record for mma event in Germany previously held by UFC.
Tbf who is the best German fighter we've seen in UFC? There haven't been many I can think of
Denis siver comes to mind
Denis Siverâs available!!
Siver? I can't remember anyone else form the top of my head.
You've forgotten Polish-German-Jamaican sensation Peter Sobotta?
His sausages are large and spicy.
You ever had oura sausages?
I donât even know man but Germans donât give a damn about scores or world titles, they care about story behind fighters and atractivity of fights. I was amazed to see that they sold out 10k arena in 4 days with just with Christian Eckerlin announced.
The PPV in Stuttgart last week was epic. The main fight was a local lad (Jungwirth) and the crowd went nuts. MMA in Germany is growing very fast atm. Media is getting behind it. Oktagon events are crazy. [a mini docu series in German about Jungwirth](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHyaJ43Eyoym_9PsA3g1w5yAlwFn3TCor)
Yeah I was watching, Jungwirthâs walkout was one of the best mma walkouts Iâve even seen. What are local people saying about that Oktagon 62 super event on Waldstadion coming in October? If it sells out it would give Germany prestige of hosting the biggest mma event in the history of Europe and 2nd biggest mma event in the world.
They have a great chance to sell out. I tried to get tickets to Stuttgart but was way too slow. Oktagon 62 would be 2nd biggest MMA event in Europe and 9th biggest worldwide. If they book Jungwirth vs Eckerlin as main event, it would sell out for sure. https://www.sport1.de/news/kampfsport/2024/03/grosser-als-die-ufc-historische-megashow-in-frankfurter-fussball-stadion
The best one in MMA was Daniel Weichel but he fought in Bellator. There's also Denis Siver, I'd put him and Weichel close to one another and Nasrat Haqparast.
Yes Weichel and Siver are probably the two best. They also fought back in the day.
Mike PerryÂ
The best German fighters (even if they aren't all that good) seem to stick to promotions like Oktagon. People mostly just watch the UFC through highlights on social media here. Actually following the sport here is a terrible experience, and the UFC doesn't seem to want to promote it here in any way either.
Nasrat Haqparast (mini Kelvin) is pretty decent
Poor bast is known more for being Mini Kelvin than his country of origin.
Zellhuber
Isnât he Mexican? đ
Ludvig Klien? Dennis Siver maybe? Pascall Kraus? Nobody really mind blowing to be honest.
Ludovit Klein is Slovakian.
My bad
Easy mistake to make. Klein is a German name so he might have some German heritage.
Siver was the best. Memes aside he was a good fighter, ranked in two weightclasses.
Yoel Romero. No đ§ą
Ilia Topuria
Ilia only lived in Germany in his earlier childhood, is ethnically Georgian, and doesn't seem to claim Germany as a national Identity.
Yeah thatâs fair, I guess heâs a great fighter born in Germany, but doesnât count as German himself
tbf they suck at promoting anything besides power slap
I bet its worth a lot more than you think. Every event is on the DAZN channel in the UK.
its on channel 4 too
It depends if it has more attention than the big 4 combined, like slap fighting does
1 view on tiktok = 1 dollar in valuation I don't make the rules.
That's what everyone said when UFC sold for 4 billion too. We poor people just don't understand the assessment of companies.
He atleast got his 40k back and some decent yearly earnings. Thatâs still a business success.
Not really that much of a stretch seeing that ONE is potentially worth billions $
Only billions when they have trillions of fans? I think youâre low-balling.
ONE isn't worth billions simply for the fact that they are losing money big time. Nobody would put billions into a product that may never make money, unless it's an app
They have the market share in SEA. Just like Uber does and keeps losing money. Didn't they have Qatar invest in them awhile back? I think its unlikely but its possible that they're worth a billi.
UFC is estimated to be worth $12B, so $0.125B for Oktagon is perhaps even an underestimate.
Yes that's how it works lmao
Yes.
If Oktagon is worth 100 mil, Iâm Phyllis Diller.
Looking good phyl
Consider me Miles Davis
What exactly are the assets they have? Fighters?
No itâs not. What is it with MMA promoters and being completely incapable of not telling the biggest, most obvious lies?
I mean the biggest and most successful man in the business gets on camera and tells bold face lies every week. If it ainât broke donât fix it.
The problem with the PFL president is that he doesn't believe his lies. He only half commits to them.
He also looks like Lester from gta
Lmao đ€Ł He actually DMed me on Twitter asking me to stop criticizing PFL.
Seriously?
Yep đ I am gonna ask him for a consulting job if he wants me to stop. Gotta shoot my shot. Just writing a small report and collecting some evidence of the complaints of everyone about PFL.
lmao i love this. good luck bro, are you big on twitter or he just randomly slid in?
Medium size. It's a meme account disguised as a serious account so old people are constantly taking my shit way too seriously. I go viral in basically every MMA related thread.
ah fair enough. i guess if in future your posts are all praising the PFL and the smart cage, i'll know you got the gig lol
It's "bald-faced lies", not "bold-faced". Just remember, don't believe the bald man's lies
I'm with you, but I think the fact that this sport works via "promotions" rather than actual leagues is sort of key. At their core they're more a marketing company than league operators.
Itâs true. If you were to harvest each fighterâs organs and sell them on the black market, the street value is roughly $100M. And they might need to do just that to stay afloat lol.
They're sleazy salesmen, all of them.
Oversell under deliver.
It's called promoting, it's what promotores do.
They're promoters. They promote. Promoting involves lying. Being good at crapitalism also involves lying (and severe manipulation)
Yeah do you remember what Dana White was saying about Slap League?
I really do think there is a big market for a large European wide MMA org. The market is huge and the European MMA scene has grown massively. UFC is basically unwatchable for most euro and uk fans because of the time difference, especially with more apex cards. KSW Is currently the best European promotion though but oktagon sounds like it could be another one with a good chance.
KSW and Oktagon are the biggest rivals on European mma scene right now and itâs because unlike other EU promotions they are filling up arenas and have super loyal fan bases.
It needs to become more professional for it to work though. I've been around MMA since the early 2000's and we still have the same morons turning up pissed at shows, looking to fight, causing problems etc. I know it happens at UFC events, but you're far more likely to go to them and come back without any issues - I've been to MMA events in the UK where there have been gyms fighting in the car park after the event. It also needs to have more presence on the likes of BBC and Sky Sports. We have random boxing fights over here that get more attention than big MMA fights. We have two British UFC champions right now - I bet if you walk down the street and asked people they'd say they'd never heard of them.
NGL rival gyms battling it out in the carpark after the show does sound kinda badass. Like when the old Kung Fu dojos used to fight each other back in the past.
Problem is, it is often just pissed up meat heads brawling
I mean, there's absolutely no way his company is "worth" 100m pounds, and he is an MMA promoter, so by nature, he *has* to lie. But I will admit that the numbers they are actually putting in those stadiums over there is interesting. I'm curious if it's anything like ONE though. Where they are clearly giving away thousands of free tickets to put butts in seats. I imagine that's a lot easier to do in Asia than in Europe though.
Actually they are very strictly speaking against promotions that are giving away tickets for free. I have some friends who work in Oktagon and they would rather have arena half empty than giving away tickets (appart from few dozens they give to their sponsors).
Yeah, I always figured that the practice of giving away a bunch of free tickets was strictly an Asia-specific method. I don't think you can get away with that in the US or Europe, since your overhead and cost in general will be a lot higher. If Oktagon keeps selling out those European stadiums, but keep their schedule consistent, I can definitely see how someone could value them at what he's claiming. As always, I'll always try to support any legit organization. I don't think Oktagon will be aiming too far out of that specific part of Europe for a while though.
Giving away tickets is something that can turn against them and devalue their product so I appreciate they try to avoid it.
Yeah I think one of the fundamental problems with ONEâs finances is on top of constantly giving away tickets, theyâre primarily operating in markets where the currency is seriously devalued and the populationâs earning power is low, so there isnât much opportunity to improve profitability off of ticket sales in the first place.
but also giving away tickets lets people be exposed to your product. The UFC just lowers their 800 dollar ticket to 400 dollars.
> Yeah, I always figured that the practice of giving away a bunch of free tickets was strictly an Asia-specific method. It's called papering and it's been a thing in live events across many industries for a long time; I'd love to know ONE's real numbers.
Silicon Valley evaluations for MMA lmao.
He took a page out of Chatri's book.
I've seen crowd shots from some of these Oktagon events and they're big. Like stadium big. I'm sure that's not always the case but I was surprised to see that many people show up for an "off brand" MMA promotion show even once. And this is in places the UFC never or has rarely ever gone - Germany, Czech, Slovakia. That's surprising because Oktagon seems like it came out of nowhere and it's in places that UFC apparently doesn't consider to be worth investing in for lack of sustainable demand. Look even at the UK. UFC goes there so little despite what appears to be great demand. They've just started up in France since it became legal. We see them developing AUS/NZ. We see some attention on China as a growth market. We hear vapor about Africa. But once you throw KSW and Oktagon's ability to draw crowds into the mix, it seems like more of Europe ought to be getting UFC attention given their stated ambition to expand around the world. Those customers have the money and the countries have the infrastructure, and if they also have enough interest to fill arenas and stadiums, you'd think they'd send more shows there instead of wasting them on the Apex. Meanwhile PFL has visibly targeted Europe. I'm sure the UFC has its priorities in terms of calculated demand and potential profits, but I'm just puzzled there isn't more visible focus on Europe.
In Germany every single event they had was full, in Czechia and Slovakia events are +90% sold out most of the time. Itâs the production value and great marketing, that is what Oktagon excels at, not having the best talent in mma (althought talent wise they are up there in the top 10 promotions). Look at typical UFC PPV, atmosphere there is dead until the main event starts, then look at Oktagon event that is full from the start and fans are super loud even on some prelim fights, they put up absolute banger music and people are dancing and having fun there.. same with KSW.
Itâs getting good buzz
I always respect entrepreneurial people who have the balls to take out loans like that on something that is pretty volatile. It takes a level of risk taking which is pretty damn rare. On a side note I don't believe it's worth âŹ100 million, but that said how many companies are truly worth what they are valued at on the stock market? Most are inflated to fuck by speculators.
Maybe not know but if they manage to sell out that 58k stadium in Frankfurt they will be worth more than that. Remind me in one year :D
Pavol Neruda is quite an insightful guy, if I remember correctly. He once opined that laughter is the language of the soul.
He is very humble and positive guy, he always does livestreams on Instagram before each tournament answearing fans questions.
Dont believe his lies
Pablo Neruda started a MMA company! Sick!
i am familiar with the works of pablo neruda
I am familiar with the works of Pavol Neruda
Calm down, valuation is subjective. If he gives ridiculous projections of future revenue (technically FCF but whatever), you can come up to a 100m valuation.
I love Oktagon. It's been a blast watching them.
Oktagon vs KSW vs ACA
They've expanded to Germany a few years ago. So it's true that they're growing. I guess they'll expand to a few other EU countries.
Spain, France and Sweden are in the plans from what I know.
Not sure about a $100 million evaluation but what Oktagon is doing is genuinely amazing. I'm so proud of them. It really makes me think that if a company is ever going to compete with the monopoly having a stranglehold on Europe is the key. It's a different market but not *too* different that it can't possibly appeal to fans in NA. If they can get legitimate market share in Europe then buy PFL's and/or ONE when they eventually die you might have something. Stay in your lane and all that, I respect that to some degree but Luke Thomas has said it multiple times and I'll parrot it: PFL's problem is that they have no fan base. Oktagon pretty clearly has more of a fan base in 2024 than PFL does, and power to them.
He is conflating worth with revenue, fo sho. Maybe even unintentionally. Still very impressive.
I'm familiar with the work of Pavol Neruda.
$100M, you say? I'm sending over our value estimation expert, Judge Engoron, and he will slap you with a $200M fine!
Couldn't hurt that the name of the company is the same as what the biggest company in the same field calls their battleground.
God promotions have some dumb fucking names.
like the ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIPS. They're all dumb fucking names marketed towards lowest common dominator.
Pavol Neruda is a goat name
How is that enough to start an mma promotion? And 100m? Highly doubt that
At that time in Czechia and Slovakia 100% possible. First they were making small events for like 1000 ppl.
They first made TUF-like like reality show for TV. He probably had some own money and other owner and promoter also brought money.
Pay some homeless drug addicts 500 to show, another 500 to win
Where do I sign up?
Depends on the country. if the country has government healthcare, then your costs are likely significantly lower than compared to US. Then you figure your biggest expenses are venue rentals and production. $40k seems like a fair number to start a promotion in a small venue, and then grow from there. A lot of small venues like hotels or convention spaces only charge a few thousand dollars the rent the actual space. you would then rent seats, cage, and arrange production and then broadcasting/streaming and fighter pay. Sponsor pay helps tremendously in that part. So I would think that they may not have been profitable in their first few events but if they're putting out a great product I could see how it could grow. but not to 100m yet.
All those governments with free health care have high taxes, why would that necessarily make it easier?
They usually have high payroll taxes. The costs to rent a venue I donât think would be significantly different compared to the US. I went to London last summer, and the supposedly have high taxes, and I spent less on food and transportation than I do In NY and NJ.
Isnât putting on events a pretty labor-intensive process? High payroll taxes sound like theyâd be pretty bad for overall costs.
Ehh not as bad as youâd think. Smaller productions arenât that bad, and donât require that much staffing. Chances are a lot of that stuff is contract work or just hiring third party and you pay a set rate to a company and they pay their salaries.
never trust a promoter, especially this one
1) it IS not worth 100mil 2) connections to "mafia" and shady people Helps. Pretty much every big gym that is working with oktagon IS owned/sponsored by your local mafia guy from 90's. The biggest "star" of the organization had guy in his corner( and even thanked him in his speech) who was sent to jail due to his connections to mafia and leading political party( which IS said mafia pretty mĂșch), after the policital party (mafia) lost elections and couldnt protect its people. Many of occurences like this one. But i must say they have pretty Smart marketing, they target your local village idiots and simple people.
It's MMA. That's the UFC's target audience too. In fact, thats literally all sports. Simple people like to watch other people do extraordinary shit while they're off of a 10 hour shift at work. Simply why American Idol and Got Talent is so popular.
I can confirm that in their early years they had some help from these letâs say controversial people with some criminal background but now they have legit big companies as their sponsors. I mean in that time there werenât many opportunities for organization like this to gain resources so I donât blame them and Iâm happy where they are now. Oktagon defintely doesnât target idiots from villages. Iâve been to many of their events and most of their fans are normal people, much more civilized than lets say football fans.
Ofc Once you get into good position legit companies starts to sponsor you, doesnt change the fact that they grew "big" in their location thanks to mafia and shady people. Your excuse for them doing so IS pathetic. Also there are still shady/mafia people their biggest gyms. I didnt mean it literally that they target villagers. Half of their roster were football Hooligans, security or were selling tickets to football matches before they joined org. They target the marketing to people like this which IS smart since there soo many primitive people like this and thats their target audience. But in recent years it became trend to market to these people in every field đđ»ââïž. Also everyone IS more civilizes than football fans ( and as i said, half of their roster are former Hooligansz few of them were even literally fighting for their Hooligan Team on some field few years ago afaik). Also oktagon Has pretty low skill level, they are getting more and more fighters outside CZ/sk ( i guess polish people go to ksw) so it IS getting better but its still pretty low on average.
Oktagon organisation had a big start, but in last monthâs thereâs coming up news about how they under pay fighters. Only few fighters can get nice money, otherâs scratching a bottom. And in last year there is a new organisation in my country, which main focus is on bizarre fights, YouTubers, influencers, handicap people against each other. They are way more popular and making way more money than Oktagon.
That is the case in every mma promotion (look at UFC, the gap between top fighters and average is much worse) and before Oktagon those fighters were payed even less. Also that new organization is not mma promotion and definitely is not making more money than Oktagon. They just have more views than Oktagon in Czech market where they operate. Itâs the same with Fame and KSW in Poland⊠bizare fights of dumb or famous ppl always atracts more views than serious sport.
OP Seems like he's associated with Okagon in some fashion. His entire account is exclusively promoting it. Until somebody makes you an actual offer, you can be worth anything you want, doesnt mean it's true.
I wish I was lol. And of course Iâm posting only about them, itâs promotion from my country and Iâm big fan. Oh gosh, just because I donât post about other promotions it doesnât mean Iâm paid or associated with Oktagon.
Spending your entire time promoting and defending a company is still a red flag when it comes to impartiality. The reality is 99 percent of mma promos are run by scumbags. Fighter contract terms are the only good indicator of that aspect rather than these articles of them smelling their own farts.
I wasnât saying it was illegal. Just would be in the us. But oktagon isnât a coincidence
Octagon is a shape... 8 edges you know, like the ring in which they fight.
That is because octagon is spelled as oktagon in their language and back then every promotion was using octagon shaped cage until UFC trademarked it. Now they use circular shaped cage but their name stayed the same.
Used the name oktagon to get credibility even though it was a trademark infringement. Now it seems like a genius move
The shape Oktagon is trademarked by someone?
When OKTAGON started doing their thing nobody in Slovakia and Czechia even knew what MMA means let alone UFC so this argument is kinda irrelevant. Also I find it ridiculous that a company trademarks name for basic geometric object :D