UFC Worth Over One Billion Dollars

As you may or may not know, mixed martial arts have been exploding all around the world, and has been nipping at boxing heals for quite some time. I was reading an article in Time Magazine about how the Ultimate Fighting Championship surpassed HBO's 2006 pay-per-view take and is worth more than 1 billion dollars.

UFC recently bought out its rivals Pride Fighting Championship for around 80 million dollars and got rid of its competition. They are signing away all the top guys from Pride and bringing them over here to the United States to get them the exposure they deserve. Pride was a MMA company that strictly was ran over seas, so a lot of guys lacked exposure from all the America fans. Now with these big roster signings, their shows are becoming as stacked as they can get with dream matches, thus bringing them in more money.

With boxing dieing off slowly from its glory days, MMA and the UFC are only going to grow even bigger and bring in a bigger fan base. The Ultimate Fighting Championship owned by Dana White has struck deals with Spike TV to have their show the Ultimate Fighter on their channel. Also Dana White just renewed the UFC contract with Spike TV for another two years, thus giving them more time on T.V and more exposure. With their Ultimate Fighter show in Spike TV and their PPV shows, they are only going to keep growing and growing and bringing in more revenue than before.

The biggest way to bring in more fans and create a bigger fan base is have a poster boy for your company and that's what the UFC has in Chuck Liddell. Chuck Liddell was the reigning Light Heavyweight Champion for 3 years, he's made appearances on sitcoms, late night talk shows, and sport shows. When most people think of the UFC they think of Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell. He is like the Hulk Hogan of the WWE. Chuck Liddell is the highest paid guy on the UFC roster right now, he helps put the people in the seats and people love to buy his merchandise, thus helping UFC get to where they are today. My predictions is by the year 2010 UFC will be worth in excess of about 1.5 billion dollars, with the way MMA is booming right now, the sky's the limit for the UFC and how big it can grow.