In fact, as documented at the time in news stories and stated by Dana White at the time in interviews, the original idea for the UFC’s TV show on Spike TV was a show called “American Promoter” that would focus on the life of an MMA promoter. The UFC’s own ideal scenario would have been for a bi-weekly or monthly live fight show.

It was Spike TV, not the UFC, that came up with the reality show idea, which the UFC hated but went along with because it was the only way they could strike a deal with Spike TV at the time. Dana White said in many interviews (a clip of one of them is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43z-ywg3KQ&feature=related) that he didn’t like the reality show idea.

Kudos to CNBC for reporting the facts regarding the circumstances of SEG selling the UFC to Zuffa, with SEG needing Nevada approval to have a hope of a future, and Lorenzo Fertitta helping to block that approval as an NSAC commissioner, and then the conveniently down-and-out SEG selling for peanuts to (coincidentally) Lorenzo Fertitta & Co. That took more research than I thought they’d do.

If only they had also done their research on the origins of TUF and the business aspects of MMA vs. boxing.

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Generally, that would mean revenue was growing at a faster rate than just about any other sport in America. Not only is this not the case with MMA so far in 2007, but the report from Standard & Poor’s showed that revenue is actually slightly down in 2007 compared to 2006. All of this “fastest-growing” talk is outdated terminology from 2006 that no longer applies to the market in late 2007. “Hugely profitable” yes… “fastest-growing” anything, no.

In the MMA vs. boxing segment, they completely missed the boat on 2007 being a seminal year for “MMA vs. Boxing” in the opposite way as it was in 2006. It was in 2006 that the UFC drew more PPV revenue in the U.S. than any other company, including HBO’s boxing PPV, for the first time in UFC history.

But 2006 was also boxing’s biggest-money year since 1999, which the piece failed to point out.

2007 has been a completely different story in the boxing vs. MMA competition, with UFC PPV buyrates slipping slightly and boxing’s PPV buyrates growing significantly amidst a year of successful PPV events and the single biggest PPV event of all time (Mayweather vs. De la Hoya), finishing up with a second mega-event (Mayweather vs. Hatton) that is expected to draw more PPV buys than any event in the UFC’s history, even including the 2006 peak.

When discussing ticket sales, they failed to point out that there is still a sizable gap between the ticket revenue for top boxing events and the ticket revenue for top MMA events. The UFC’s highest live gate ever is a little under $6 million, while De la Hoya vs. Mayweather drew $19 million at the live gate and Hatton vs. Mayweather will still be well above the $6 million current high-mark for MMA.

Instead of presenting this up-to-date, late 2007 version of the MMA-Boxing story, it seems that CNBC was content to show the outdated story, just as it would have been in 2006 (or in May 2007 with a quick update to briefly acknowledge De la Hoya vs. Mayweather).

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http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=601986791&play=1

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