New Year’s Eve revelers packed Times Square last month, jockeying for position to see the ball drop and music acts take the stage. Ten blocks south at the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden, a different kind of clash was simultaneously taking place: It was championship fight night for an upstart mixed martial arts entity, the Professional Fighters League. A half-dozen champions in different weight classes were crowned, with boxing great Mike Tyson delivering oversized checks in the ring to each winner.
The PFL owners will be dishing out more big checks for years to come thanks to a new infusion of cash in the business. The league closed a $50 million Series C funding round on Christmas Eve; it brings the PFL’s total funding to $100 million.
Tyson will be a bigger presence in the PFL. “Mike is going to help recruit and sharpen the marketing of some of our new fighters,” says PFL cofounder Donn Davis. “No one knows what it is like to be a champion more than Mike Tyson—how to become one and the pitfalls of being one, financially, emotionally and psychologically.”
Tyson will also cohost a new show for the PFL, Mike Tyson’s New Fight Game. The 30-minute episodes on ESPN2 and ESPN+ will preview ten PFL events during the year and also look back at some of Tyson’s classic matchups in the ring. Davis compares the show to the Emmy-winning Inside the NFL series, but it will be more “irreverent and freewheeling.”
“I’m excited to find and mentor the next generation of MMA world champions,” says Tyson. “PFL’s pay scale is aligned with my principles of paying fighters more for the entertainment value they create. MMA fighters are also prizefighters, and when you enhance the prize, you enhance their ability to thrive outside the cage.”
Davis and his fellow PFL founders launched the league in 2018 with the rebranding of the World Series of Fighting, which already had an infrastructure, licenses and contracts with dozens of fighters. MMA organizations like UFC and Bellator have events put together by a promoter to create appealing matchups, but the PFL differentiated itself by using the format used in professional sports leagues like the NBA and the NFL, where there is a regular season, playoff and championship.
Swan & Legend Venture Partners and Matterhorn Private Equity led the investment round. Swan cofounder Fred Schaufeld is a partner in the Washington Nationals, as well as Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns Washington’s teams in the NHL (Capitals), the NBA (Wizards) and the WNBA (Mystics). It is the first U.S. investment by Matterhorn, a consortium of wealthy Italian families.
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The latest investment round included broad participation from early investors, says Davis. Sports team owners Ted Leonsis, David Blitzer and Mark Lerner are investors, as are celebrities like comedian Kevin Hart, reality TV pioneer Mark Burnett and motivational guru Tony Robbins.
Viktor Nemkov, left, in action against Rakim Cleveland during their regular season mixed martial … [+]
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“We’re ready to build in three areas: upgrading the roster, upgrading the marketing and expanding the product,” says Davis. He points to the recent signing of Rory MacDonald, who previously fought on Bellator and UFC cards. Product expansion will include international offerings and a mobile gambling platform.
Davis expects to partner with a gambling company ahead of the May 2020 season start to offer real-time betting that goes beyond just picking a winner of a bout. Fans would be able to do round-by-round prop bets on things like punch impact and fighter heart rates thanks to real-time data and analytics conveyed by the sensors surrounding the cage and on the fighters.
Davis wants to take the PFL outside the U.S. because of the strong international makeup of its lineup, which features fighters from 15 countries. The PFL Championship on New Year’s Eve had a global audience of 3 million viewers via 30 media partners. Russia had the biggest audience, with more than 400,000 viewers, even though the event occurred in the middle of the night there.
The PFL’s ten events in 2019 on ESPN2 averaged 236,000 viewers, up 75% over its inaugural season on NBC Sports Network. The UFC audience is nearly four times bigger but was flat last year. The PFL Championship was the top event at 395,000 viewers.
The company’s current two-year deal with ESPN expires after the 2020 season, and with UFC and Bellator locked into long-term deals, the PFL is potentially in a strong position to capitalize on the current demand for live sports programming, with streaming services craving the content.
BBC