That was a signal, not just a launch. Hey, it's Adam. I was at the Ki MMA reveal in New York on Monday night. Thank you to Rich Chou for the invite. Congrats to Scott Coker and the team on the event; a lot of work went into that day, and it showed. I walked in this amazing venue, saw the ring and the branding, and read K1 MMA. Then I saw Fedor there, and it reminded me of M-1. I thought, okay, K1 MMA, that is a twist I was not ready for. Then I got to my friend Rich, their VP of talent and...
20 days ago • 9 min read
We have an identity and an integrity problem. Hey, it's Adam. Saturday night, I'm on my sofa scrolling Instagram. IBF world heavyweight title fight in the UK, BKB bare-knuckle in Florida. A boxing freak show in Orlando. BKFC in Boston. Pro boxing somewhere else. And I couldn't tell you which was which. Same ring. Same ropes. Same ringside angle. Rainbet in the same corner. I had to check the account handle to know what I was looking at. That's friction, on a platform where people decide in...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Fighting is the highest-stakes live experience in entertainment. Nothing else is close.A concert is a performance. A basketball game is a game. A fight is two people agreeing to hurt each other in front of you.That's what every other live product is trying to fake.The experience economy is booming right now because people are done with screens. Searches for in-person events are at all-time highs.People are chasing rooms instead of feeds. And combat sports delivers the most intense version of...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey, it's Adam.A few weeks ago I argued the IRL economy is coming for combat sports. That people are drowning in AI slop and paying for things that can't be faked, and nothing delivers that like a live fight. I still believe it. But I found something that says the exact opposite and I can't stop thinking about it. Anonymous buildings across Eastern Europe host fake teams that play 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to an empty room. Table tennis, floorball, water polo, four on four soccer....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
It has never been cheaper to start one. It has never been harder to survive one. The gap between those two facts is where a few hundred promotions a year go to die, and most people only ever measure the first one, because that's the one you hit in month one. Here's the honest answer. Start one only if you can name your edge in a single sentence, out loud, without using the words passion, vision, or disruption. What changed Four things, and they don't pull the same direction. Costs collapsed....
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
If they only watch five seconds, why are we paying for the other five hours? A knockout does five million views by Tuesday. The card it came from does forty thousand on YouTube. Every operator in this business has seen those two numbers sitting next to each other. Almost nobody has changed anything because of it. We keep building the five hours. The storyline, the buildup, the walkouts, the commentary, the full broadcast package. Then the audience takes five seconds of it and leaves. So the...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Every conversation I have with someone building in combat sports arrives at the same place. Usually about twenty minutes in. I ask what the product is. The answers come fast. The fights. The content. The brand. The athletes. Everyone has an answer ready and almost nobody has thought about it for more than a minute. Here is the better version of the question. Where does the revenue come from? Not where you hope it comes from eventually. Where it comes from. Then reverse engineer everything...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Something interesting is happening in combat sports right now. Two industries that spent decades looking down at each other are quietly trying to become each other. Dana White is getting deep into boxing. Eddie Hearn is talking about getting into MMA. And while everyone is watching the crossover, a third force is building underneath both of them. Here is what is actually going on. Boxing wants the UFC model. Zuffa Boxing has been in motion for over a year now. The play is straightforward —...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Last week I wrote about the three tiers of promotion economics. This week Conor McGregor gave us a live case study in why those economics are so brutal. 69 seconds. That's how long the main event lasted. Injury. Done. Card over. Fans paid real money to be there. They tuned in by the millions. And the product — the thing they showed up for — was over before most of them found their seats. This is what makes fight promotion fundamentally different from every other business in sports. In the...
3 months ago • 3 min read