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Mixed martial arts is having a moment and the Professional Fighters League is right in the middle of it. The league has invested $250 billion to expand over the last 5 years with its first African competition set for 2025. Recently, the league was valued at $1 billion and joining us now to discuss all that and so much more is Don Davis, Professional Fighters League founder and chairman. Don, thank you for sitting down with us.

Great to be here. Always a good day to talk fighting.

So, let's Don, let's start high level right there. Explain to the audience a little bit about PFL, the mission, and also, Don, how you compare and contrast to the competition, UFC.

Sure. Most people know the UFC, they are the clear leader today. That's a promoter-driven organization. You know, Dana White is the next generation of Don King. He chooses who's ranked one and who's ranked two. The promoter decides who to fight. PFL, completely different. I don't decide anything. I'm like Adam Silver in the NBA. It's all driven by the athletes. So the PFL is a sports season format, just like the NBA or the NFL. Regular season, playoffs and championship. Athlete-driven. In the PFL, if you win, you advance. If you lose, we see you next year. Think of it as March Madness meets MMA. So in the PFL, if a fighter wins four times, they win a million dollars, they become champion. Meritocracy and transparency. That is what's propelled our explosive growth. Very different format, the same one than all other sports have.

Do those it starts with the fighters, right? You need those great dynamic high-profile fighters. Do they come to you also, Don, because is the pay different? Are you paying more than UFC?

It's astounding. I'll give you a metric. There's only one organization that ranks all fighters independently, Fight Matrix. 30% of PFL's roster, top 25 ranked in the world. The exact same percentage as UFC, 30% of their roster, top 25 ranked. So we now have same quality athletes. Why have they come to PFL so quickly? Two reasons. Control. Whether it's you or me or the fighters, we want to go as far as we can go in our career. In a PFL, they're not under anybody's thumb. They win, they advance. They win four times, more money, champion. We're not holding them back. We're not in control. They are. And number two is more money. We pay the same per fight as the UFC, but you get championship bonuses that average five to ten times what you make per fight. So you can create real wealth if you become a champion of PFL.

Let me ask you about this market broadly. I talked MMA as a market, as a sport. Is it big enough for multiple players?

Absolutely. Here's what's fascinating. Why I started six and a half years ago is not because I was an MMA fan. As an investor and company builder, I saw three things. Third biggest fan base in the world. Soccer's one, basketball's two, MMA's three. 650 million fans and the most underserved and under-monetized fan base. Think of UFC and PFL together. We only have 70 events between the two of us. There's 5,000 basketball games and 4,000 soccer matches. So very, very scarce. MMA is a 25-year-old sport, that's it. All other sports are 100 years old. So that curve we all learned in business school, this is just starting its high growth period. So there'll be at least two, maybe three, big global players in MMA.

Who is, and you mentioned the fan base, Don. Who is the fan there? I mean, what's the demo? And has it evolved at all?

What's most interesting is global. Everybody wants to be global. MMA is global. Along with soccer, they're the really only two global sports. So 80% of those 650 million fans not in the United States. They're outside, which is why we've started PFL Europe, PFL Africa, PFL Middle East to serve those fans where they live.

Do you think PFL Asia could come at some point?

We'll have PFL Asia, PFL Latin America, and PFL India in the future. But the first three we have where we're kind of a co-leader is Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Why? They get their own local heroes. They're events primetime and they're events that they can see. And when they become champions of those regional leagues, they go up to PFL Global and compete. So we have a global league that competes with the UFC, the best in the world, but those regional leagues are where those fans live.

Let me ask you, you made some splashy acquisitions as well. Bellator, right? I want to I'm curious what has that meant for the business. And you mentioned Dana White. Was he right? Don, I have to I have to clean up this language a bit. It's a family-friendly show, but reportedly said, Dana White said, "Why in God's green earth would anybody buy Bellator?" Your response, Don.

Dana doesn't say anything unless he's bothered.

He was bothered by this acquisition. How come, do you think?

So, so I take that as a great compliment from my friend Dana White. Um, we doubled our number of top-ranked fighters with the acquisition of Bellator. Bellator had been the only other company around for a long time. Paramount had owned them. So they really had a lot of great fighters. In fact, they had 15 fighters ranked in the top 10 of the world, a lot of great talent. So that roster I mentioned earlier that we have, that was basically us consolidating all the great fighters that aren't in UFC, and Bellator allowed us to double the number of great fighters. So that was really about acquisition of talent and allowing us to really claim that duopoly spot. There's now UFC and PFL and nobody else.

Let me ask you, you got a big pay-per-view coming up, October 19th, I think. Talk to me about that. What should we expect?

Yep.

What's cool is it's not from UFC. Biggest fight of 2024 is from this little old PFL. Battle of the Giants, Francis Ngannou, the number one, yeah, number one fighter in the world when he left UFC. This is his first time back in the cage, and he goes against the number five by ESPN rankings, Henan Ferreira, who's also the fastest and biggest and hardest puncher. Six eight. So you've got Godzilla versus King Kong. Something I want to see as a kid. So this is a big, big, big fight. And then you have the biggest women's fight of the year, Chris Cyborg, who is the goat of women's MMA. 18 years, only one loss, and four promotion wins against Larissa Pacheco, who hasn't lost except for one time in eight years, and last beat Kayla Harrison, who's the face of UFC right now. So best men, best women, Battle of the Giants.

Let me get your interest on IPO down the line. What do you think? Possibility?

Man, I'm working to build a company for fans and fighters. That'll take care of itself. But we're only six years in. We're 50% of UFC's audience, and we're twice as big as MLS in terms of viewership. They've been around 30 years, both of those guys. We're a humble little six years. So if we get fans and fighters happy, that'll take care of itself.

Don, great to have you here. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having us.