The UFC is likely headed to Germany in 2009. The big question is “why?”

Written by Jim Murphy   |   Sunday, November 30 2008

The UFC's success promoting in Germany is far from a "sure thing"--even with Randy Couture (Photo: Susumu Nagao)

The UFC has done well with its initial forays into the European market, particularly in England and Ireland.  While it’s not surprising that the United States’ #1 MMA promotion wants to continue to develop the international market, the revelation that they’re making Germany their next target has been met with a lot of skepticism.  Some are even going so far as to call the proposal to hold UFC 99 in Cologne’s 20,000 seat Lanxess Arena a “surefire money burner”. 

Dana White has made no secret about his desire to make the UFC the dominant MMA promotion not only in Europe but worldwide.  Working in Zuffa’s favor is the fact that outside of Japan and Korea, the international market is wide open.  The promotion has no doubt been buoyed by their success in the UK, where they’ve succeeded in making the UFC synonymous with MMA much as the WWE has been able to define pro wrestling.  In fact, they’ve probably been more successful than the WWE in dominating the UK marketplace as Kurt Angle has been able to get some media coverage for the #2 US pro wrestling promotion, TNA.  The UFC, meanwhile, has the British sports media locked up—you’re hard pressed to find any coverage of MMA that isn’t a Zuffa product.  There was some interest in Kimbo Slice, but the UK media was quick to fall in line with the Zuffa spin that he and EliteXC was merely a sideshow compared to the “legit” UFC.

The UFC actually promoted their first event in England (and, for that matter, on the European continent) back in 2002 just a few months after the Fertitta brothers purchased the company.  UFC 38: Brawl at the Hall wasn’t particularly successful, drawing only 3,800 fans to the historic Royal Albert Hall for a card featuring a main event of Matt Hughes vs. Carlos Newton.  It wasn’t the first international event for the company, as during the pre-Zuffa era the UFC held several shows in Japan, Brazil and Puerto Rico. 

Zuffa did find enough promise in the UK market that they opened an office there in 2007 and would return to England in April of that year with UFC 70: Nations Collide at Manchester’s MEN Arena, most famous to fight fans as the site of Ricky Hatton’s one sided victory over then IBF Light Welterweight Champion Kostya Tszyu in 2005.  Zuffa had clearly learned how to better promote in the UK market, and drew 15,144 (12,708 paid) to the event headlined by Gabriel Gonzaga’s shocking upset of Mirko Cro Cop.  British fighter Michael Bisping was almost an afterthought on the card, but would soon develop into the UFC’s top UK drawing card.

The UFC has since held five events in Great Britain and another in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  The Belfast card was something of a disappointment, but the events held in England have drawn well.  Not coincidentally, the UFC has wisely promoted Bisping on all of these events and has benefitted from his improved fortunes at middleweight.  More significantly, perhaps, the UFC has become an established part of the British sports scene. 

With the UK market in good shape, Zuffa is plotting their next international move and has chosen Germany to be the primary target.  While Dana White has also mentioned a desire to promote events in Australia, Brazil and the Philippines along with further developing the UFC presence in Canada but every indication is that establishing the German market is the company’s highest international priority.  Germany is Europe’s biggest economy and that reason alone makes it an attractive market for many US based companies.  In addition, there is still a significant US military presence in the country which—in theory at least—makes the German marketplace more receptive to American pop culture.

The UFC PPV broadcasts have been available in Germany dating back to UFC 1 though they’ve never done anything approximating a decent buyrate with the “most successful” event mustering a paltry 5,000 buys.  That’s bad even by German standards, though not exactly a repudiation of the UFC’s product since the entire concept of PPV television has been slow to catch on in the country.  Instead, the UFC has turned its attention to free broadcast television and specifically finding a German broadcast outlet for “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show.  That became a reality within the past few days as the UFC signed a deal with the ProSieben network to air “TUF”.  The network is nominally on the level of “The CW” or “MyNetworkTV” in the US, which means that in theory at least it’ll provide greater exposure than the UFC’s US network home on Spike TV.  ProSieben is also known for a heavy reliance on British and American produced series, meaning that the UFC is thematically at least a perfect fit.

So the UFC has a decent promotional outlet for their product but it still remains to be seen how receptive the German market will be to mixed martial arts.  There’s obviously a rich boxing tradition in Germany from Max Schmeling in the 1930’s to the Klitschko brothers today.  That’s a start, but no guarantee that MMA will be a hit.  The only major promotional effort in Germany to date was by a company called “Martial Arts X-treme” or MAX.  They produced their own knockoff of “The Ultimate Fighter” which only lasted a season due to poor ratings that kept getting worse over the run of the series.  The company went out of business soon after.  Obviously the UFC product will be a qualitative upgrade to the MAX offering, but the fact that German viewers kept tuning out over the course of the series has to be somewhat disconcerting.

Another issue for the UFC is the lack of big name German fighters to promote.  While the UK fans have clearly warmed up to the sport as a whole, the success and popularity of Michael Bisping has helped immensely.  Without a top level native fighter to build around the UFC has turned to Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture.  Both men are still among the sport’s top box office draws and Couture is fluent in German and could be a significant promotional asset.  There have been rumors that Liddell could move up to heavyweight and fight Randy Couture, or that both men could appear in separate fights on the same card. 

While Couture and Liddell are arguably the two biggest names in the sport, there are some issues with building the UFC’s German efforts around them.  First of all, both men are getting up there in years for professional fighters, and most certainly past their competitive prime.  The North American MMA press has been very derisive of a potential fourth fight between Couture and Liddell—the Toronto Sun went so far as to call it “a match for the aged” and “the UFC equivalent of a senior’s tour”.  Couture’s future in the sport remains unclear, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he’ll choose retirement.  While the wisdom of using the promotion’s most famous fighters in a new market is apparent, using fighters that are past their prime to help develop a new market for the sport is somewhat questionable.   On top of everything, it is fallacious reasoning on the UFC’s part to assume that just because Couture and Liddell are considered the sport’s “biggest names” by the North American market that they have the same appeal in a completely different.  In fact, the “Q ratings” which measure celebrity recognizability are almost negligible for both men among the German public.

Assuming that the UFC can put a compelling event together, their most formidable challenge could be the German media who have so far reacted indifferently at best and negatively at worst at the prospect of MMA coming to their country.  The country’s most popular news magazine, Spiegel DE, did a lengthy feature story on the UFC including this less than flattering assessment of Dana White:

“White now owns a Range Rover, a Ferrari and two Mercedes, but he still has difficulty saying three sentences without the word "f*ck" in at least one of them.”

The full English language translation of the article is available on their website:

Kinetic Chess:  Ultimate Fighting is About to Hit Europe @ Spiegel DE

The German news site Buz Online provided this negative take on the sport in an article titled “Brutal Boxing: Teeth Fly Into The Crowd”:

“As real as it gets” is the slogan of the UFC. Real is the blood that flows in buckets at UFC events, real are the broken teeth that sometimes fly into the crowd. The new generation of MMA stars have mastered various disciplines including Judo, Muay Thai, Boxing, Wrestling and Jujitsu.“

This hysterical characterization of the sport may sound ridiculous to US fans, but it is basically where the sport was in the country back in the “dark ages” of the early to mid-1990s.  There are still those in the general public—and even the sports media—who haven’t updated their views since despite MMA’s growing mainstream acceptance.  On the other hand, with effective promotion these attitudinal barriers can change quickly—similar scare stories were common in the UK media several years ago.  All it took was a successful British fighter and the Zuffa promotional machine, and MMA is arguably more widely accepted as a legitimate sport in the UK than even the US. 

Even a good controversy, however, is preferable to the “outpouring of apathy” at the prospect of the UFC coming to Germany that is more prevalent in their media.  With a few exceptions no one seems excited, alarmed or even particularly interested that America’s largest mixed martial arts (or as it is commonly referred to in Germany “free fighting”) promotion has set their sights on taking over the German marketplace.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the UFC’s international plans are the foreign markets that they’ve shown little or no interest in entering, many of which already have a developed MMA fanbase or a more prevalent fight sport culture.  Zuffa has made some efforts to secure a Japanese TV outlet, but there’s not even been a peep about returning to the country since the bungled purchase of PRIDE.  Ditto South Korea, which offers a similarly large US military presence to Germany along with a solid fanbase.  They even signed to a UFC contract recently—a fighter of Korean heritage who is already a star in the country. 

Zuffa may see an advantage in entering markets without an established MMA fanbase where they can “define” the sport and enjoy first mover status.  That has been very successful for the WWE as they’ve taken over the European pro wrestling industry—then again, it’s much easier to accomplish this sort of marketplace hegemony in a “worked” environment where you can exercise complete control over the storylines than it is with a legitimate competition.   Even if they’re bent on entering undeveloped markets what about the boxing mad countries of Latin and Central America, a task made easier by the many first rate fighters who share the same ancestry?  

Whether the UFC’s obsession with the German marketplace is prescient or ill advised, it’s obvious that their success in the country will be more difficult than merely dubbing “The Ultimate Fighter” and booking an arena.  Hopefully, they’re not operating on the mistaken notion that all of Europe is the same and that success in the new market is inevitable and will come as quickly as it did in the UK.  The UFC clearly knows how to promote mixed martial arts, but this quote from Dana White about the European market from January 2008 sounds pretty simplistic:

“Look at the NFL. There's nothing bigger in this country than the NFL. They've been spending billions of dollars trying to break into Europe and they can't do it, because nobody gives a (expletive) about football in Europe. They didn't grow up playing football, they don't know about it.

“I take two guys and put them in the Octagon and they can use any martial art they want. It translates through all different cultural barriers, language barriers... people love fighting.”

“I think that this thing can be global. I think that this thing can be the biggest sport in the world. I already know it's the most exciting sport in the world.”

There’s no doubt that “people love fighting”, but that alone doesn’t guarantee that they’ll love the UFC’s brand of fighting.


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Thanks to Robert Kamsky for his insights on the German MMA marketplace and translations.  His website, Free Fight Videos, has extensive coverage of the UFC’s planned expansion to Germany.  He'll be providing his insights and translation skills here at THE SAVAGE SCIENCE as we continue with our committment to cover the entire world of MMA better than anyone on the planet.

Of particular note is a post entitled UFC Germany?: Ich Don't Think So which outlines a number of other obstacles that Zuffa faces in promoting there.

UFC Germany? Ich Don't Think So @ Free Fight Videos

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