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THE FIGHTERS ONLINE FREE AGENCY MODEL An amazing but subtle transformation has taken place in the fight business -- a wireless infrastructure has developed in all the MMA and boxing gyms, dojos, and promoters' offices. Every fighter, trainer, agent, manager, and promoter has a cell phone -- some have two -- and they surf the Internet every day to read the fight news. But paradoxically, those in control of the fight business are still operating under an outdated model where access to opportunity and useful information is tightly controlled, and free agency for fighters is rare. In the age of the Internet, this is a situation ripe for change. FEAR OF FREE AGENCY A MEETING BETWEEN ENEMIES The following article was in the Las Vegas Sun over ten years ago. The article says volumes about Don King, Bob Arum, and boxers' and managers problems dealing directly with venues, circumventing the contractual stranglehold of promoters. Where there are problems, there are always two groups -- those who seek to solve problems and those who seek to take advantage of problems. The marketplace is operating unfairly for MMA fighters and boxers. Free agency for MMA fighters and boxers is just around the corner. The article -- verbatim: "King and Arum: Strange bedfellows rebel against Wynn" By Tim Dahlberg, AP Sports Writer, March 11, 1990 Late last month, Don King and Bob Arum, bitter rivals who for years have controlled boxing's biggest fights slipped into the same booth at a Las Vegas restaurant and began talking. King was seething, having just come from a heated confrontation with casino mogul Steve Wynn over the rights to heavyweight champion Buster Douglas' next fight. Arum was equally upset with Wynn, who he thought used him to lure Douglas to his hotel-casino, then dumped him after Douglas agreed to a two-fight deal with Wynn's Mirage Hotel. The avowed purpose of the meeting? "Arum wanted to become allies against Wynn," King said. King's response? "I had to think twice before telling Arum it was no deal," King said. "Then I said, Welcome aboard, this is a common cause." That boxing's two most powerful promoters - and longtime arch enemies - had even sat down together to talk is amazing in itself. But the fact they actually agreed on something indicated the seriousness of the threat they perceive by Wynn's promise of a new order in boxing - an order that basically eliminates the role of the promoter in a big fight. "I don't feel threatened by Steve Wynn; I am threatened by Steve Wynn," King said. "Steve Wynn has turned into an outright gangster, worse than Al Capone. He told me both Bob Arum and myself are dinosaurs, that we're extinct." Wynn's bold play for the rights to Douglas - combined with his signing of middleweight champion Michael Nunn to a five-fight deal - has in only a few short months turned boxing's normal pecking order upside down, forcing the promoters to desperately scramble and try to reverse the tide. In a sense, Wynn is offering top fighters free agency, following the path of Mike Trainer, who pioneered the idea as Sugar Ray Leonard's attorney and in the process helped his fighter make more than $100 million in purses. "Leonard's fights have been the biggest in boxing history and Leonard and Trainer have always driven those fights," Wynn said. "It's all reminiscent of the big superstars we do business with. People like Sinatra or Cher. Those people don't have anyone telling them what to do. They make the decisions and have their attorney set things up. There's not a promoter there telling them when they have to perform and for how much." Wynn's tactics have sparked a legal battle that threatens to be bigger than anything in the ring, with suits and counter-suits flying between The Mirage, King and Douglas. Even Donald Trump has gotten into the act, allying himself with King in a federal court suit that alleges Wynn interfered with his right to hold a Douglas-Mike Tyson rematch in Atlantic City. "This is worse than the typical boxing mess," said Arum, who has both seen and instigated a few in his time. "You've got heavy hitters in there." Among the heaviest is Wynn, the charismatic casino operator who parlayed a small interest in a downtown casino to build the glitziest hotel in a city of glitzy hotels. Arum claims Wynn, who has vowed to better Trump in making offers to land the fights he wants, doesn't understand how fights are promoted. He predicts the casino operator will lose millions and ruin the sport of boxing in the process. "One thing about Trump is even with all his money and ego there's never been anybody in boxing who has criticized him," Arum said. "Trump is a smart guy, he works within the system. Wynn is not a smart guy." "It's the attack of the pigmy," Wynn says of Arum. Although he has hosted only one fight - Leonard against Roberto Duran - since opening the $640 million Mirage in November, Wynn has made it clear he will be a major player in the bigtime world of boxing - and on his own terms. That means a reduced role, or no role at all, for promoters who have made their riches on the megafights. "I think that's what all this anxiety, all this animosity, toward me is all about," Wynn said, "I think they see their dominant role in dictating everything with the fighters slipping away. We're going into an era where we don't need the promoters for the big fights." Wynn, who vowed to become boxing's "new kid on the block" while building his opulent Las Vegas Strip resort, says his approach maximizes the return to the people that deserve it - the fighters themselves. Where in the past hotel-casinos bought the rights to host a fight from a promoter, The Mirage is dealing directly with the fighters and their management, signing the principals and then handling the promotion itself. Wynn argues that in an era where a handful of men control the lucrative pay-per-view outlets or network rights, there is little need to have a promoter involved as the middleman in selling a fight. "This is not brain surgery here," Wynn said. "It's a business, but it's a business that can be understood. There are no deep dark secrets Arum and King know that we don't." Wynn, whose casino established an all-time record win in December when it hosted the Leonard-Duran fight, brushes off the criticism being thrown at him. "I said to Don King that I thought it was only a question of time that the big fighters don't deal with promoters," Wynn said. "But I told him not to be angry at us. The champion (Douglas) came out here to talk to us because they wanted to deal direct with the people who stage fights, and there are others who will do the same thing. King and Arum know that, but they've been trying to keep it under control for a couple of years. As the fighters and their management get more sophisticated, though, it becomes harder and harder for them to do that." End Comment: We think Steve Wynn was right even though wireless matchmaking and streaming videos of live fights on the Internet were years away. He saw the rationale of dealing directly with the fighters. There will be strong free agency implications of GetAFight.com, MadeFights.com, PurseBid.com, FightAuction.com, SiteFeeAuction.com, and GreatFightsOnline.com. They will provide new business models that Steve Wynn alluded to -- fair marketplaces. The Industry Status Quo On November 1, 2008, George Willis wrote in the New York Post, "If this were baseball or football or even boxing, Faber would be earning close to seven figures each time he steps into the cage. He's smart, personable and the ladies like his golden blond hair. But Zuffa dictates who fights who, and for how much. With the absence of any type of free agency among fighters, purses will remain limited as long as there is no real competition among promoters. Faber has earned about $40,000 for each of his past three fights." Another prominent writer on promoters' fear of free agency: "Of course they're afraid of it. With free agency a promoter has no control over the athlete. The way things are now, they sign a fighter up and even if he's put in a tough fight that he could lose, they get options on the opponent so they always have control of the winner. And with the promoters holding TV dates, they can freeze out anyone they want to who doesn't want to sign on the dotted line." The few prominent fighters who have tried to operate as free agents have found themselves auctioning their contract to a narrow market of one or two promoters. They're unable to get the best paying fights until they sign up. As free agents, they don't get fights with fighters who have marquee value. They either play ball by giving options to the major promoter, take what they say is their best offer, or they don't fight fighters under contract to them. There are many examples of a top contender who promoted himself but had to partner with a major promoter in order to fight a World Champion (a huge fight), because the major promoter had the World Champion's promotional contract. When the top contender signed with the promoter of the World Champion, the promoter marketed them as a made fight to venues and the media. That's the way it is. Fighters currently have no other options. The most prominent MMA and boxing promoters currently control directly or indirectly through controlled corporations virtually all of the prominent fighters and their marketable opponents. Promoters have tremendous leverage over the fighters. The Fighters Online Solution Fighters Online will provide every registered fighter and his manager with access to a database of prospective opponents. He will be able to sort them by gender, weight class, geography, record and many other criteria. Grouping all the fighters in his weight class in any state or country with a similar record will be easy. Fighters Online will also offer each segment of the fight community geographically sortable databases of promoters, venues, trainers, and fans. A fighter or his manager will be able to offer terms and challenges to any number of fighters online, with cell phone, e-mail and Twitter alerts going out to any fighter, manager or promoter registered with the system. As challenges are accepted, they will be transferred to a database of made fights and auctioned with a minimum bid to promoters and venues. Like eBay, there will also be a "Buy It Now" option for promoters who need to quickly fill out cards. Once their fight is purchased, free agent fighters will receive even more revenue if the fight is carried exclusively on our digital fight channel via our new partnership model with venues and promoters. All sources and amounts of revenue will be open and transparent. Fighters Online's patented matchmaking and fight auction model will enable fighters to develop their careers as free agents. Fighters currently under contract will let their contracts expire when they discover they have an option to make their own fights, sell their fights to the highest bidder, and share revenue under a new revenue-sharing model. They will have direct access to a broad and deep market of the world's promoters and venues who will buy their fights under this new incentive-based revenue sharing model. Marquee fighters' earnings from percentages of advertising, live gate, and pay-per-view revenue will skyrocket just like the baseball players' salaries did when they got free agency. Due to the democratizing trajectory of Internet technology as well as hugely popular fighters that are accelerating market trends, we believe this movement toward free agency is inevitable, and that all fighters will eventually choose to become free agents. Fighters Online's goal is to dramatically accelerate this process. Home Executive Summary The Fighters Online Free Agency Model Advantages for Fighter and Managers Advantages for Promoters Advantages for Fans Potential for Growth Math Phenomena of Our Matchmaking Creating an Unprecedented All-Heavyweight Series New Models and Revenue Streams Revenue Sharing A Letter from the President Password Protected Directories Copyright 2011 - All rights reserved |