Mixed martial arts promotion The Professional Fighters League (PFL) will ramp up its international expansion in the coming years, with four new regional competitions planned, including a regional league for India.
Speaking to GlobalData Sport (Sportcal), PFL's founder and chair, Donn Davis, said PFL Africa, the promotion’s third regional league after PFL Europe and PFL MENA (Middle East & North Africa), is set for launch later in 2025, with a timeline already set for the promotion's expansion beyond that.
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He said: “The first event in Africa will be in July this year. Africa will have a full season in 2025, and we will have two [new] leagues in 2026. My hope is that those are Australia and Latin America, and we'll have two additional leagues in 2027, and those would be [East] Asia and India. So, four [new] leagues for sure.”
Though the order that the four competitions will roll out in is still undecided, Davis remains certain that those regional leagues can help further grow the nascent MMA brand, adding: “[Underserved markets] certainly drive the whole economic engine, because of the 650 million fans of MMA, 550 million are not the US.
“UFC goes [to different markets] once every two years and leaves, so think of 550 million fans who don't get to attend, don't get to watch in prime time, and don't have their local fighters. When you're serving 550 million fans who haven’t been well served, money's going to follow.”
Davis spoke to Sportcal after recently revealing the valuation of PFL at $1 billion, a milestone for the promotion that he claims is still “just the beginning” of the business’s journey. In doing so, he points to two main facets that powered the valuation.
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By GlobalData“Firstly, in 2024, we had our first year of over $100 million in revenue. And that's obviously a big milestone, and that's a big deal to achieve that. For people who are new to PFL, it might appear to be an overnight sensation, but this is our seventh year.
“Secondly, there are only two premium companies in MMA recognized right now, PFL and UFC. They (UFC) are a lot bigger than us, they have a 30 year head start, but in terms of the things that go into that [recognition]; fighter roster, premium production, true global distribution on top outlets, all those things that go into making a premium product that's perceived by the commercial market and by the fan market.”
The business of MMA
Another facet of PFL’s business that has aided in securing the $1 billion valuation is the growth of MMA as an asset class, particularly those promotions with strong global distribution outlets and production capabilities. This is why Davis asserts that over the coming years, the industry will be immune to many of the problems that other sports properties, such as soccer leagues, may suffer with.
“MMA is global. When you look at the PFL or UFC’s revenue, it's 50:50 domestic and global. So that's a big differentiator for most sports, which very heavily rely on one region.”
“Scarcity” is another factor, he adds, continuing: “between PFL and UFC, there's still only 90 major events a year for 650 million fans, for media partners, and commercial sponsors.
“We (PFL and UFC) are both growing. The market is big enough that in a territory where there are seven media companies, where they could take UFC or PFL or both, sometimes people want to take both. There's not enough product.
“The third thing is that MMA is set up best for the future. It's a streaming product that's easily digested on mobile and streaming. [It caters to] short attention spans for Gen Z as a high-action sport. If you're going to draw up an investable sport, it would have the attributes of MMA overall.
“So, I think all of sport will remain very robust, but I think within all of sport, if I were an investor, MMA has the attributes of the best investable area to be in terms of high growth.”
This goes hand in hand with PFL’s openness to new investors, explained Davis, be it commercial partners such as Dune that are tangibly aiding in the sport’s expansion in the Middle East, or shareholders like Aries Capital Management that participated in earlier funding rounds as the series was still in its infancy.
“I'm all for the partnership between capital and entrepreneurship. That's what fuels building big companies. UFC is in a monetization mode, they're happy where they're at. Anybody interested in MMA, we want them in the PFL boat. We're always open for business for everybody who wants to invest, who wants to sponsor, who wants to distribute, who wants to fight here. We are looking to be the most partner-friendly MMA company there is because we want to continue to grow.
“If you’ve got a big mission to go to the moon, it takes fuel to go to the moon. So, we will continue to get great investors, and we will continue to build the company.”
“Champions League of MMA”
Davis has long stated his desire to turn PFL into a global spectacle mirroring the UEFA Champions League of European soccer, where the top fighters from every PFL market face off. Bringing that idea to fruition takes manpower, resources, and local expertise beyond what PFL currently boasts, hence PFL’s aforementioned “partner-friendly” attitude, which bodes well with the promotion’s willingness to engage with existing stakeholders in each market.
While UFC typically taps IMG for its global commercial needs (UFC and IMG share an owner in sports and media giant Endeavor), Davis comments that rather than one global agency to handle sponsorship, media rights, or production, different agent representation in different regions is a pathway that has suited the promotion.
The most prominent example of this has been in the Middle East, PFL’s newest market, wherein the promotion recently tapped agency Dune to secure commercial partnerships in a region positioning itself as a global hub of combat sports.
Saudi Arabia, the largest and perhaps wealthiest of the Gulf states, was a “first mover” in the space says Davis, but PFL’s focus extends to its neighbours also, the likes of UAE, Dubai in particular, which is the centrepiece of the PFL Road to Dubai series borne out of the promotion’s purchase of rival Bellator in 2023.
With further penetration and events across the Middle East planned, Davis highlights the coming year as one that could be a pivotal one for MMA in the region.
“Within the Middle East, you’ve got a lot of partners still coming in. With Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Bahrain, you have a lot of people who are still coming to the MMA table that we haven't seen yet. You're going to see other people who have a huge amount of interest in MMA coming to the table in a couple of different ways in the next year for sure.
“For one, [they will be] hosting big MMA events in their country, but also investing, because they've seen the development we've done with PFL MENA, not just about an event from scratch.
“We have 32 of the best fighters in the region creating an ecosystem there, not just a hit and run ‘stage an event and then we leave’, like the UFC. We're building an ecosystem in these countries, we're building a better ecosystem in Europe, and we're going to build a better ecosystem in Africa. So I think you're going to see more and more people invest in that ecosystem with PFL.”
The future of PFL
While the achievement of a $1 billion valuation is a major milestone for the upstart promotion, it has by no means come without notes for the company to improve on. “Balance”, for one, is of pivotal importance to Davis, who stresses: “Anytime you're building a high-growth company, you have to balance, two different times, the now, and the future.”
“We've never compromised on quality, and we always try to continue to invest, but what happens sometimes is things get a little messy,” he concedes, pointing to the 2023 Bellator acquisition as a particular “speed bump.”
“We probably took on too many fighters… in the first quarter of this year, you saw some bumpiness, fighters saying they didn't get all the fights they wanted to get. We recognize that, and we've had to deal with that. We had to release a lot of fighters so they could pursue their career elsewhere in a way that they wanted to.
“So, anytime you're growing, you have to keep quality, you have to maintain speed, and you have to do things now and also build for the future. That's a lot to do. And speed bumps happen, and when those happen, you go, ‘I'm going to fix that, I'm going to do better, and I'm going to keep moving forward’. And that's happened to us from time to time. It happens every year in some way or another.”
While missteps will always be a part of the sports industry for most companies in growth periods, the growth remains the focus, he posits. PFL launched with a soccer-like league format, but that too has fallen by the wayside in favor of a knockout-tournament style season in response to fan preferences.
Juggling the need for a USP with fan feedback is another facet of the constant balancing act Davis cites as the key to that $1 billion valuation. Circling back to that number, Davis also looks further into the future about where the next milestone lies for the promotion.
“And the only way to [grow] is to not think about going from $1 billion to $10 billion. It's thinking, how do you add more fighters? How do you make better fights? How do you sell more media rights? How do you sell more sponsorships? How do you launch more international leagues? How do you just do better and more of what we've done, now that we have that position secured and that game is on?”
Although this may sound like a rallying cry, Davis maintains he is solely focused on PFL, “We're not competing with anyone in the market. We're just competing to do better against our plan.
“UFC is worth probably $20 billion today, and we're only worth 1 billion. MMA, as I said, is the best market to invest in if you're interested in sports, so can we go from $1 billion to $10 billion? Sure.”
