Reebok out..... Venum in

Not a good indicator for the health of the UFC. This would have come from Reebok's end. I'd heard their contract was expiring with UFC and they obviously didn't want to renew it. RBK is owned by ADIDAS. It's a  subsidiary.


Venum is a huge step down. It's not even public.

Very weird partnership. It's possible UFC want to acquire it.

* Edited at 07.10.2020, 4:16 PM ET *

I do agree that the Reebok deal was a *************, and so is the new Venum deal. Fighters should be allowed to make their own sponshorship deals and the promotion shouldstay the **** out of their lives. How the UFC works licensing, sponsorship and merchandising is massively exploitative. .


I think there's probably two reasons they don't allow fighters to organize their own sponsorship:

A) It gives fighters waaaaaaaay too much leverage over the promotion.For example If X fighter was signed by Nike it's quite possible that they would make far more from that endorsement than anything UFC actually pays them. And that would be for the UFC for quite a few reasons, but mostly because it would be in the interests of the fighter to to cater to their sponsor, not the promotion--it would to put it simply remove power from UFC. It would make contract negotiations far more difficult for UFC both in the sense that it would flat out have to offer fighters more skrilla to keep them around as a result of cost/risk benefit ( fighter side) but also because of the providence created by a massively recognizable brand name raising the stock price of the sponsored fighter.



B) The system that exists now is set up to create both UFC and promoters really ******* cheap money and  low-risk speculation.Ultimately, every sponsor is gambling when they decide to endorse any given fighter. It's not really any different than stock trading. Basically, they're buying calls on a human being, and when you're only expected to return 10-15% value in generated equity...well, you can kind of be as bullish as you like, because that's chicken-scratch in real terms, and was especially so given how popular UFC was between 2015-2019, and especially given UFC's virtual total market dominance. Actually, it's a far safer game than trading, because although they might not know which fighter will get massive, they do know it will be a UFC fighter and that they will always be the sponsor of that fighter because they sponsor every UFC fighter. There's actually nothing even close to that in the world of trading, They're wagering **** all to at worst make a very small net loss with the very high probability of making a huge return somewhere else.

They literally had and still do have the market cornered. Probably what got ADS ( I just checked their index and their price didn't even move in any meaningful way as a result of the announcement Reebok cut ties with UFC) soft in the whole thing was the fact that Dana can't really keep his house in order, and no brand wants to to endorse AthleteS who are ******s/on video punching old men in the pub/drunk degenerates getting in to fender benders with pregnant women.

Reebok (well, ADS) can see the writing on the wall. They were clever enough to time the market and had a ******* GREAT position in a bubble, and now that's over and they're getting out right on time IMO, probably without ever getting their 'Theta' comeuppance.

Now UFC is standing around with its **** in its hand tethered to a ****** company that nobody recognizes and employs like 61 ******* people because they can't pull off the same confidence trick twice. It's embarrassing. I think WME paid way, waaaay to much in the UFC acquisition. That was insane. Or maybe it wasn't, I don't know what they do. It probably looked sexy when they bought it, it was selling out every ******* event, there was no union ( still isn't) and they had no competition etc et al. Everybody ****s up occasionally. Buffet bought Kraft which turned out to be an absolute turd of a play.


Sean O'malley worked out that Reebok had generated over 1M in T-shirt sales off his name alone, and he took two fifths of **** all of that, It was something like 3K when the dust settled. The line that DC and Dana  feed people about 'Oh, it looks cleaner' is obvious horse **** and that should be clear to everyone. If it's about optics and congeniality, what's to stop the company simply limiting the amount of sponsors a fighter can rep but letting them choose what those are?

Anyway, the whole system is greasy and I'm for the Ali Act for MMA. Allowing UFC to set IR parameters almost absolutely is like allowing rats to guard the granary, and as long as it's the only viable show in town, that's going to be the status quo, and fighters are going to take it up the bracket.

* Edited at 07.11.2020, 1:27 AM ET *

lol I love you man, I really do--and believe me, I hate the Government as much as anybody. But it's the Ali Act or a Union, which would just be a kangaroo court. An unions are just cesspools of corruption.


Competition,completion, completion! It's how we get great ****.

Unrelated, but have you been following the Ghislaine Maxwell debacle? Turns out that ***** was literally a power moderator on Reddit....millions of Karma, and has multiple posts defending Pedo activity on the site. Looks like Reddit brass knew, and had some kind of relationship with her.