Fertitta brothers don’t like to fight
Billionaires enjoy success with UFC
Cain Velasquez, a tattooed mixed martial arts fighter, slams his elbow into the face of Antonio (Bigfoot) Silva, opening an inch-long gash on the bridge of the 264-pound Brazilian’s nose. Blood sprays onto the Bud Light logo in the middle of the canvas mat.
Actress Charlize Theron, at ringside, yells, “Fight, fight, fight!” A few feet away, Dallas Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray and Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald gawk at the brawlers through the black chain-link fence that surrounds the Octagon. Pockets of fans among the 15,000 spectators — who have paid an average of $300 apiece — wave Brazilian and Mexican flags.
With 1:24 to go in the first round, the referee declares Velasquez the winner by a technical knockout.
The brawl is one of five heavyweight bouts staged by Ultimate Fighting Championship on a Saturday evening in May, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The world’s largest promoter of mixed martial arts, it’s also one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative draws in entertainment.
UFC today has 442 fighters from 38 countries under contract and will host 14 pay-perview events this year, bringing in $500 million in annual sales. The Las Vegas-based company signed a seven-year television contract with News Corp.’ s Fox Media Group in July 2011, and its content, broadcast in 19 languages, is available to more than one billion homes in 148 countries and territories.
That’s a long way from 2001, when brothers Frank Fertitta III, now 50, and Lorenzo Fertitta, 43, heirs to their father’s casino business, bought UFC for $2 million. “It was probably the worst brand in the United States because of all of the negativity surrounding it,” Lorenzo says.
The brothers say that rules adopted in most U.S. states in the past decade — outlawing practices such as eye gouging, biting and blows to the trachea — make it safer than other sports such as boxing.
“This is a form of violence,” says Bob Reilly, a Democratic assemblyman in New York, the only state that still bans UFC competitions. “When you give a prize for the best knockout of the evening — and that does serious damage to a person’s brain — it’s troubling.”
The Fertittas respond by citing a 2006 study by doctors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that found “the lower knockout rates in MMA compared to boxing may help prevent brain injury in MMA events.”
“They take pains to make sure fights are clean and that the medical supervision at all their events is stringent,” says Joe Ravitch, founding partner of New York-based sports consulting firm Raine Group LLC, who has worked as a strategic adviser to the Fertittas for five years.
Brutal or not, Ultimate Fighting has made Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta billionaires. Each owns 40.5 per cent of ZuffaLLC — named after the Italian word for fight — the private company that controls UFC. Flash Entertainment, an Abu Dhabi government investment company, bought 10 per cent in 2009 in a deal that valued Zuffa at more than $2 billion.
The remaining shares are owned by Dana White, a fight promoter and former high school friend of Lorenzo’s who first suggested they buy UFC. White became UFC’s public face.
The Fertittas also own a majority stake in Station Casinos LLC, a Las Vegas-based gambling outfit founded by their late father, Frank Fertitta Jr., in the 1970s. Frank III is chairman and chief executive of Station, which owns 17 casinos in Nevada and other locales, while Lorenzo is chairman and CEO of Zuffa.
Wearing bespoke suits over their muscular bodies at the MGM Grand arena, the brothers talk between fights about how they’ve managed to work in tandem.
Each Fertitta controls a fortune worth at least $1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The brothers not only work together; they work out together. Six mornings a week, at a gym beneath the Station Casinos corporate offices 16 kilometres west of the Las Vegas Strip, they spend two hours lifting weights, jumping rope and hitting heavy bags.