The week sees the debut of the Professional Fighters League, a new MMA promotion that will serve up a regular season, “win-or-go-home” post-season, and championship. Co-founded by Donn Davis, Russ Ramsey, and Mark Leschly, the PFL 2018 Season features 72 fighters across six weight-classes, competing in the regular season on Thursday nights throughout the Summer. The top eight in each weight-class face off in single-elimination playoff fights on Saturday nights in October with the PFL season concluding December 31 with six championship bouts back-to-back with a $10 million prize pool with fights running on NBCSN and Facebook Live.
This Thursday at 9p on NBCSN, the action will come from Madison Square Garden, headlined by a featherweight showdown between undefeated Long Island native Andre Harrison and Juma Tuerxun, as well as Lance Palmer vs. Bekbulat Magomedov in a featherweight matchup. Cynopsis spoke with Pete Murray, CEO of PFL, about the league and its goals.
Murray on PFL vs. WSoF: World Series of Fighting was an acquisition from my partners to add their assets and ensure that we would have credibility and authenticity in this sport. But PFL really represents a new vision, a new model with a world-class ownership group and our will to reimagine and grow the sport by bringing a compelling format – a true sports format – to MMA for the first time.
On the marketplace: When you look at the marketplace, MMA is one of the top three sports around the world and the fastest-growing sport around the world and what we know about a true sports format, where there is a beginning, middle and end, provides true transparency. Fighters in the PFL know when they are fighting, who they are fighting and what they are fighting for with a $10 million championship purse. It really recognizes the athletes from a performance model standpoint and we believe it will really elevate them as well as the sport.
On fans: Having this type of true sport format is something fans understand and it provides an easy way to follow the action, the fights and the events and they can pull for their favorite athletes. At the end of that journey, fighters will be awarded a million dollars so there is a great story to that journey. Fans are also assured that the best will be fighting the best as it takes out the matchmaking component.
On production: We are really proud of the team that we have in place, which is headed up by George Greenberg, who oversees production of live events and programming. MMA is not a foreign sport to George and he is bringing a fresh point of view to presenting the sport to fans. In addition to the new format, we are going to bring a high-level production value to the presentation, including camera angles that are going to showcase the action in a unique way. We will also be going deep in data and analytics because we know that fans want to get closer to the action and want context on their performance. So that part of storytelling will be part of the live event. In addition, we will have some customization to provide fans, such as leveraging our partnership with Facebook to provide some unique angles or a ref cam.
On the schedule: We are proud to be back at Madison Square Garden to kick off the inaugural season and New York had a great history with World Series of Fighting so we thought it would be a great way to start the season here, in addition to hosting our championships here on New Year’s Eve with six title fights in one broadcast. In the middle, we are going to go to Chicago on June 21, and then we go to our ownership backyard to host an event here in DC during July 4th week. Finally, we head to Long Island on July 19 and Aug. 2 and then we go to Atlantic City at the Ocean Resort Casino on Aug. 16 and 30. We will take the show to the west coast, announcing shortly, for our Oct. playoff schedule.