Back in the ring

Mixed martial arts is a hot combat sport that has suffered setbacks in Macau but City of Dreams is trying to tap the market and increase non-gaming revenue After a shaky start, mixed martial arts or MMA, is back in town this month with Melco Crown’s City of Dreams hosting the Legend 5 Fighting Championship on July 16. Outside the ring, odds are being quoted on whether MMA can give the city’s casinos an edge in non-gaming revenue, following in the footsteps of Las Vegas. After all, MMA is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, having already drawn live audiences of up to 60,000 to events in the United States and Japan. Jonathan Galaviz, an independent gaming and leisure industry strategist, says “it is worth noting that the largest MMA organisation, the UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship], is headquartered in Las Vegas and owned by Las Vegas-based interests.” There the similarities end. Mr Galaviz believes a sophisticated strategy for MMA is necessary if the sport is to take off in Macau. “It’s hard to say whether Asian consumers will eventually be willing to pay to see live MMA events in the way people do in the United States.” MMA has created a huge fan base in the United States through pay-per-view broadcasts of fights – something that is familiar to and accepted by Americans but uncommon in Asia. Those fans then fill up the seats at live events. Unlike Las Vegas, where boxing and casinos went hand in hand long before MMA arrived, Macau is a newcomer to hosting combat sport events. One of the first tournaments after gaming liberalisation was what Galaxy Entertainment Group described as “the very first international muay thai contest” in Macau, at the Macau Dome, in 2006. Fury evaporates Shortly after, the city started hosting more combat sport events, although only infrequently. The first big MMA tournament was in 2009, when the Venetian Macao hosted an event featuring some notable international fighters such as Brazilian António Braga Neto and Dutch-Surinamese Rodney Glunder. Momentum seemed to be building. Shortly after, City of Dreams hosted Macau’s first MMA cage fight, “Fury: Clash of the Titans”, in May last year. Suddenly, things went south. First, last October, “Fury 2: Armageddon”, an MMA event scheduled to be held at City of Dreams, was cancelled with only a few days’ warning. As the fighters were arriving, allegations flew that the promoter had swindled nearly HK$13 million (US$1.6 million). With their hotel rooms cancelled, fighters were left with nowhere to stay, stranded either in Macau or Hong Kong with no paid return flights. Less than three months later, a new MMA event, “Mayhem in Macao”, booked to take place at the Venetian Macao last January, was cancelled by the promoter who blamed low ticket sales. Now City of Dreams is betting it can take MMA to the big time in Macau, partnering with the Legend Fighting Championship, Hong Kong’s first professional MMA competition. The resort will hold a series of four events over the next 12 months in a bid to diversify its entertainment landscape. Young bucks Melco Crown’s director for public relations and projects, Charles Ngai, explains the importance of the tournaments. “With the rapidly growing interest in MMA, we feel that fight sports events such as the Legend Fighting Championship will have a ready audience in this part of the world who are looking for entertainment with a difference.” Mr Ngai says the partnership with the Legend Fighting Championship is meant to appeal to Hong Kong’s established MMA fan base. “We are confident that a large portion of this loyal fan base will follow the tournament migration to Macau, which is just a short boat-ride away.” Chris Pollak, co-founder of the Legend Fighting Championship, says his organisation is thrilled to bring four world-class MMA events to Macau. “We are once again featuring champion Asia-Pacific MMA athletes for what we anticipate will be our most exciting competition to date,” he says. Legend 5 and subsequent events at City of Dreams will be the first MMA fights to be broadcast internationally from Macau, to the mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia the United States and Canada. Whether MMA can help Macau’s casinos to increase their non-gaming revenue is debatable. Yet with MMA’s primary audience being affluent males aged between 20 and 40, it could definitely attract people more willing to spend their discretionary dollars on attractions other than gambling. Joe Poon, an associate at Standard and Poor’s, does not think gaming revenue will be knocked off its perch overnight. “While a heavy chunk of Macau’s operators’ investments in recent years have targeted leisure travellers, we believe it may take many years for their reliance on the VIP gaming customer to reduce.” What is MMA? Mixed martial arts, or MMA, is an inter-disciplinary full-contact combat sport. It allows a wide variety of fighting techniques and skills from a mixture of other combat sports – including sanda, wushu, jiujitsu, muay thai, boxing and wrestling – in supervised matches under a strict set of rules designed to protect the safety of the fighter. Most professional fights last for three or five rounds of five minutes each, with a one-minute rest between each. A fighter can win the contest by knocking out his opponent or forcing him to submit, by a technical knockout or the decision of the judges, or if a doctor decides his opponent cannot continue. A fighter must wear a mouth guard, groin protector, mittens and MMA shorts. No other equipment, such as shoes, elbow pads, knee pads, shirts or athletic tape is allowed. By Kim Lyon