The Professional Fighters League (PFL) is excited about working with betting companies as it continues to grow, one of the firm’s C-level leaders told Insider Sport at sports busienss conference SPORTEL Monaco.
Responding to an IS question during his Q&A with Micheline Van Puymbroeck, Commercial and Marketing Director at Monaco Mediax, James Frewin, PFL’s International Managing Director, said that working with wagering can fall in line with the league’s mission of ‘innovation and disruption’.
“There’s no reason why combat sports should be any different to football or rugby or whatever it is that is underpinned by data that is served up as content for the fan, but also has the upside of providing more things to wager on,” he said.
“We’re really excited about the gaming space in general. Again, our approach is all about innovation and disruption, so we’re trying to create different angles that allow it to become a more exciting product.”
PFL was founded in 2017 and began operating its first events in 2018 under the leadership of CEO Peter Murray and Founder Donn Davis, an experienced venture capitalist. PFL Europe would hit the market in March 2023 with an event in Newcastle, England, and was followed by PFL Mena in May 2024 and PFL Africa in June 2024 – the latter buoyed by the addition of former UFC heavyweight champions Francis Nganou to its roster.
Since joining the firm, he has contributed to the PFL’s objectives not just to foster innovation and disruption in MMA but also to pursue its arguably most ambitious goal – that of being a co-leader and competitive rival with the UFC.
“There is more room for more than one leader in the sport.”
Dana White’s UFC is the undoubted global leader in MMA, having emerged as the forerunner in the sport’s early days in the 1990s and solidifying its leadership in the years since.
In Frewin and the PFL’s view, ‘there is more room for more than one leader in the sport’. Aside from UFC, most MMA promotions tend to be quite regional – Cage Warriors in Europe, and ONE FC in Asia, for example.
A series of business developments have seen PFL emerge as a new contender in global MMA. Notable investments have come from the SURJ investment firm, which is connected to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) – itself becoming a major force in global sports, combat sports in particular.
Its most significant moment for PFL came earlier this year when it acquired Bellator, the second largest MMA promotion in the US after the UFC and also a prominent promotion in Europe. This saw PFL’s roster of world ranked fighters grow significantly, further boosting its profile following after former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou joined the promotion last year, with the star now playing a role in its Africa expansion plans.
As the league moves forward with its co-leadership ambitions, Frewin sees wagering and the content which can be associated with the industry as playing a role in how PFL engages with its growing fanbase.
“Gaming and gambling is a great engagement tool from a brand perspective, but when we built the business,” he said, adding that ‘the next generation is consuming a lot of content and wagering on their smartphone’.
Central to the PFL’s tech strategy so far has been its ‘smart cage’, a 10-sided cage which incorporates MIT-developed technology to track striking speeds and other in-match stats. This, like wagering, can be used to ‘provide more content for the fan as we professionalise the sport’, Frewin remarked.
“Gaming and gambling is a great engagement tool from a brand perspective.”
The global growth of MMA has benefited PFL as much as it has benefited other leagues – again, with the UFC as the clear frontrunner at the moment. This growth has also caught the attention of other major stakeholders.
Saudi Arabia, with its 2030 vision, has become an increasingly prominent host of MMA events, as well as boxing. PFL, buoyed by the investment made by PIF-holding SURJ in its business, has become one of the major combat sports events to find a new home in Riyadh, hosting seven events in the Saudi capital.
“It’s been a privilege to be a part of that journey and that vision,” Frewin said, asserting that PFL has “nothing but good things to say about the support they’ve given us and their plans to grow the sport of mixed martial arts”.
MMA’s growth over the past two decades has been exponential, now rivalling boxing as the most-viewed combat sport. Frewin notes that the sport has over 700 million worldwide fans, putting it in the ‘top three of fandom’ and making it the ‘growth sport of the decade’.
However, with the audience being very young in comparison to other sports – 60% are between the ages of 18 and 35 according to Frewin – its audience is made up of a ‘very difficult demographic to capture the imagination of’.
Setting up the right events, whether this being big money fights in Saudi Arabia or homecoming bouts in the US, UK and other European nations, or finding the right content partners in bookmakers and media firms alike, will be the deciding factors in how promotions like PFL can achieve their growth ambitions.
