A new global mixed martial arts promotion will debut in Q1 2027 with $60mm in financing. Creator Sports Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, and a host of strategics across sport, media, tech, and finance are backing the entity. Strikeforce founder and former Bellator MMA president Scott Coker will serve as its CEO.

The macro investment thesis is “there's a lot of demand for AAA [or premium] MMA content in the [live event and broadcast] market and not a ton of supply,” Peter Y. Levin (chairman, Strike MMA and cofounder and managing director, Griffin Gaming Partners) said.

Projections cited by the group’s backers suggest the sport could become the world's third most-watched by 2035.

“We want to fill that [imbalance] with a discrete offering,” Levin said.

It’s worth noting that Strike MMA is the name of the holding company, not the promotion.

However, the path to success is not without risk. There are valid questions about how much media money will remain for properties further down the value chain after the NFL completes its round of renegotiations.

But the serial entrepreneur-operator, who was an investor and advisor in Strikeforce and an MMA agent prior to that, indicated established regional media networks abroad and at least one of the big global streamers are prepared to pay meaningful rights fees to the promotion based on the belief that it will deliver a desirable, hard-to-reach audience.

“If I'm a marketer, I'm a brand, I'm WPP, IPG, Unilever, [or] Procter & Gamble, I'm scrambling right now. The billions I used to deploy through traditional broadcasters, those eyeballs are gone. And the most attractive demographic, young males with disposable income, they couldn't find broadcast television programming if their lives depended on it,” Levin said. “So, the emerging media titans want sports on their air…That’s a huge part of [our] economic calculus as well.”

Coker has proven capable of scaling MMA promotions, expanding them internationally, and building brand equity along the way. In fact, he’s done it twice.

First as the founder of Strikeforce, which sold to UFC/Zuffa in 2011 for a reported ~$40mm, then as the president of Bellator. PFL acquired the promotion from Paramount in 2023.

So, “this [latest] shot was a very easy calculus for me to [take],” Levin said.

The promotion’s best chance at long-term success is to lead with talent identification and development. Cris Cyborg, Daniel Cormier, and Ronda Rousey are among the stars Coker is credited with helping to build.

“Recycling the same names gets old and there's a stuntiness to that,” Levin said. “It's way more interesting to most people that are proximate to this [sport] to be part of the discovery.”

It’s certainly fair to wonder why a top young fighter would sign with a new promoter if the UFC were an option.

But Levin argues that “these careers are short. [Fighters consider] who's going to pay [them] the most, promote [them] the best, and set [them] up for a great post-combat-sports career?”

And Coker has a reputation for being ‘fighter-first’.

It’s hard to suggest that a challenger property is going to provide as large a stage as the UFC for an individual looking to build his/her personal brand for a career after fighting. Certainly, not for those at the top of their rankings.

However, “beneath that lies some of the opportunity set,” Levin said.

‘Strike MMA’ is not positioning itself as a UFC competitor. It understands the clearest route to relevance is in expanding the sport’s global infrastructure and trying to be an additive product within the ecosystem.

Of course, the media landscape is not the same today as it was even just a few years ago when Coker was leading Bellator. Must-have properties are increasingly soaking up more of the traditional buyers’ available dollars and streamers have not yet shown a consistent willingness to wildly overpay for rights packages as many observers expected they would.

That’s noteworthy when discussing a business model predicated on rights revenue, sponsorship sales, and ticketing.

But Strike insists it has heard from distributors across the U.S., Europe, Asia, Middle East, and North Africa that both want and are willing to pay up for premium live MMA programming.

“A lot of my relationships around the globe are with big [regional] players in the media space…  So, when we stood up this initiative, [those] were very easy phone calls to make,” Levin said. “We never would've set out on this journey if we heard [there are no media dollars available] …This will not be a time buy [or] profit share [situation].”

And the promotion insists significant white space remains in brand extensions around live events too.

“There’s a huge opportunity for [video] gaming in combat sports. Wrestling has done a good job [tapping into it] over the decades [and] the UFC game sells a bunch of units,” Levin said. “There's [still] a lot of opportunity in the trading card space. Just look at some of the more recent collabs between Topps and WWE… [Toys and] licensing and merchandise have [also historically] been under levered in combat sports.”

While that may be true, Crakes Media founder Patrick Crakes suggested advertising dollars are likely to be tougher to come by than anticipated. New entrants can try to take share from UFC, but the broader ad market is not going to be as elastic as backers hope.

“If [a brand] won't advertise in UFC, they're not advertising here," he said.

Strike’s financial model does not call for another capital raise in the short to medium term ($60mm is a lot of capital for a challenger MMA property), though the group will remain opportunistic, and there is no defined exit strategy.

“Right now, it's about building [brand equity],” Levin said. “If you build it, they will come.”

In this case, ‘they’ could mean dividends, strategic buyers, or merger opportunities.

“This round came together relatively quickly,” Levin said. “A lot of that has to do with the opportunity set [and] this world-class generational operator that we have in Scott Coker.”

On the latest episode of JohnWallStreet Presents: Big Business on Campus, a college sports podcast powered by Playfly Sports, JohnWallStreet Founder Corey Leff and Playfly Sports Chairman Michael Schreiber sit down with University of Alabama Director of Athletics Greg Byrne.

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