Dana White is the first to admit as well they had quite a bit of luck to get where they are today. When Pride was still going and took over the UFC as the No.1 MMA organisation, the Fertittas bought the dwindling UFC in 2001 & they were losing money hand over fist for years. He tells a story about the brothers coming to him and wanting to pull out because they'd literally sunk $34 million after they bought it for 2 million and it wasn't getting any better and wanted to sell.

Then a couple of things happened, in 2005 the UFC went to Spike TV to sell them an idea of a reality TV show based around MMA and a contest to sign to the UFC at the end. Spike wasn't even interested, so the UFC offered to produce it cost-free for them, it was their last roll of the dice and cost them millions to do. After the 1st season of TUF and especially the final fight between Bonner and Griffin it started to create a load of hype and got signed for another few seasons. after that new fans started to buy PPV's that had never before but it was still behind Pride's huge events. Then in 2007 Pride lost its TV deal in Japan because of links with the Triads came to light. The UFC swooped in and bought Pride at a knockdown price and the vast majority of it's best fighters moved across, making it truly the place where you could see the best versus the best. That's really where they started to become what they are today imo. Along the way, they also bought Strikeforce, WFA, brought in lighter weight fighters with their purchase of the WEC and then introduced women to their ranks, funnily enough only a couple of years earlier Dana White said it would never happen.

Just shows you need luck, things to go your way and then take advantage of them, plus also willing to take the odd chance. Also, it helped being bankrolled by a couple of brothers who are billionaires that own Station Casinos to get where they are now.

Lockers is probably not as well-known to The Great British Public as someone like Michael van Gerwen. More's the pity. I too was and am hopeful regarding recent changes, but something needs to happen, and it looks like the Hearns will not be getting involved in the foreseeable future.

Totally agree. And while the SL/RFL should promote the players, they themselves could do more by prodding their agents into generating some publicity. For some reason, this aspect of an agent's role is neglected entirely in RL. Not in other sports though.

You can't expect too much. RL players' agents are too busy keeping the players-to-RU-then-the-NRL-then-back-again carousel going.

I would have liked for him to have got involved in someway

But our biggest problem in my view is our relationship with sky and the exclusivity they receive. The BBC get better figures than sky do for rugby league. They are our best bet of getting better national exposure. Why can we not have a Sunday afternoon game on free to air TV??

The argument that clubs don't have the money, imagine if you were trying to sell Wigan rlfc to roman abrhamovich. Hey roman Wigan have just gone up for sale, brilliant he replies where did they finish last year? 2nd but they won the grand final, great he replies but I want to finish first, whose the best j5 players in the world get them and send me the bill.... Ahhh sorry roman we can only spend 1.8m a year on players wages aggg we'll love that then. Those 5 players would put bums on seats increase profile and attract better sponsors and allow us a better negotiation with sky.

Unfortunately the disharmony besween rfl n super league makes it hard for real changes to be made.

Or you could say to Roman that we won the trophy that everyone wants to win. you can have 2 world class players and pay them as much as you want as only a minimul amount counts on the salary cap but dont expect crowds to rise massivley as its only a town and we maximise the numbers we have and could increase maybe by 1500 at most no matter who we bring in as proven this year with Benny Barba over the hill. but we can assure you Mr Abramovic that you will not lose anything like the amount of money your current football team loses.


More importantly the do gooders of Wigan will all be out on there high horses should he want to take over as he has a chequred past and they dont like that. well unless its a player they like as in Bateman or Flower.