ONE FC is struggling to market their American debut. In the past week, the CEO succumbed to all of his greatest hits. On top of trying to commandeer the narrative surrounding Francis Ngannou’s free agency, ONE FC CEO, Chatri Sitydong went so far as to claim he wouldn’t co-promote with anyone except the UFC which is laughable for a number of reasons.
Notably, ONE FC struggles to sell tickets on the home continent of Asia, and Bellator tends to outperform them even with a single event.
In fact ONE FC has a gaping hole in their financial sheets – one that the CEO hasn’t explained. A report published by BloodyElbow shows $47.6 million in 2020, but a very suspicious transfer offsets that negative balance. A nearly $400 million transaction was made by the ONE (Group) in which they sold their intellectual property rights to their own ONE subsidiary.
Once questioned about that, Sityodtong basically called fake news – despite the fact that the report had to be filed with Singapore’s version of IRS and is very much an official document.
“I will say that the internet is a dangerous place and you shouldn’t uh believe everything you read, and there is a lot of factual errors and inaccuracies you know?”
But ONE FC still managed to court a portion of the vivid UFC fanbase after they revealed they would in fact not be signing Francis Ngannou. A portion of UFC fanbase thinks Ngannou overplayed his hand, and should’ve stayed within the UFC.
After Ngannou talked with Ariel Helwani and confirmed ONE FC didn’t walk away from him as much as he confirmed he made a verbal agreement with the PFL, ONE FC CEO went on the offensive and told Dailystar:
“He was asking for a seat at the board of directors, he was asking for him to determine his opponent’s pay,” he revealed.
“We offered him £16million ($20million) guaranteed, the money wasn’t enough, he wanted all of these other non-financial terms that didn’t make a lot of sense.
“We obviously can’t give a seat at the board of directors, that doesn’t make any sense, he would be a fish out of water [in that position].”
Previously UFC claimed they made an $8 million offer to Ngannou, but that too might’ve been a bit overblown in terms of specifics. What Ngannou was offered, was a contract that was structured in a way that he would earn $8M if he won all of the bouts on the contract, including the one against Jon Jones.
Ngannou’s headcoach Eric Nicksick recently confirmed:
Nicksick went on to provide some interesting information:
“Absolutely, still a lot of money, I agree. But, think about this, when Francis KO’d Overeem, Overeem was making $800,000 flat, and that was 2017. What if that non title fight for Francis was for a million, do you think that pay would be fair in comparison?”
