Who Owns UFC?

UFC was founded in 1993 by Art Davie and Rorion Gracie as a single-night tournament designed to determine which martial arts discipline was most effective in real combat. The first UFC event, UFC 1, was held on November 12, 1993, at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado, and featured eight fighters representing different martial arts disciplines including boxing, wrestling, karate, sumo, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu competing in a tournament with minimal rules.

The founding concept was deliberately provocative: rather than a sport with established rules and weight classes, UFC 1 was positioned as a test of which fighting style would prevail in a no-holds-barred competition. The event was broadcast on pay-per-view and attracted significant attention, with Royce Gracie, representing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, winning the tournament and demonstrating the effectiveness of ground-fighting techniques against larger opponents from other disciplines.

The early UFC events were controversial. The minimal rules, which allowed strikes to downed opponents and had no time limits in early events, attracted criticism from politicians and media commentators who characterized the events as "human cockfighting." Senator John McCain was a prominent critic who lobbied cable companies to drop UFC pay-per-view broadcasts, and the organization was banned from cable pay-per-view in the late 1990s. This period of regulatory and media opposition significantly damaged UFC's commercial viability and led to financial difficulties for the organization.

In 2001, Zuffa, LLC, a company formed by Las Vegas casino executives Frank Fertitta III and Lorenzo Fertitta along with Dana White, acquired UFC for approximately $2 million. The Fertitta brothers and White recognized that UFC had significant commercial potential if the sport could be legitimized through the adoption of standardized rules, weight classes, and state athletic commission oversight. They worked with state athletic commissions to develop the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, which were adopted by Nevada in 2001 and subsequently by other states, providing a regulatory framework that allowed UFC events to be sanctioned and broadcast legally.

Under Zuffa's ownership, UFC grew dramatically through the 2000s. The organization developed a roster of elite fighters, expanded its event schedule, and secured broadcast deals that brought MMA to mainstream audiences. The launch of The Ultimate Fighter, a reality television series on Spike TV in 2005, was a pivotal moment in UFC's growth. The show, which featured aspiring MMA fighters competing for a UFC contract, introduced the sport to a broad television audience and generated significant interest in UFC events.

The Ultimate Fighter's success led to a rapid expansion of UFC's television presence and its fighter roster. The organization signed some of the world's best MMA fighters across multiple weight classes and developed a promotional infrastructure that could support a significantly expanded event schedule. UFC's pay-per-view business grew substantially through the late 2000s, with events featuring marquee fighters generating millions of pay-per-view buys.

In 2016, WME-IMG (later renamed Endeavor) acquired Zuffa for approximately $4 billion, the largest transaction in combat sports history at the time. The acquisition brought UFC into a diversified sports and entertainment company with significant capabilities in talent representation, media rights negotiation, and international expansion. Under Endeavor's ownership, UFC expanded its international event schedule, secured a landmark broadcast deal with ESPN in the United States, and continued to grow its global audience.

Endeavor Group Holdings completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2021, trading under the ticker symbol EDR. Silver Lake Partners, a major investor in Endeavor, led a take-private transaction in March 2025, returning Endeavor to private ownership. UFC continues to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Endeavor following the take-private.