ONE Championship would only be interested to co-promote with UFC

Don’t expect ONE Championship to co-promote with any other MMA organizations in the near future.

That’s according to ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong, who responded to a question about the Singapore-based company possibly teaming up with another promotion like what Bellator MMA has done with RIZIN in recent years. Co-promotion has been very rare across MMA and Sityodtong doesn’t really see a need to explore that option for ONE Championship unless the opportunity was there to potentially work with who he considered the other biggest show in town.

“Only UFC,” Sityodtong said on The MMA Hour. “Look, again, if you look at the largest players in the combat sports industry, pure facts and figures. Forget about marketing. Pure facts and figures. The Nielsen industry report, if you’re a fan an don’t know anything, go look at the followers that ONE has. We have 70 million social media followers globally, when you include China and stuff. I think the UFC has 100 million plus.

“It’s very clear there are two big giants — one in the east and one in the west.”

Chatri Sityodtong, the CEO of ONE Championship, referred to a study conducted by Nielsen Sports in 2021, which ranked the biggest sports properties worldwide based on various factors such as organic reach on television, social media influence, and video views across multiple platforms. The study consistently highlighted ONE Championship and UFC as the two major players in combat sports. In terms of television reach, ONE Championship had 406 million viewers globally, while UFC had 259 million. Sityodtong cited this study to support his claim that UFC and Bellator are the only viable competitors to ONE Championship in promoting MMA events globally. He emphasized the importance of relying on hard facts and numbers to assess the market position of various combat sports organizations.