Dana White Reveals His First Big Business Mistake That Cost the UFC a Mind-Boggling $200,000
Contrary to popular belief, The Ultimate Fighting Championship, commonly known as the ‘UFC’, was not founded by Dana White and the Fertitta brothers. It was started by Mr Art Davie who later sold the company to the Fertitta brothers and Dana White for $2 million in 2001. Since then, White and his high-school friends and the heirs to the Red Rock Resorts have built the UFC into a mammoth organization that sold for $4.2 billion in 2016.
On their journey to make the UFC a global sports empire, White had to overhaul a lot of different things, which cost time as well as money. The UFC President made a lot of mistakes along the way, as is the case with any entrepreneur who starts on the path of creating a business.
In a recent podcast, Dana White shared one of the costliest mistakes he ever made while running the UFC. He said, “Yeah, so this guy owned user friendly computers (ufc.com) This was my big first business mistake. So I call him up and we wanna buy the .com from him.”
White continued, “And I don’t remember the number but he wanted something like $20,000 for it and I mother f**cked him up and down, you piece of sh*t, he’s like f**k you and hangs up the phone. So we battle for years and the UFC just starts to go like this (Imitates a rocker taking off) so we end up paying a crazy number $150,000-$200,000 for the thing eventually when I should have taken it for $20,000 at the beginning.”
Dana White and the UFC grow from strength to strength
During the pandemic in 2020, the UFC was the only sport that kept going, which has paid off brilliantly for White. In the same podcast, he mentioned that the promotion’s fan base grew 46% during the pandemic when the other sports suffered major losses.
White also stated that he does not see himself stepping away from the business anytime soon and would continue doing it till he has to be dragged out of the company.
