UFC owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta make Forbes billionaires list
Back around the turn of the last century, when Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta decided to take a chance on their buddy Dana White's crazy idea to purchase the struggling Ultimate Fighting Championship, they were known exclusively for their family's casino business, which they took over from their father and then grew to new levels of success. For years, the Fertittas threw millions of dollars into what must have felt like a bottomless pit, as the UFC continued to lose money.
Eventually, their investment began to pay off, as they helped create The Ultimate Fighter reality fighting competition show, got the sport sanctioned across the world, aired on basic cable, and then network television, and the UFC and MMA began to catch on among sports fans. Now, the Fertittas are known just as much for being owners of the UFC, as they are for owning Station Casinos.
Look no further than the two brothers' listing on the Forbes list of the globe's billionaires (they share the #1250 spot) as proof. Whereas the number one spot holder Bill Gates' "source" of wealth column reads simply, "Microsoft," the Fertitta brothers' reads "casinos, Ultimate Fighting Championship."
Bad. Ass.
We have to admit, as fight fans who used to have to wait for months for the next big MMA event to come around, only to then need to find someone with a satellite to watch it on (because it was banned on cable), or scour Dailymotion for uploaded fight footage the day after, seeing the world's biggest MMA promotion listed in any way in a mainstream business publication like Forbes, feels pretty good. Here's hoping that that 2015 sees even more growth for the Fertittas, the UFC, and that more and more of that wealth is continued to be passed to the fighters who make it possible.
