Building the UFC Legacy and MMA’s Hispanic Future – Campbell McLaren, Combate Global

This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

Sean Callanan (00:01.602)
Very happy to welcome Campbell McLaren. He's the CEO of Combate Global. Campbell, welcome to the podcast.

Campbell (00:10.128)
Thanks, Sean. Glad to be here and well done on the pronunciation of Kumbhati.

Sean Callanan (00:14.178)
Well, that's the thing I always try. Most of time I'm trying to get people's names right. But also, yeah, when I'm looking at different languages, I try my best. Cameron, when I start my podcast interviews, always try to figure out people's origin story and how they got started in the world of sports and entertainment. What about yourself? What was your first break or your first gig in the world of sports and entertainment?

Campbell (00:37.029)
Well, sports, it was the UFC. know, entertainment I'd been doing for quite a while. I've got a varied background. My wife says the only sports I like are the one I created, which is not exactly true. I I like football, your form of football, not American football. And I do like American baseball. So I do like those. But MMA is a different thing. It's a passion. It's a love.

Sean Callanan (00:58.125)
Yes.

Campbell (01:06.687)
you know, I had a long background, as a TV producer, produced sitcoms, comedy specials, entertainment specials, folks like Paul McCartney, Ellen DeGeneres run DMC, like a long list of folks and, managed someone named Larry David, you know, from curb and Joy Bihar, who's on the view. know, I had done a lot of different entertainment.

projects and I was running programming for a pay-per-view company and we were looking for nothing was working. Luckily, I was new so I hadn't had a failure yet. You know, like, and everybody else had had multiple failures. And let me tell you, the group there was not hoping I was gonna, the head of the company was hoping I was gonna come up with something, but the rest of them were rooting for my abject failure.

Sean Callanan (01:42.573)
Yeah.

Campbell (02:02.779)
So as I was looking at things, know, there's not a lot of things that come with built-in marketing. It's one of the reasons you see the movie business goes back and does reboots number two, number three, number four.

Sean Callanan (02:20.12)
We're seeing, yeah, we're definitely seeing a lot of that now.

Campbell (02:22.937)
Yeah, because the marketing is already built in, Whatever it is. Terminator, Terminator 2. You know what Terminator is. They already spent the money advertising it. So there's not a lot of projects that come with a built-in marketing component. And I was trying to find that. And when I found what was the early, not even the beginnings, like it was a hint of an idea, Julian Gracie,

of the famous Brazilian Jiu Jitsu family was in an article that I read called, I think, Baddest Man on the Planet. And I got a call from his marketing guy. And they had a project called War of the Worlds. Now, a lot of respect for the Gracie family. And I went out and I met with them. I went to the dojo. I met Horian. It was very impressive.

that War of the Worlds thing was kind of goofy. you know, and I was looking for something provocative, cool, controversial. And I thought to do a real life version of Mortal Kombat, the video game. And I knew zero about fighting, zero, not zero about the martial arts, but not very much. Certainly had never put on a fight, even though I'd done a lot of live.

Sean Callanan (03:45.518)
And again, you're coming at it from like all TV producers or channels and media companies, you want the content. So you were trying to build something that you could build an audience around that is, like you said, marketable, year on year and build an audience that keeps calling out for us. you were coming at from that production background.

Campbell (04:05.275)
Absolutely, development and production. What's interesting? What has a hook? How can you produce it for a reasonable amount of money? Because, you know, we had very little… They gave me very little money. They did, if you remember a long time ago, Tommy the Who, which was a seminal classic rock double album.

and they had Elton John and Patty LaBelle, you know, and this giant production and they lost all the money. So they were going, Campbell, we'll give you a dollar, but maybe two. So that was a big part of it. What could we do on limited resources that would get attention? And as I looked into this, it was really cool. And Jorge had introduced me to, you know, like very impressive folks.

And not only when I was looking at tapes, Gracie Jujitsu tapes and stuff that Horian sent me, like a mob would always form in my office because folks wanted to see what it was. So that's a good sign. And then when I went to meet with Horian the second or third time, he goes, you know, we're going to go meet Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I went to Arnold at a restaurant and he did a cigar night at the restaurant. So that's how I met Arnold the first time.

So Arnold was sort of advising and then Arnold said you should talk to John Milius, who's the director who wrote and directed all the Conan the Barbarian movies. He also wrote Apocalypse Now. He wrote Dirty Harry. So here's a guy that has written the lines, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. And, fuck, you got to ask yourself, do you feel lucky? Right. So this is like a classic guy action.

you know, legend. And he's given me his ideas. And then I met Van Damme and, you know, and he was saying, it's like a real life kumite. I didn't know what a kumite was. But I saw he was excited about it. So there was all this interest and it was very high level, very exciting. And nobody in the world would do this. You know, our Davey who is Horan Gracie's marketing guy called everybody in the world. I mean, he

Campbell (06:28.315)
He says this, he goes, I was running out of ideas and names and people, no one would take my call and I took his call. You know, so I thought it was cool. I thought it was a real life Mortal Kombat.

Sean Callanan (06:41.73)
And so from that initial idea and I guess making that pitch and getting momentum behind the idea to go from that to the actual event, which now retroactively is called UFC one. It wasn't called that at the time. What was, what was the, you know, the seven, like I love the seven days out series on Netflix. What was the seven days out? Look, what did that look like? Leading up to that first event.

Campbell (07:09.275)
Ahhhh!

Yeah, what did it look like? It looked like everybody was either gonna go to jail or be killed or, yeah. No, it was, look, it was so new, right? It was so new. There was no roadmap. There was no pilot. There was no way to figure out what it was. Not seven days out, but about 20 days out.

Sean Callanan (07:16.618)
Absolute chaos.

Sean Callanan (07:30.136)
Yep.

Campbell (07:38.971)
So three weeks or so. Well, the event was supposed to go on September 1993. I had done two shows that were gonna roll right into it. It was a very controversial, you know, foul comedian named Andrew Dice Clay that was banned just about everywhere. And I put him on pay-per-view. He still had a massive audience. You just couldn't see him. And it was a huge hit. It was called No Apologies.

I still remember one of the lines, Michael Jackson with his hand up a little boy's ass, but I'm the bad guy. And that was sort of the take, you know, of Andrew. He was unapologetic. It was called No Apologies. And we did it like it was a boxing match. And then I did a combination for BBC and Pay-Per-View, Iron Maiden's last concert.

Bruce Dickinson and we killed the band members live on stage and it was very bloody and very horrific and got a lot of trouble for that. Very popular as well. So I had these two controversial shows and then I was going to like the piece de resistance, right? The chef's kiss was going to be UFC one. But the cable operators, you know, who controlled the cable systems that would present the pay-per-view kind of went like, no, you're not going to do that. And

And so got pushed to November. I had to go literally door to door to the big cable operators to tell them, it'll be okay. Don't listen to what I'm saying about it. It's actually gonna be fine. So, you know, we're three weeks out and we don't know where to contain the action. You've got to think about that. Boxing and wrestling have the ring. know, Sumo is the line in the sand. And if you cross it, then that's game over.

And we didn't know, John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger had said use an octagon because that's what Conan the Barbarian fought in. So if you see the movies, he's in the stone octagon. I also thought octagon sounded cool because hexagon or pentagram, you know, that doesn't sound cool, sounds weird. Right? Pentagon. What is it? I still don't know what it is and it's like the headquarters of military and intelligence.

Sean Callanan (09:45.613)
Yep.

Campbell (10:04.159)
Octagon. You know it's real. So anyway, so we had a shape, but that's all we had. So we're three weeks out and Jason Cousins, who's the designer I'm working with, can't sleep because we don't have a thing. We're supposed to do the show and you know, we're go and we don't have a place to do the show. We don't have a pitch. We don't have the baseball diamond. We don't have the ring. We don't, how do you…

do a new sport without an area to do the sport. And Jason is a bit of a chain smoker and a real character. He was out walking, chain smoking, two in the morning, and he's like running his hand along a fence. And he feels the vinyl covered chain link. It's that eureka moment for him. We thought plexiglass, but if you bang somebody's head into plexiglass, it's not gonna work. We tried a version of nylon, but it smothered people when you…

pushed their faces into it. And I love Horyon, you know, Horyon, you know it's absolutely not true. There was no moat with alligators. I mean, you gotta stop saying that. makes it sound ridiculous. Anyway, three weeks out, we finally found the surface. Now, if you look at UFC1, you'll see like the padding has helped to get, it's like packing material with black zip ties. Because seven days out, you know, like,

Three days out, we're building this thing in McNichols Arena in Denver. And three hours out, Jason is on his hands and knees blow drying the painted artwork because we didn't have time to make details. So, know, seven days out is great if you have a plan. know, this was, didn't know, nobody done anything like this, right? We literally invented a sport.

Seven days out, seven hours out. Seven hours out, I was thrown up into a trash can.

Sean Callanan (12:02.286)
So then what was the chaos like on you know on on fight night? You know you've got a new shapes You got the octon as the focus you don't know where the cameras are meant to be you don't know where the action is how as a Producer of both the TV program and the event. How do you how do you how did you tackle that on the first night?

Campbell (12:21.04)
Well.

Well, okay, that's a great question. I'm not sure anyone's asked specifically, like, how did we set up for the show? So I'll answer. That's a very good question, Sean. I appreciate that. I've been asked a lot of things about this. There's no moat. Did I mention that? There's no moat. It's silly. You light the octagon, which is 30 foot diameter, right? So you can do that. You can place your lights. have the light lighting director comes in, he sets his instruments and you

set up so the octagon is lit. Okay, we light the crowd? We can't afford to do great lighting for the crowd. That's a big, know, McNichols and 17,000 people. We had eight or nine thousand in the audience. But you can light, say, the first three rows, so you're to get reactions. So we did that. So we now with once we had the octagon, we had the stage.

Once you have the stage, you can light the stage. Now, you know, no one had to hit their mark, like on Broadway or anything like that, right? The whole thing was lit. And I think the first two rows ended up being fairly well lit. Not that there's a funny quote at the end that I'll tell you about. the problem, all right, so we're set up there, but here's the issue.

You know, it wasn't that it wasn't that there were no rules. And that was really a promotional, you know, there are no rules in Band in 49 states. But in essence, it was more like this. There were all the rules. It wasn't that there were no rules. All the boxing rules were there. But so were all the kickboxing rules. And so were all the jujitsu rules. And so were all the judo rules. And so were all the taekwondo rules.

Campbell (14:16.763)
So everything you do in boxing, you can do in this, but everything you do in Jiu-Jitsu, you can do in this. there was nothing was excluded. Maybe that's a semantic issue, you know, that's too complicated to put on a poster. But if you put, are no rules, that works. So we had no idea what these fights would look like. And we literally pulled the matchups out of a fishbowl.

Sean Callanan (14:38.434)
Yes.

Campbell (14:45.743)
the night before. he went, Sean, you're fighting Campbell. You know, there was no time for the guys to prepare. It was a one night tournament with eight fighters. And the first fight went 29 seconds, 24 seconds. So you're in a three hour block. You have seven fights and the first one goes 24 seconds. You're like, this show is going to be over in 20 minutes. And that was Taylor and Gerard Gordow.

Sean Callanan (15:11.191)
Yeah.

Campbell (15:15.951)
Kayla died a few months ago. I had a wonderful call, beautiful call from a guy named Rob Nakamura, who is kind of well known in Las Vegas. teaches high speed driving and escape driving and all that kind of stuff. Huge, and my main UFC fan. And he called me up and he said, you know, my dad and I were Pacific Islanders, we're Samoan. And the only time we saw Samoans on TV was when

you know, they were rapists in the show, Hawaii Five-O. He said, and then we had this guy representing Pacific Islanders. And he goes, even though he lost, he goes, we were just so proud to be presented in a good light. And to an extent, despite the, whatever you want to call it, the controversy, know, the death is cheap, 1495, the New York Times wrote, despite all that.

We gave people a chance to show their national pride, to show their martial arts background, their philosophy, their honor, their dignity, their heart, their courage. And there was a real positivity mixed in with that controversy and all the bullshit that followed. So.

Sean Callanan (16:36.684)
Was that part of it? I you sort of get the first one done and without a playbook did then start to develop that playbook as you went to the second paper view and ongoing to say this is our this is what we want to do. It's always going to change. But then also that storytelling piece of how do you how do you bring more of those stories into your broadcast?

Campbell (16:57.391)
Well, you know, look, Sean, you have a great podcast. You've had real guests on. You talk about the business of sports. My answer should be we definitively follow the playbook and we're able to develop a great plan forward for which we maximize revenues for the shareholders. No, we went, this is crazy. Let's go crazier. So what a lot of people don't know is UFC 2 was not an eight-man tournament. It was a 16-man tournament. We added another level to the second one.

which was just absolutely ridiculous. you know, in UFC three, Kimo comes into the event carrying a full-size wooden cross because he's fighting for Jesus and not a replica, like a full-on, you know, and so it just got crazier. And we, I felt like we were always running to get ahead.

You know, like we built this rocket or steam locomotive and, you know, or we didn't put the parking brake on the car and it's going and we're like running to get ahead of it. But, you know, a lot of the decisions we made that were good is we wanted not only great fighters, we want a very colorful characters because I saw it as an entertaining show and we wanted a diverse cast.

so that it looked like Mortal Kombat. We encouraged people to wear the gear, uniform, outfit that they would in their arts. We had a variety of different disciplines as well as a variety of different countries represented and of course different racial groups represented. And it just looked great. I had a few spokespeople that were very good. Jim Brown,

the American football legend was a great spokesperson for us. had someone named

Sean Callanan (19:00.142)
And then, sorry, I wanted to ask, because there's this stuff that's happening inside the octagon, but then you're still a producer and a TV producer at heart, even though you're in this, hey, developing a new sport, you still need to have a watchable broadcast. And part of that is getting the right talent. One of those guys was Joe Rogan. What did you see in who's gone on to a few things since then? What did you see in Joe to bring him onto the broadcast?

Campbell (19:26.555)
Yeah, you know with Joe, let me before I get to Joe because that's an important one and obviously he's done a few things besides the UFC. We had a gentleman named Jeff Blotnick and Jeff had won Olympic gold as a freestyle wrestler at the Olympics overcoming leukemia. So he loved the UFC and he actually coined the phrase MMA. So

He said, you know, anything with fighting in it, you're always going to have people looking down their nose at it. He goes, call it MMA, mixed martial arts. Jeff did that. He was a great competitor. was a great on-air guy. He gave us he gave us class. You know, he really did. And he gave us that sort of Olympic, Olympic gold. And that, that was very important. And that was, think UFC five or six. And then seven.

And then Joe Rogan comes in on 11 and I knew Joe. I mentioned I had a comedy background. You know, I knew Joe. I love Joe and Joe knows I said this. He's a good stand up. He's not a great stand up. But what he's really good at is handling hecklers and dealing with the audience and doing that. And by 11, as we're still working on our playbook show.

We still have stuff go wrong and it doesn't work and it sounds so unpredictable. The sport's really unpredictable. It's one I think the beauty's of it. Joe was very good at switching gears. Joe, go out and do this.

Sean Callanan (21:04.59)
He had those improv skills to be able to yes and whatever the night threw at him.

Campbell (21:10.521)
Yeah, and that was great. And then, you know, he transitioned, you know, Dana White brought him in full time as a commentator. I was using him as a roving reporter as I was using a guy named Brian Kilmeade. And I don't know if you're familiar with Brian, Sean, but I think your American viewers and listeners will know he runs a show called Fox and Friends and it's a great friend of President Trump. So.

It was Brian Kilmeade and then another NBC sports commentator named Bruce Beck and then Jeff Blotnick and Joe Rogan. So yes, that on-air talent was key because I think the on-air talent for number one was probably the worst on-air talent ever assembled. And I say that proudly because there's no point in being second worst or fourth worst. They were the worst, but to give them credit, no one had ever seen anything like this. you know, all beginnings are hard.

And what happened was there started to be a playbook. And maybe it was around UFC seven. You know, we start we we start to put time limits on the fights. That was important. And we started to understand this as an overall process, how long the whole show would take. And we started to understand that you need the stories to drive interest in the fighters. So we started to quite good at that. We also had a playbook in dealing with the increasing

ferocity of John McCain's attacks on the organization. And it was, that was a hard one. And that was something I was doing. And part of the reason that, you know, I was I was asked to leave the UFC, I didn't own the UFC, I was an employee for Gurtelsmann, a German company.

ran the paper view company that I worked for. So, you know, it's like we were going, it's pretty safe, it's really safe. That's great, it's incredible. You'd more actually you've ever seen, but it's safe, safe. You know, we did this study that girls high school football, soccer had more concussions than we did.

Campbell (23:23.055)
Because you know young women don't have the neck strength that young men do so there's a lot of in the US there's a lot of controversy around allowing headers in in girls soccer and But if I were to go safer than girls soccer, you're not gonna watch that You know, so that was a double-edged, you know hoisted by your own petard, you know The controversy helped sell it the controversy is what created all the political

So I produced through 22. Executive produced, consulted. The first 12 were my hands on work. They're really mine. Like all parts of it. I hired Joe Silva, who's a legendary matchmaker. As you said, Joe Rogan helped design the Octagon, the marketing for it.

Sean Callanan (24:13.152)
And so coming out of, then what was the origin for combate glibar? Like what was the genesis of that? And why did, why did you look to look to start that? And how, you know, I guess give lists as an idea of what exactly that that delivers.

Campbell (24:29.091)
Yeah, so I stepped away late 99, you know, might have been February 2000. I'm very, and I'm very depressed, very despondent. I thought of the UFC as one of my children. I have three great kids. And by the way, the recent announcement that Campbell number three will be arriving in January, my son Campbell and his wife, Keiko, are pregnant. But I think of the UFC as my fourth, right?

And so honestly, it's know, creatively very painful to be, you know, essentially forced out. Everyone thought I was the lightning rod and for the controversy and if I was gone, maybe they could patch things up with John McCain. And, you know, it took, you know, I produced the show with Paul McCartney. I did another comedy series.

I did a show called Major Misbehavior, which was about campus cops, police on college campuses. It very funny. I launched a company that was aimed at college TV students called Xylo. It did a bunch of stuff. Around 2006, 2007, right when The Ultimate Fighter was starting, I did a show called The Iron Ring, where I gave

famous rappers, teams of MMA fighters. And it would, I don't know if you're a hip hop fan or not, but I think you probably know these names, Ludacris, Little John, T.I., Nelly, and as I always say, a guy couldn't sing but sure can dance Floyd Mayweather. And so, you know, I gave them teams of fighters, then they fought each other, and then they, you know, did sort of rap battles, and it was a huge hit.

It was beating the Ultimate Fighter in the ratings. was tremendous. But the hip hop community…

Campbell (26:36.325)
Like they're out of control. you know, guys, if you get rich, I mean, you don't have to act like you're still in the hood. Like you don't have to carry a gun and you don't have to beat up your pregnant girlfriend. And like literally not ludicrous. Ludicrous is a real gentleman, a movie star, a great dad. Good guy. Everybody else on the crew. I had to put a metal detector for the stars of the show, Sean. You know, I had to make

Little John walked through a metal detector. He wasn't the worst. Nice guy. just traveled with two pounds of weed. Anyway, I saw that the UFC didn't have a lot of black fighters. That's why I did an all black cast with hip hop stars. It was a big hit. And it made me think, I don't want to compete with the UFC again. I see it as my kid.

It's pretty popular, kind of hard to compete with something that popular. And, you know, I was looking around at something else to do. I didn't want to do another hip hop project. It was like a, it was a fun year, but it was crazy. And I thought, you know, and I knew a guy that was, you know, helped start Strikeforce and a bunch of other things named Michael Farnham. It's really good, smart guy.

And goes, you know, the tradition of fighting in Hispanic countries, he goes, think of the boxers from Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. You're right. And in the US, just to put things in perspective, because I think if you're not based in the US, it's kind of hard to envision this. How many folks in Australia? What's the population?

Sean Callanan (28:25.998)
27, 28 million maybe.

Campbell (28:28.347)
All right, so there's 65 million US Hispanics. So that's what, two and a half times the entire population of Australia. So it's a country within a country, right? And in Mexico is 130 million people. There's close to almost a billion Spanish speakers in the world. So I thought this was a good opportunity and I went to see Dana White, you know, who…

I keep a good relationship with because you don't want that guy as your enemy. at the time, Lorenzo Furtida, who was the owner before it was sold to Ari Emanuel and you know, I told them what I want to do and they said, rock on, we've never really been able to land that audience. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. think UFC initially was a very murican product.

And even though what I did at a lot of folks from around the world, we were about American pay-per-view. And then it spread to the Anglo countries. You know how long it's been in Australia. Same in Canada. And kind of the same in England. You know, so it was very Anglo-American.

Sean Callanan (29:37.965)
Yep.

Campbell (29:48.859)
And then as the world changed, investment reasons and whatnot, starts to be Russia, Middle East, the talent base that's coming out of the Middle East and the Arabic countries, the Near East, it's changed. It's always been Brazilians, but they're not Hispanic.

They don't say combate, they say combache. Because in Brazil, they speak Portuguese. So the UFC always had a lot of Brazilians. I started it with Brazilians. The Jiu Jitsu is effective. But there were very few Spanish fighters. In fact, it's now the UFC has just gotten really their first Spain, Espana fighter in Ile Ataupuri. And he actually grew up in Georgia.

You know, and lived in Romania, but his Spanish is really good. So I knew there was an opening. And then if you contrast the hip hop community, which is about, which is focused on, you know, getting rich, getting famous, getting what's yours, being rewarded for your talent. Those are all fine attributes. The Hispanic culture is a little more family centered.

more traditional. And one of the things I don't have at Combate is it's very hard. My fighters are not trash talkers, naturally. I got to tell them, go tell that guy, he's a moron. They don't naturally do it. It's a very respectful community and culture. But they're learning. it is a part of the American culture, trash talk.

So I saw a real opening. The UFC was not reaching this group either as fans or fighters. Nielsen Research, which is a TV data company, said 91 % of my audience does not watch the UFC in the US. So think about that. built in my TV ratings often beat the UFC, usually beat baseball, usually beat NASCAR, usually beat MLS, which is the American.

Campbell (32:12.814)
soccer.

Is that an oxymoron? American soccer?

Sean Callanan (32:18.947)
I it's it's you've football soccer, you've got to use it in different in different parts of the world. You're talking there about the media.

Campbell (32:26.391)
No, no, You only say soccer in the US. It's not different parts of the world. Everybody's football.

Sean Callanan (32:31.094)
No, they wait. Australia has multiple football. So we have Australian rules football and rugby and rugby union and soccer are all called football. So it's there's still a battle for the world different parts of the world. I want to talk about you know, you come from the media producer background. The media landscape has changed vastly in that in that time from the first pay per view from you doing, you know, comedy specials, you know, cable has changed, pay per views change streaming is coming in and

Campbell (32:35.333)
yeah.

Sean Callanan (32:59.95)
and change the game. You know, with combate, you're now doing a deal with, you know, streaming directly to YouTube. How has that landscape changed from, you know, if you look back at your time when you were a producer looking for content for a pay per view to all the options you've now got as a, as a, as a, as a sport on where you can put your content.

Campbell (33:24.511)
Yeah, look, know, look, UFC is coming out about 32 years old. So if you look at the arc from then till now, it's things change, you know, the internet changed things and you had the social media, the ability to promote product and shows and events. And that was a big change. And certainly John McCain settled down and that was a big change for the UFC.

But look, the real changes I think have come in the last five years. You've seen in the US, and I'm sure situations same in Australia, anyone with cable television has found that the networks aren't getting the affiliate fees, the money that people pay to have the cable systems, cord cutters, right? Everybody's gone to an internet provided programming service. Now,

Originally it was supposed to be cheaper when you cut the cord and it supposed to be easier. 500 channels, nothing to watch, is the joke about cable TV in this country, in the US.

Sean Callanan (34:28.707)
Now we've just got 15 streaming services and it's the same price as what the cable used to be. And it's harder to change a channel.

Campbell (34:34.683)
And it's more money. And it's in the U S it's more money. Well, it's just, I, you know, I have everything. And what I'm like four or $500 a month for every app. Right. Um, so pay per view, let me, let me posit this. Maybe this is crazy. Pay per view was the first streaming. know it came on cable or if you had direct TV, it came on satellite.

Sean Callanan (34:51.458)
Mm-hmm.

Campbell (35:02.085)
But it was a direct to consumer offering that you paid for directly. So I think the UFC's new deal with Paramount Plus, with Paramount, is a great one. I think it's a great one for the UFC. They got a lot of money. It's a great one for Paramount because Jeff Schell and David Ellison, it was funny. I talked to Jeff Schell who's going to run Paramount for David on Friday.

They announced on Monday and I called Jeff who I know pretty well and I go, man, you really, you didn't even hint at anything. He goes, I can't tell you I'm going to do that. But I think it's great for Paramount because it's a very engaged audience who's going to save a lot of money. In the U.S. you have to have ESPN Plus and buy the pay-per-view. And the cost of one pay-per-view will pay pretty much for the whole year of Paramount. So the fans are getting a big break.

Paramount gets a huge engaged audience that will definitely sign on. They follow the UFC. They followed it to ESPN Plus. They followed it from Spike to Fox, from Fox. They will follow it and they're going to save money. There's no more pay-per-views. So in 32 years, the UFC essentially kind of, know, boxing had pay-per-view, but the boxing events, the Tyson events, and a few others were so irregular.

we started doing very regular pay per views. So the UFC, think in some ways created a regular pay per view business and now they have killed the pay per view business. So I made you, I can rate you. So I think it's a great deal all around. For me, going on YouTube and in the US we're on Samsung TV, but globally we're on YouTube and I hope anyone listening.

August 28th Mexico versus Argentina. We're doing it Mexico City. It's gonna be great You know for me YouTube Free is really meaningful You know free is very meaningful and the support John Cruz and the team at YouTube are giving us is phenomenal I think YouTube is clearly look it's coming down. Here's what it boils down to Netflix versus you

Campbell (37:25.647)
I'll tell you a funny story. John Cruz is head of global sports for YouTube. And I said to him, I go, I want to do the Samsung deal because YouTube is great, but it's a rev share. And it takes a while to build your rev. Right. I said, look, I want to do this very much. I'm committed to it. But if I can do the Samsung TV deal in the US, I'd like to do that. Mexico is our biggest market. And I said, but I don't want to cannibalize.

Sean Callanan (37:36.899)
Mm-hmm.

Campbell (37:55.275)
YouTube audience and he went YouTube are the cannibals damn

Sean Callanan (38:01.229)
Yeah. And that's that that's been the conundrum in sport where, know, the NFL will take the big money from the from the TV providers. And then the you know, the teams in the league couldn't be sharing on YouTube where there is this wider reach that is slowly eating away and is the primary channel for everyone under 24. Like, like that's the opportunity. And so it's always that balance. And this is the bit I think will be interesting with the UFC and Paramount deal is how much Paramount say, no, we want to make sure everything is on our

Campbell (38:25.807)
So that was Formula One,

Sean Callanan (38:30.882)
platform. Now, yes, you've got a transferable audience that will go there. But, you know, that's always been the push pull of when you take the big check, the person that hands the big check over starts putting those restrictions on what you can do with your rights. I mean, I'm sure Dan has done a, you know, the UFC have done a great deal to be able to still put a whole bunch of clips on social and those kinds of things. But we've seen even the most successful ones like the NFL. You know, we had, it was only a couple of years ago where we had teams doing

Lego recreations of plays because they couldn't share an actual clip on socials. And so, you know, I think we're starting to get to that normalized place where YouTube is definitely a player. And, you know, I think for you and for Combate, it's that reach and global audience that YouTube offers, which will be pretty amantages.

Campbell (39:21.413)
For us, maybe more importantly for us than others in Latin America and folks in the US, people don't always have an unlimited minutes playing on their phone. So if you watch a show, you're using up a lot of your minutes, right? And YouTube is trying to migrate its viewers to the TV set. So I'm happier. it's hard to watch football of any kind.

of the numerous Australian versions of football. It's hard to watch on this, right? But if you watch fighting, you can watch it on that, I think, pretty well. But when you see this on the big screen, it's much more dramatic. So we're part of the push to get folks to migrate from the phone or tablet or whatever to the home TV. And it's happening in the US, 50 % of YouTube's viewership.

Sean Callanan (40:20.434)
YouTube's TV viewership, mean, consumption through the big screen is definitely growing and definitely that older demographic. mean, the younger demographic is flexible, like you watch it on the phone, they can easily throw it to the TV. But as it gets embedded in TVs, people go, yeah, I'll just click YouTube. And the algorithm does a does a pretty good job in actually making sure more people more people say it.

Campbell (40:45.691)
Absolutely. So brave new world brave new world. So someone a wise person said to me digital turn dollars into dimes and To a great extent that's very true. So if that's true, you need to have a lot more dimes Right, and that is the thing that it does CPMs are lower on YouTube, but I have a Like I said, I have a billion span of speakers to work

Mandarin is the number one language. English is third. So if my CPMs are lower, my reach is now phenomenal, literally global.

Sean Callanan (41:25.314)
Yeah, mean, you're yeah, I mean, now you're competing with the Mr. Beasts of the world that have, you know, audiences and show where that reach and commercialization can come from.

Campbell (41:32.965)
Yeah.

Campbell (41:38.671)
I don't know if that's accurate. sort of kind of pitch me. It's a rev share. they've got to, not a pitch is too much, but they've got to explain what I would get out of doing this, right? And there's a guy called Kaz who's Brazilian and he was streaming on his YouTube channel. was watching the Corinthians, which is a Sao Paulo football team.

Sean Callanan (41:48.802)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Callanan (42:07.656)
football team.

Campbell (42:08.827)
And he started to get a bigger viewership of him watching it than people were watching on TV. And so YouTube made a deal with the team and now they've got, and that's the San Paulo team, right? So it's a big city and a big following, but he is now throwing off nearly a million dollars a game to him.

So, you know, he's generating real, real money. And Jake Paul, look, I think rather than think about Mr. Beast, I think about a little bit more like Jake Paul. Jake Paul's making a lot of money on YouTube, but the fights are on Netflix. you know, and you know, Mr. Beast went and did the Amazon show for gazillion dollars, right? We're in sort of a new area where we are looking to have additional content, interesting content.

behind the scenes content, podcasts, the works, whole multiverse of combate talent, but with the center being our live events. So, you know, we're not the test pancake or, you know, the test guinea pig, but it's sort of a new way to look at it, this universe of live fight events with the spokes coming off of different types of content. So.

And CBS Sports, which is part of the Paramount family, is calling one of our fighters the Mexican Jake Paul. So that, it's starting to get interesting on YouTube. It's starting to get interesting.

Sean Callanan (43:52.751)
And that's the thing, it does offer, I guess, that different programming, whether it's a content creator or a fan that's doing their own thing and you can bring them into your universe and bring more fans in. I guess that's what I was saying about the Mr. Beast and the Logo Pools of World. They're showing that, I mean, the traditional model would have been 20, 30 years ago for them to get a show, to be discovered and then to be moving to TV. And now they're like…

Campbell (44:18.107)
Thanks.

Sean Callanan (44:20.908)
No, no, no, we're good on this platform. This platform is serving. This is where our audience is. This is where we can continue to talk to them. And this is where we can commercialize it, whether it's through a show or through product or product placement and all of those kinds of things. So I think it is an exciting time to be partnered with YouTube. And I think they're just going to get more and more embedded in the world of sports. I mean, they're going to be doing the NFL game NFL game out of Brazil is going to be exclusive on YouTube. I think more sports will be doing some of those deals and

And it'll be interesting to see how those checks get cut, whether they're rev shares or whether YouTube and Netflix, you know, pay the money that has been paid in the past. Sports are always going to be looking for that dollar in that audience and getting that balance right.

Campbell (45:04.485)
The balance is important. That's the key ingredient. Sometimes you have to invest and take less money, grow the audience, and take your win later after you've built the audience. Formula 1's a good example in the US. The lucrative market, great for sponsorship, great for events. They had to figure out how to grow that audience. Combate, I think, is

Sean Callanan (45:16.354)
Yeah, I mean, again, we've talked about the UFC in

Campbell (45:33.603)
is in that group too. think baseballs maybe went the wrong American baseball maybe went the wrong way. MLS went on Amazon for the money. Nobody watches them. There's a bunch of examples. We're all trying to figure it out, John. Like, know, just as there was no playbook in UFC one, seven days out, my God, my amigo, seven hours, seven hours, seven fucking, sorry.

Sean Callanan (45:50.752)
Absolutely.

Sean Callanan (45:58.701)
Yeah.

Campbell (46:02.511)
We didn't have seven days. But it's strangely similar right now. There are no rules. There really are. Everybody's trying to figure it out. And this is a scramble for big dollars.

Sean Callanan (46:17.71)
Absolutely. Camel, I really do appreciate you taking the time. I want to get to the sports gate closing five. Do you remember the first sports event you ever attended?

Campbell (46:27.803)
Yeah, I do. I was a Scottish immigrant kid. My family had moved from Scotland to Philadelphia. That was seven years old. went to Connie Mack Stadium, which is three stadiums ago. we were walking in and was in Philadelphia. It was kind of a tough town. It was a really tough neighborhood. And I was going to go see the Phillies. I had no idea what was happening.

getting out of the car and this young kid comes up to my dad and goes, I'll make sure your car is safe for a dollar. And my dad, former RAF fighter pilot and rugby player for the RAF turned to the kid, goes, you know what, make sure my car is safe. And when I come back, I'll get.

And later on, I realized how smart my dad was. And then we went into the Phillies and I couldn't fit. Why was that man keeps throwing it back to the other man? know, was, baseball is inscrutable and to a kid, but to be in America, it be with what 45,000 screen and Philadelphia fans are out of their mind. Yeah, that was, that was something. I don't know who the Phillies were playing. I can't remember much other than that. Just like that sense of.

So that was the first.

Sean Callanan (47:47.918)
Thanks for that. Do you have a do you have a favorite food memory or a go to food at a sports event?

Campbell (47:54.435)
at a sports event.

I don't if this counts. So we know this counts because it wasn't official. So I'm doing my first live event, second live event in Mexico City. And we're in over where the Formula One, the Grand Prix is held. Hernandez Brothers have this complex. And so we're in there. And and the food is, you know, I'm disappointed. Mexico is great food and standard food. It's like

Sean Callanan (48:06.2)
That's okay.

Campbell (48:31.321)
It wasn't good. And I went outside. know, show was starting. It wasn't full fledged. I went outside and there was a taxi. Mexico City has these kind of Toyota taxis and they're white and pink. And the white is faded and the pink is faded. And, you know, it's very typical of Mexico City. And there was a taxi with the trunk open and the guy had a grill in the trunk and he was making tacos.

And I went and I got the tacos. I think they the best tacos I've ever had. And you know, it's Mexico City style. It's the small corn tortillas.

Sean Callanan (49:08.206)
tacos out of a trunk in a taxi car in Mexico is probably one of the best answers we've had.

Campbell (49:13.147)
You know, and it was good. These are great questions. All right, you said five, that's two.

Sean Callanan (49:19.896)
There you go. What's first app you open in the morning?

Campbell (49:24.091)
So that's boring. I opened a Wall Street Journal.

Sean Callanan (49:30.604)
Yep, that's that's why I got to stay you got to stay in connected with with everything around the business in the world. That's completely fine. And the next question is I wanted to ask you is there someone that you follow whether it's someone in the industry or someone on an author or someone in social that the podcast list you should follow and why

Campbell (49:36.475)
I'm sorry.

Campbell (49:49.591)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it will make no sense. It is too complicated, but it's still hilarious. I would appreciate it, Sean, if you would actually look at this and email your response. Because foos gone wild. F-O-O-S. Like fools. Like fools. But no L. Yeah. Okay. Foos gone wild.

Sean Callanan (50:13.078)
Okay. Yep. Fools without the L.

Campbell (50:18.861)
It is a group of fans, Hispanic, Mexican-American fans that are second and third generation. Like, I'll give you a good example. You know what low riders are? The cars that go bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. The foos love low riders, but they all drive Audi A6s, right? Like their third generation, you know, it…

Sean Callanan (50:33.314)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Sean Callanan (50:41.89)
Thank

Yep.

Campbell (50:45.049)
But they're proud. They're proud of the Mexican-American heritage. So they follow this guy, little Mr. E, who makes fun and doesn't make fun. It just shows all the weirdness of, you know, there's a similarity amongst poor people worldwide, right? Like you're getting by, right? Like, you know, the car you drive is old and you keep it on the road. And so there's all these things that he does about

growing up Mexican American in the US. And it resonates with me, not just because of combati, but because it's a Scott, you know, we were immigrants too. And you know, the food we were cooking, mince and tatties. don't know if you might even know what that is. But my friends had no idea what mince and tatties were. And they were like, why does it smell like this? So, food's gone wild. Check it out. I would love to hear what you think. I've never spoken to anyone outside the US. And if you're not,

Hispanic it takes quite a bit of explanation even if you were in the US so food's gone wild love to hear your

Sean Callanan (51:49.155)
I will check it out. does from what it sounds like a Mexican version of Hoonigans. The guys that Ken Block and all the stuff that they do in that space. But I will check it out.

Campbell (51:58.928)
NO!

Campbell (52:02.287)
Yes. Yeah, good catch. Question.

Sean Callanan (52:06.882)
And then the last one, it's from what social media platform is your MVP? And you can answer that personally and you can say what's the one that is the MVP for Combate?

Campbell (52:17.785)
Well, it's YouTube. Even if it wasn't, I'd say that. Let me, I like, I used to like X, Twitter. And this is not a knock on Elon Musk. That's not it. It's just lost a lot of energy. A lot of people said MMA was the sport Twitter created. I like to think I created it, but I, there's a lot of truth in that.

And it used to be a very vibrant platform for very passionate fans. And I think there are some subgroups. And I think…

Sean Callanan (52:54.188)
I mean, that is that that is a trend that we're seeing across sport. I think there is a lot of you know, there's NBA Twitter, there's NFL Twitter, there's football Twitter, there's, you know, UFC Twitter, and they were really vibrant communities, because they really work well around live. Like again, pay per views on that's where you go. That's where you're having the the, you know, the the octagon side, you know, commentary if you're not in the in the venue. And yes, there has been either a handbrake or, or the fact that there's been

people step away from the platform that has taken, that edge has been taken away.

Campbell (53:28.475)
Yeah, I think Reddit is the replacement. I'm trying to be familiar with Reddit. I get no upvotes. I guess what I say is not to the liking of the Reddit audience. on Twitter, I like starting fights. So I'm Scottish, Sean. So occasionally, they will be a little bit provocative and antagonistic.

Sean Callanan (53:31.906)
Yep.

Sean Callanan (53:55.18)
Well, Campbell, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. I always ask listeners if they've listened and enjoyed the episode that they reach out and say thank you, what's the best way for people to do that? Would that be LinkedIn?

Campbell (54:06.681)
Yeah, LinkedIn is great. Instagram, Campbell Combate, Campbell McLaren on LinkedIn, Campbell Combate on Instagram. Would love to hear from folks. Would love to hear from people. And I answer everything, really like everything.

Sean Callanan (54:22.764)
Well, I do appreciate you taking the time and hopefully I'm on your part of the world maybe for an event at some stage.

Campbell (54:30.659)
I know it's a long trip and I know you folks come for like six weeks at a time. I have a cousin in Sydney, Elizabeth Campbell, and I know when she visits it's for a long time. So you would be a VIP, you'd be more than welcome. And I urge your listeners, August 28th, Argentina versus Mexico, there will be blood.

Sean Callanan (54:55.733)
And it's up. Thanks for that.

Campbell (54:58.288)
Great.