UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta's letter to congress in support of SOPA

I take issue with SOPA but not paying for the UFC’s product. You know it’s wrong to pirate things and you can’t blame them for trying to have the most successful business model possible, you would do the same damn thing.

i live in singapore.. now how do you reckon i follow the ufc events 8( this is not practical at all. mma is almost unheard of in singapore…

I think a somewhat interesting twist to the whole thing is that most streams are not sourced from American-bought PPVs, but rather from the essentially-free ESPN UK broadcasts. While, I agree that it’s probably wrong that I stream these events, it bugs me that they give it away for free in markets that are in relatively the same standing economically.

I get that these companies want to maximize their profit (greed), but st the same time they’re still bringing in millions of dollars a year. Actors are still rich, players are still rich, and no matter what people will always go to the live show if they can. Somebody argued yesterday that if it’s not right to steal from why is right to steal from the UFC. It’s a great point but I have to say while I wouldn’t steal from Walmart, the people that do are t really hurting walmarts bottom line are they? Walmart is still a billion dollar company.

Movies are over priced. That same person argued that movies are overpriced because people are stealing them. Again a great argument, but movies are still grossing millions on opening night (Underworld did $25 million Friday) whih means people are still willing to pay those ridiculous prices and if thats the case what is the incentive to lower prices? If they some how stop the left of the movies they aren’t going to lower prices.

Music is entirely different. My dream was to play guitar in a band and tour the rest of my life. I never once thought I want to make millions or even hundreds of thousands dollars playing music. I did it for the love of music and getting it to the fans.

Point being, greed is the problem. Instead of making millions on ppvs the UFC wants to make billions and it’s bullshit. That’s just my opinion tho. I don’t really know shit about how much it cost to run a live show or make a movie.

I got hooked on MMA by downloading free content on the internet and now I pay $60 for every HD PPV. I wouldn’t waste my time watching a grainy low res internet stream. Young people don’t have $60 to buy every event in HD, but once they are hooked they will in the future. There will always be around 15% of people that will never pay for it, so they aren’t losing anything from those deadbeats. If they can’t get it for free they just won’t get it. I also bought several UFC dvd’s in the past and it was all due to the fact that I got hooked by watching free content on the internet.

Heres how i look at it.. ufc should just let the world roll the way that it does.. now you do get scum bags who stream everything all the time but whats that % against the buyrates?? fuck it there making money the greedy fucks !! ( it keeps keeps them up at night lol.. they can retire on an island now ) i would say i buy 7 out of every 10 shows due to the fact my ass would bleed…….>>>………… it’s people who support SOPA that equals = GREED !

otherdarkmeat, italianstallion54, and 8=Danago have beaten me.

I’m surprised he took enough time away from his liquid gold filled pool to write a letter.

Is like having a metric ton of ants marching through your yard via one thousand different trails and you decide to try and stop them by stomping through the trails with you boot. Afterwards you decide to make lemonaide using anti-freeze and toilet water. Then you decide to have sex with your wife and realize after all these years it’s not your wife but some dude named Jimmy that’s been taking it from you. Then you realize you don’t live in a house but a cardboard box. But the cardboard box is really just a cave made of mashed potatoes and windshield wipers.

Point is SOPA won’t do anything to prevent piracy. It’s not rocket science to understand that if you are in the business of entertainment – movies, television, music, live events, books, magazines, software, basically anything that can be made in to an electronic copy, that part of doing business today is knowing that piracy will be a variable to consider when you are talking about profit. You have to know that a certain percentage of people who view your product will be doing so via illegal methods that they do not pay a dime for. It’s not right, but it’s fact. It’s just doing business in today’s market.

There is a solution that does not involve rampant oversight and foreboding laws that frighten the innocent. PUT OUT A QUALITY PRODUCT. When you have a quality product, a broader audience will buy in to it.

Say the pirated view percentage is 15% (I have no idea, just saying). Let’s also say you have no control over the percentage. It is an independent variable that will never go plus or minus more than a few percentage points. If your audience is 1,000,000 then 150,000 would be your number of pirated views. So you only are making money on 850k.

Let’s expand our market and get 10,000,000 viewers. Now 1,500,000 are pirated but you have made money on 8,500,000 purchases. Does not take a math major to figure out that 8,500,000 is better than 850,000.

Now, is it more important to try and stop those 150,000 or try to gain that 7,650,000? You don’t even have to use 10x as the multiplier, just double your market to 2,000,000 viewers and you’ve doubled your income. Are you making more money stopping the 15% or by increasing the amount of your 85%?

I can’t be the only person who has this line of thought. Their are people who make a shit ton of money to figure out ways to increase profit for companies. I’m just a poor ol’ Chinese boy, no way I’m the smartest POS on the planet right now.