Dana White Adamantly States No Piece Of UFC Is For Sale

White Says There Is No Interest In Selling Stake In UFC

UFC President Dana White yesterday said that neither the UFC, "nor any piece of it, is for sale," despite a September 30 interview with Bloomberg News in which White "indicated a willingness to take on a limited partner," according to Kevin Iole of YAHOO SPORTS. White said of the report, "This is (expletive) bad; it’s not what I said. Here’s the bottom line: Basically, it was a longer story and he kept asking if we would sell this thing or not. I kept saying ‘No. No, we won’t sell it,’ and I’d go through this whole (expletive) thing about how we’re all 40 years old and we’re young and we’re the visionaries for this thing. We know where we’re taking this thing. We know where it’s going. We have no interest in selling it. And going public? We don’t need the (expletive) money." In the interview with Bloomberg, White said, "For what we value this thing at, you’d have to find somebody with a lot of cash laying around, somebody who has got a lot of cash who wants to come into this business, get a piece of it and just sit over there and not tell us what to do." But White yesterday said that "not only was the clip shown out of context," but that he had repeatedly told Bloomberg reporter Greg Miles that the UFC "was not for sale." White: "He kept (expletive) pushing and pushing. He said, ‘OK, hypothetically speaking, would you ever sell a piece of it?’ I said, ‘I guess we’d sell a tiny little piece. We’d probably sell a tiny little piece.’ ... For us to even offer somebody a piece, it would be the biggest compliment in (expletive) history because they’d have to be a serious strategic partner. It’s the only (expletive) way we’d do it" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 10/20).

ON THE UPSWING: Bellator Fighting Championships, which bills itself as the only tournament-based MMA promotion, has signed a deal with FSN and NBC Universal to televise its next two seasons. Bellator’s first 12-week season began last April and aired on ESPN Deportes. The third season starts in April '10, followed by the fourth season in June. FSN will air live coverage of fights in primetime on Thursday nights, followed by 30-minute and 60-minute highlight packages during late night windows on NBC and Telemundo, respectively. The NBC timeslot was formerly occupied by Strikeforce, an MMA promotion that signed deals with Showtime and CBS earlier this year (Jon Show, SportsBusiness Journal). YAHOO SPORTS' Dave Doyle notes FSN scheduling conflicts "with local pro and college sports teams are expected to bump some air times into tape-delay mode on various affiliates" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 10/20).