Dealt a body blow by the ongoing global pandemic, the pay-per-view sports business is looking to rebound in 2021. And sports streamer FITE looks to be a major player going into next year, offering boxing, mixed martial arts and other top events. Flipps Media-owned FITE currently streams more than 100 PPV events globally per month for its more than 4 million registered users to purchase, including the Nov. 28 Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. exhibition fight and the Dec. 5 Errol Spence Jr.-Danny Garcia championship boxing event.

Leading the eight-year-old service’s charge is pay-per-view veteran and FITE chief operating officer Michael Weber. In more than three decades of working for such companies as TNA Impact Wrestling, Clear Channel Motorsports, World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Entertainment, Weber was involved in the marketing, distribution and production of more than 250 PPV television events prior to joining FITE in 2016. 

Weber spoke with Multichannel News senior content producer, programming
R. Thomas Umstead about the health of the PPV category and how FITE is building toward a strong event campaign in 2021. 

How does FITE differentiate itself from other sports streaming services? First, we’re independent. We’re not beholden to any one individual company, so we’re open to working with everybody and anybody. We’re up to 4 million registered users on our platform and we’ve distributed more than 4,000 PPV events. This is all we do. We’re a technology company first, and we’re not really producing events.

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You've been part of the PPV sports business for more than 30 years. How do you see the event business evolving going forward? I think the business has a great future. What the pandemic has proven is that you don’t need a huge live audience to put together a quality PPV event, so I think you’ll see the number of events increasing. If you put the right event out there, people are going to buy it. We’ve done more events in the past three months that we did prior to the pandemic. We’re now averaging more than 100 events a month. 

How significant will streaming purchases for top PPV events become over the next two to three years? Fans are going more digital and leaving cable and satellite services and I don’t see that slowing down anytime soon. ESPN Plus and [Foxsports.com] are doing alright with PPV buys now as viewers are getting more comfortable with buying big PPV events on digital. 

Will you look to extend FITE’s reach beyond combat sports? We’ve branched out beyond combat sports. We’ve done some South America soccer, we’ve distributed a marathon from Spain. We recently did an indoor motocross event from Pennsylvania and we’ve done some collegiate wrestling. We feel we want to be the place for every sport program to find a home on the digital platform. 

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Do you see FITE converting to a subscription sports service in the future? The mathematics on the way we do events is actually more advantageous financially than subscription. We’re also learning that people just don’t want anymore subscription services: they have their Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, ESPN Plus and WWE Network. If you’re trying to save money by signing up to streaming services you may end up paying more money than for cable services. With us, you pay for what you want. If you want to watch your favorite wrestling brand every month you can buy the events, or if you want to watch the big boxing match every few months you can do that as well. The events are priced accordingly and it’s still cheaper than attending the live event. 

Streaming sports platform FITE TV will offer live UFC pay-per-view events as part of a distribution partnership deal reached between the two companies.

The deal calls for FITE TV to distribute future UFC PPV events beginning with the Sept. 9 UFC 215: Johnson vs. Borg event through its FITE app and through its website FITE.TV, said company officials. The event, which will also be streamed via the MMA organization's UFC Fight Pass OTT service, retails at at a suggested PPV price of $59.99. 

FITE will also stream UFC Fight Week events such as press conferences and weigh-ins. 

“When we first launched FITE TV, our goal was to bring combat sports fans the very best events,” FITE Chief Executive Officer Kosta Jordanov said in a statement. “The signing of this distribution deal with UFC has validated that goal and we look forward to building an amazing relationship with the sports industry leader.”

While most televised professional and college sports games can be watched online on multiple devices, a good number of major pay-per-view ring-sports events have yet to enter the digital arena.

FITE TV is trying to change that. The mobile app, developed by digital media company Flipps Media, currently offers live boxing events, as well as pro wrestling and mixed martial arts content, streamed to mobile phones. The app is available via iTunes or Google Play and gives users the option of watching on their devices or connecting directly to a smart TV.

Through distribution deals with such event providers as Golden Boy Promotions (boxing), TNA (pro wrestling) and World Series of Fighting (MMA), FITE TV is streaming an average of eight live free and fee-based ring sports events per week.

FITE TV CEO Kosta Jordanov recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the service, as well as his aspirations to eventually offer fight fans the opportunity to watch the biggest PPV ring-sports events online. An edited excerpt of their conversation follows.

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MCN:Do people actually want to watch a fight on a mobile phone?

Kosta Jordanov: It depends on the content. The trend is that people are shifting to short-form clips, and for those people who watch that content, the size of the screen doesn’t matter that much.

When it comes to sports, however, people want to watch live sports on a large screen. For a three-hour show that you’ve paid $30 to $40 for, the small screen doesn’t work. You want to sit with friends, drink a beer and watch a fight on the large screen. That’s what’s so attractive about FITE TV. The biggest differentiator is our technical ability to connect the stream and bring it to the big screen. We don’t have any hardware for a specific box to be connected to the TV, and there’s no need for a cable subscription.

Basically, we do IP delivery over the big screen using the mobile device as a remote-control interface. The only requirement is that the mobile device and the TV have to be on the same network. The stream goes through a cloud service that we support going to the big screen.

MCN:What are some of the rights deals that you have with ring sports providers?

KJ: We already have deals with 35 event providers on the wrestling, MMA and boxing side. We have a deal with TNA [and] Ring of Honor, on the wrestling side; Legacy [Fighting Championship] and WSOF [World Series of Fighting] on the mixed-martial-arts side, and Golden Boy Promotions and Integrated Sports for boxing. There really isn’t a reason for a content partner not to work for us — it’s all upside for everyone involved.

We’re just one more distributor that they have to work with, but we have a slightly different reach. We’re reaching cord-cutters; people outside the country. We also help our partners with the promotion of the event through Facebook and Twitter ads, sponsored ads. We can also provide content to specific countries.

MCN:Do you see a time when you’ll be able to stream a major PPV boxing event from HBO or Showtime?

KJ: I think it’s doable. I think we would probably start with some distribution outside of the prime window, or it could start with streaming of prelims, weigh-ins and other supporting events leading up to the main-event card. Again, we’re just another Dish or DirecTV; we’re one more provider that can help provide revenue.

MCN:How does a consumer purchase an event to stream?

KJ: Through the FITE TV app, you can purchase the event just like you would through iTunes or Google Play. Once purchased, you get a confirmation from both FITE TV and from iTunes or Google Play.

MCN:The knock on streaming has been the piracy factor — there’s a lot of stealing of the signal when it’s on the Web. How can you assure event providers that you can eliminate piracy?

KJ: We have a very secure content-protection platform that we’ve been working on for the last four years. Through this platform, we’ve streamed content from CBS, Bloomberg [Television] and some of the movie studios that really have high requirements for signal protection. That said, every single signal can be hacked, but we’re actually more safe than traditional systems. It’s harder to steal the content from us than it is from cable.

MCN:Are there any plans to extend your content beyond ring sports?

KJ: We’re very focused on ring sports — we don’t have any plans to go to any areas until we own the space. After that, we may look at other events.