UFC President Dana White has helped make mixed martial arts one of the fastest growing sports in the world today. As of 2009, the UFC has gained in popularity, along with greater mainstream-media coverage. Viewers can now access UFC programming on pay-per-view television, Spike in the United States and Canada, on ESPN in the United Kingdom as well as in 33 other countries worldwide. White predicts a huge rise in the sport of mixed martial arts in the next ten years.
Snip from Dana White:
“UFC will be the biggest sport in the world by 2020. People were saying I was a lunatic 10 years ago when we first got this going, but the stuff we’re working on right now on so many levels is mind-boggling…. The sport was just sanctioned in Massachusetts and Vancouver. We’re going to get it done in Ontario and New York in 2010. And we’re already working on taking the UFC global. We’ve already done Germany, England and Ireland, and we just sold 22,000 seats for an event in Australia in 15 minutes…. Right now we are on some form of television in over 175 countries. We’re all human beings and we all ‘get’ fighting…. Me and Lorenzo Fertitta will sit down and figure out a game plan for the next 10 years, and we’ll execute it. So, is 10 years enough time to make this the biggest sport in the world? Hell, yeah.”
