Let’s Be Mates Podcast – EP08 – UFC, a metaphor for life.

Let's Be Mates Podcast | MATE | 8 January 2020

In this week’s episode we are talking to a brand that has built a cult following in the sports space.

At MATE we have partly aligned our brand to sport for a bunch of reasons such as:

• Competitive spirit – being the underdog and needing to fight hard to win in the telco industry
• Building fans – just like fans of sporting teams, we need to build fans of MATE also that keep us honest and ensure we continue to deliver what we say we are going to do
• Inspiration – every sports fan, no matter what sport, there is a person, event or moment that inspires us all – we want to make sure we inspire as a telco.

A brand that we have become great friends with are the team at UFC. Peter joins us from the UFC Australia and New Zealand team.

You can find out more about the UFC business as well as their Fight Pass at www.UFC.com

You can learn more about Mate internet and mobile plans at www.LetsBeMates.com.au.

Subscribe to hear the latest episode each week on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast player.

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Transcript:

Faz: Welcome Australia. It’s that time again for another podcast, from the Mate team where we try and get into your head with stuff that makes us sound smart. Sit back and relax. It’s time for us to be Mates.

Bosco: Welcome to another. Let’s be Mates podcast. My name’s Bosco. We’ve got the usual suspects here. So Dom, Faz, How you going boys.

Faz: How you going? Good, good, good stuff. And hey Dom, what we talking about today? I think spices,

Peter: Well, FAZ in today’s episode, we’re talking to a brand that has built a cult following in the sports space at Mate we’ve partly aligned our brand to sport for a bunch of reasons, such as competitive spirit. We see ourselves as the underdog, we need to fight hard to win in the telco industry every day.

Building fans just like fans of sporting teams. We need to build fans of mate also that keeps us honest and ensures. We continue to deliver what we say. We’re going to do inspiration every sports fan, no matter what sport is, a person event or a moment that inspires us all, we want to make sure that we inspire as a telco, to a brand that we’ve become great friends with other team at the UFC.

They brand delivers on so many different things. And this is why I’ve got Peter on today to tell us more. So

Dom: welcome, Peter,

how are you going?

Peter: Doing well, thanks, gents. Thanks for the invitation. And please be with you guys.

Faz: Thanks to having you on board. And may we always love talking to, you know, great brands and especially around the sports arena.

And I think we set up this podcast to say what sports means to us at mate and how we’ve aligned our brand with sport and, you know, whatever. there’s not other biggest sport, then UFC  right in at the moment, especially in this market. And so Peter, let’s start with understanding who you are and what your role is at UFC

Peter: sure. well, just to kind of build on that, I mean, you know, sports are so big, but Australia’s a sporting nation. So we get, we get it down here. So, you know, all of those things are relevant, but you’ve got to take into account that, you know, whether it’s so sports mad down here, but sorry. So to answer your question.

so I’m the vice president of UFC for Australia, New Zealand. And I’m responsible for, I guess, managing the business that UFC has here in Australia, New Zealand, and to, to basically grow, continue the growth that we’ve seen here in Australia and New Zealand. You know, we had our first live event in Australia in 2010.

So we’re 10 years young, as a, as a brand in this country. And, we continue to build on, you know, the, the success that we have since that first event in February 20, 2010, and continue to grow the fan base. And so my job is to be responsible for that. And we’re slowly building out a team here in Australia, which is seen a lot of success.

Bosco: So Peter you’ve mentioned your role at UFC, but give us a brief history into UFC itself as a sport. basically where it started and how it got to where it is today.

Peter: Sure. Well, as I mentioned in Australia, UFC has been operational for about 10 years, but the journey goes back to about 1993, where UFC was first created.

And it’s a great story and I’ll kind of put into a short synopsis, but it was essentially a, an idea, a group of guys got together to figure out, okay, who’s going to be the best martial artist out of. All the martial arts throughout, there is a karate guy going to beat a Sumo wrestler is a boxer going to be a wrestler.

So is that age old question? We get together with a bunch of mates. You haven’t got a Beer it’s like, Oh my guy, I can beat your guy. So I want to put an end to these questions. So they came together and they formed UFC. They had their first event in 1993 and it was billed as no holds barred. Anything can happen.

you know, you can’t miss this unstoppable event and. What transpired was that they invited all these different martial artists from different parts of the world and the country and the us. And they had huge burly guys who absolutely jacked and, and, you know, Look like that would win any fight. And then you had a range of abilities and different fighters and athletes.

And the guy who ended up winning was a Brazilian jujitsu player, Royce Gracie. And what was so surprising is this guy was pretty small. It was only six foot, 185 pounds. And he used his skill and technique. Take these massive guys, you, you know, you wouldn’t want to meet down a dark alley and that’s what blew everyone’s mind.

It’s like, hang on skill and technique Beat all these other forms of martial arts. And I think that everybody kind of felt that they’re onto something there. and then it just kind of exploded from there. So to kind of fast forward, a little bit through the journey, you know, UCF was, was bought in, bought in the early two thousands by Dana White Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta.

And, you know, the UFC was this freak show for a number of years and people, you know, it was, it was promoted as this no whole bars competition. And it was failing because that will they’ll blocked in a lot of States. They weren’t able to get on to television, you know, and all their revenues were going down.

And so what Dana and the Lorenzo brothers did together. Ah, so the Fertitta brothers did together was to, was the properly, regulate the sport and create the sport of mixed martial arts. And it was through that proper regulation that, you know, lift bands in States throughout the U S and then regulate the sport throughout the world.

And then, you know, The UK was a prime destination for international expansion. Australia was a top of that list as well, Canada. And so that the, the momentum built off the back of that. And, and now we’ve got the business, what it is, what it is today.

Dom: And what about in Australia in  2020? What are the, you know, how big is this sport?

What are some upcoming athletes to be saying?

Peter: Yeah, we’ve seen some tremendous growth since that 2010, that first event we had UFC 110. we had two sold out back to that, arena events in Sydney in 2010, 2011. And we had very few Australian athletes. I think we had maybe a handful that either represented UFC internationally or locally.

and we’ve seen tremendous growth and the fan base was always there since we, since we came in 2010 and then. Grown exponentially since then, over that, over these periods of saying about 50 athletes represent either Australia or New Zealand in that time. And we’ve, we’ve currently have about 15 to 18, currently active, athletes on the roster.

So in terms of participation, we’ve done exceptionally well of people representing, Australia, New Zealand. We have two current champions. Israel  from New Zealand and Alex  from Australia, which really shows that, that, you know, we’re a mature market. We’ve got athletes, we’re representing the country as well.

And having a local champion does so much to, I guess, build sport and the fan interest, in a particular market. we’ve done 18 events across. Seven different cities in Australia, New Zealand. And, and, and the future is bright . We continue to, as I mentioned, build that fan base, bring in new partners.

And I think that the vision that we have for the future is, is crystallizing and we’re slowly maturing into, into an adult. Yeah.

Faz: But it’s a great story. And I think, you know what, I am my passion around UFC and. And, is around, how I focus on fitness and you know, how I, how do I, when I watched the matches and the people, the people involved in the athletes, it’s, you know, what, what is their training regime?

How do they, you know, how do they keep fit? How they stay competitive. For that long and, and, and so on and so forth. And that’s the that’s, I think it’s the, that’s the real focus of the brand now, and that spoke of focus of the sport, which is really driving a lot of the conversations I have with my groups of friends and, and things like that.

And it’s, I think it’s really inspirational around that. I think we all Fitness is. A bit of a trend at the moment, and I think it’s a good trend. All right. We speak about a lot of things around trends and fitness is a good trend. I think you’ll see, you know, amplifies that into a completely different way and imagine the feeling in, in the, in the type of space where UFC plays right in the feeling you get to be able to do something, to be able to be that fit the, the way it leads you is, is in a second to none in my, in my ex my experience.

Now, if you look at me, I’m probably not a UFC athlete yet. I might not. I’m definitely focusing on that. Right. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s my next question, right? Is that, you know, a lot of businesses, especially during COVID  time is all about diversification and all these different things. And I know the UFC has diversified.

There’s the UFC gyms that you have in the market as well. you know, there’s obviously your OTT platform around content and things like that. And I mean, You want to talk to us about the different phases? So you obviously have your core sport, but how do you take that to market different why’s that?

How do you build your fan base around all these different types of things that happen around UFC?

Peter: Sure. I think that it’s, it’s pretty simple. You build a business on, through having strong partnerships, whether it’s your media partners and content partners through the responses that you have through affiliate affiliates and add another kind of franchising things, a lot UFC gyms, but it’s the sum of all those parts and, you, right.

We, you only. You’re judged by the company that you keep, and if you kept good company and then you can set yourself up for success. And we’ve seen that over the years, a lot of credit goes to, you know, the, the, the broadcast partners that we’ve had over the last 10 years in Australia, they’ve helped us grow.

And, and content is definitely the number one pillar of our business. And we’ve seen that in recent times where. You know, everybody’s faced a lot of challenges in response to the pandemic. but what is, what we’ve been able to continue to do is create and build on our content with, with the we’re back on schedule and it comes out scheduled events, and we’ve been delivering the content in terms of our live events for fans to watch at home, you know, have a lockdown.

So content is definitely the number one up there, and there’s a lot of time and effort and resource gone into how that looks and feels.

Faz: so

at

MATE sport is at the heart of our brand. Right. and so if you look at our, our brand ambassadors, you know, we’ve got Matty Ryan, who’s the Australian goalkeeper, based in the English premier league.

And he’s also the current captain and, you know, and then we’ve got Samantha Kerr who is our. you know, leads us from the front. And so we always said that, we want to be known for kicking goals for Aussies. Alright. And that’s where Samantha Kerr comes in and we wanted to be known for saving Aussies against bad service and bad internet.

And that’s literally where Matt Ryan comes in from, from, saving Aussies. He literally does that every day. Right. And so I think. I mean, if I relate this back to the UFC brand and I want to talk about the USA brand and the brand values and things like that, you know, in our  world, we, we see sport inspires people in many different ways.

it enables them to, to watch to follow. And to try and see if they can do something in that space. And, and I think that that’s, what’s really, I think connected with the, our customers as well around sport. And, and when we look around your, your brand and your brand values and what are the things that UFC, focus on when they’re delivering, the UFC brand and the content and the things to the public,

Peter: ultimately.

You know, UFC wants UFC is aspiring to be the global icon, of, combat sports. Right. And, and we’re achieving that. And if you look around, that space, the, the brand is, is paramount to that success. And, you know, going back to the origins of UFC, you know, when Dana Lorenzo and Frank bought the company effectively, they’ll buying three letters, UFC, there was something powerful behind that brand.

But you’re making some good points, mom, about that inspiration that you take from athletes. What happens on the pitch? What happens in that field of play and how that affects all of us? So I have to say that, you know, the brand that we created with UFC, it’s not only inspirational, but aspirational.

we have a certain number of net brand maxims, which kind of help steer the conversation and, and position how we do what we do. Not only from the look and feel and what consumers see, but also how we. How we act in the business world, how we make decisions internally. I was one of the really strong brand Maxim that we have.

And I’m one the week is our last brand maximum. Is that. W we are all fighters fighting is a metaphor for life. You know, whether you are working night shifts and, and putting, you know, bread on the table at home, or whether you’re struggling through an illness or whatever it might be, we are all fighters.

I think that that resonates really strongly with fans. It’s not only inspirational, but it’s aspirational in terms of what our athletes do. I think, you know, you touched on it before in terms of their fitness levels and what that, the skill and technique involved in, in that sport. And really it is quite incredible to see what the athletes do under such.

I’m the, I’m the I’m in a sport, which is, you know, it’s not tickling contest. It’s that it’s a pretty brutal sport and to see what they’re able to do. you know, we think about the sport of mixed martial arts. It’s a combination of, you know, final Olympic sports and disciplines. but also a whole other, you know, there’s so many other techniques that you gotta be cognizant of.

So to be proficient and Excel at jujitsu and boxing, you know, wrestling. All these different sports put together. It’s really quite incredible what athletes are able to do in the octagon. And put I put on a show every single time. And I think that they’re to be credited for, you know, what, what they do and how they inspired, fans all the way around the world.

There’s something really human about the competition. It’s an UFC is an evolution of that human competition. It’s what we say today. It’s really raw in a lot of  ways. it’s, it’s really, quiet. there’s something that kind of triggers, triggers a certain kind of response, a human response in all of us.

And I think that that’s that’s. The sacred behind it. And in a lot of ways, we tap into that in terms of our brand position and, and how we like to portray out the brand.

Faz: That’s cool. And you mentioned something before about that everybody fights, right. Everybody’s fighting for whatever reason every day.

And I think we re we really resonate with that. It may, because we’ve had to fight. Every day to achieve what we’ve achieved today. You know, there’s a, we didn’t have a head start. you know, we, we ready. We, we started a business in a market that was obviously very well established and we needed to fight every day to differentiate ourselves, to make sure we stand out from the crowd.

And I think that’s the reason why we, you know, resonate quite well. with UFC in the brand and everything that you guys do. And so it was, I think, Pretty special. And so I think you’ve got something special and I think just businesses this day and age have great stories to tell and uniqueness in that way have really something special to deliver customers.

And that’s what I love about this industry. Yeah. I don’t

Peter: think there could be some similarities saying between MATE and UFC. I mean, UFC is a really a big, small business in a lot of ways. Very humble beginnings with not very many staff. And even for a global business that, you know, the, the, the staff that we have, you’d be surprised that, you know, we don’t have thousands of people who work for the company.

It’s a lot less than that. So, yeah, totally see eye to eye on that. It all comes down to a story and a message that you can pass on. And, and, that, that becomes very powerful. You can get that cut through in that, that connection with, with your audiences, then they’re going to see it. And they’re going to say POS anything that’s not genuine,

Faz: absolutely authenticity, right?

Such a big thing.

Dom: Pete the last three months or so has been, you know, a significant period for everyone, but sport in particular, what’s some of the, the challenges that the UFC have come across and what are some opportunities, I guess I’ve come out of that across the, the period of, of COVID-19.

Peter: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think everybody, or every, every business and every person has been affected by the current pandemic. There’s no question about that. It’s grinded. A lot of people to a halt and a, you know, we’ve physically were restricted to where we could go. And a lot of businesses, have had faced a lot of challenges, including us.

you know, we, we put on live events with 10 to 20,000 people in, in, in attendance and Australia has the record for the most attended UFC. Then over 56,000 people, So not being able to put on live events, as we know them has been a challenge and we try and take the octagon to, yeah. Every country in the world.

We’ve, we’ve, we’ve been in every continent except for obviously most continents and throughout Europe and Asia and middle East Australia, North America, South America. And you know, that kind of, we had to put a pause to our current schedule, what we planned out for 2020, obviously. And it was a huge challenge operationally, too.

Getting a lot of events, back up and running, for, for, for the, for the broadcast element. And, you know, despite the fact of not being able to have fans in attendance, you know, our operations team saw that challenge to get up and running as soon as possible. And they took that challenge to be the first kind of major sport to be back on television and worked really hard to, to try and do that now.

There was so many hoops, as you could imagine to jump through, to have to try and get that up and running. And we managed to put on three, three events in the space of a week in Florida, last month. And, you know, the, the juice is worth the squeeze in a lot of ways, because it was the only sport that was showing on television.

We had that time in the sun and particularly in the US with the support of ESPN rebel to take the sports who a lot of fans who may or may not. Be familiar with our sport or normally watch our sport. That was an opportunity to grow our fan base. So that was a huge challenge and certainly worth the reward.

UFC 249 really performed at exceptionally, well, not on the U S but, but here in Australia when we had no other sports on as well. so, so it will continue to be a challenge over the next, over the next few months. And until, you know, even into next year, but the next step for us is when we have events up and running in Las Vegas at the UFC APEX, it’s a facility next to our headquarters, which is, it’s almost like a television studio in terms of what they have there and what they can produce.

We had UFC 250 on the weekend and that was, that was. Done really well and looked fantastic in my opinion. And, our next step after the Las Vegas will be remember, events is, the much anticipated and hopped up, fight Island, which, which I believe is going to be announced in the next few days.

And, we’re going to take, the octagon internationally, to an Island. as a, as a means and method to get our international athletes fighting, obviously it’s hard to get all of our athletes into one spot and the US has been a, you know, an affected country when it comes to the pandemics. So how do we get our athletes together in a territory where they can compete?

So a watch this space, you

Faz: know, you speaking about athletes, I know there’s been, obviously in Australia, the rugby league finally started off. I think the AFL starts this week. and you know, they always speak about the, how the. The consumers are gonna, how we think about the sport without, without a crowd.

Right. But, have you had a chance to hear from athletes in the UFC and what they think about fighting without crowds is isn’t much talk around that the did they still feel the same inspiration, the same joy, or, I mean, I assume not exactly, but I mean, obviously that’s their sport, that’s their code.

That’s what they love. But I mean, I’d be interested to hear it from an athlete’s point of view.

Peter: Yeah, I’m for sure. And perhaps we can get one of her athletes on to tell them about their experience. But I think the feedback from what I’ve heard is that obviously the feeling and the energy that you get from the crowd can sometimes help form a result.

But I think what we’re seeing in UFC and having this last few events is that the instruction that they’re hearing from their corners is kind of that added something to the broadcast. We’re able to kind of listen in on. The advice from the corner men and, and then see how the athletes are adapting to that advice.

And I think for them, it’s, it’s become a lot more clearer for them to hear that sometimes they’re here over the crowds. But also UFC is one of those ones. I don’t know if you’ve been to a lot of event, but started with five. you know, everyone’s more and when Bruce buffer does the announcements and you know, the energy is there and once they go to fight, there’s dead silence in the arena.

And, It’s obviously that role kind of erupts when something huge happens, but, it hasn’t really affected the impact of the broadcast think

has kind of added a, an, an interesting element to it. but yeah, it would be interesting to get that athlete, feedback to see how has this changed the way that they’ve approached the fight.

some people will just built for those larger, where they want to get that feeling and energy from the crowd to, to get the job done. So be interesting.

Dom: Do you think something like that feedback. More flow into post post COVID-19. We got crowds back,

like, is there opportunity

to mike up? Those cornermen much like I do maybe in the big bash or something like that.

Peter: Yeah. They do a bit of that. They definitely make up at least one or two cornermen. And, you know, we hear that in between rounds. That’s more or less when we try and get that insight. When they go to the red corner on the blue corner to try and hear what advice they’re giving the athletes, but it’s become more prevalent within the, the middle of the fight as well.

But yeah, it’s not exactly. Extra or that production, which is pretty cool to say. Yeah.

Faz: You know, from a business point of view, going away from the sport and talking about the business element, you know, I’ve, I’ve read a lot of articles lately around, naming conventions of, of different events or plans or, or services and things like that.

And what I really like about UFC is that it’s a, you’re saying it’s a number. You know, the, the show and I mean, can we talk a bit about that? I mean, how, because I read an article that people can’t follow what the updates are. They can’t follow how, you know, like if you have a particular plan in, sorry, let’s take a back step back into the mobile space, the mobile space, the plans are always changing.

Right. And you never know. If you’re on an old plan or a new plan or whatever it is and what I’ve noticed about the UFC, you know, exactly where you’re up to because each show or each event follows a particular number. And is that something purposeful that the UFC has done in regards to events and things around that?

It’s

Peter: it’s, it’s simple and it’s consistent. what we’d like to say is that UFC and UFC events, a brand, let people buy tickets while they’re, without knowing who’s fighting, or they might buy the pay per view, or they might tune in to watch without knowing who’s actually particularly fighting. And, they expect a certain quality of.

Our show, our production, the athletes who can compete, there’s a certain standard. So you’re very much so I think you kind of, you hit the nail on the head there in terms of that. but being brand led, having UFC in, in, in the title, certainly I’m very purposeful. Yeah.

Faz: there’s something so simple that we don’t really take notice of.

And, you know, when we, when we talk about our plans, we took, we try and dumb it down in the call, it the best mates plan or soulmates plan and things like that. And, you know, I’ve done a lot of research over the last couple of years around how confusing the name of something, or the way you, the naming convention or something can really confuse the consumer and, you know, stop sales and stop people getting involved and things like that.

And you, you, you hit the nail on the head before that people. Well, buy a ticket to an event and not even know who’s fighting it’s folk it’s, it’s focused on the brand and what you’re delivering, which is. Fantastic

Bosco: . I think you

said it well, Peter, I think you said consistency is key, right? And I think, in, in, in that, in our industry, I think there’s not a lot of consistency.

always, and I guess that’s something we try and focus on.

Faz: Absolutely. And that’s something that I think you’ll get that from us, right? If you look at our brand reviews and things like that, we are consistent in the way we approach it. We are consistent in the way we deliver and we’re consistent in the way we, we tell people what we’re doing.

And I think that’s something that, you know, we resonate with UFC on as

Peter: well. Sure. I’m going to do 42 events. Now these days per year, there’s a lot to keep track of. And sometimes it’s just easier just to categorize if we’re doing numbers, but, but you know, there’s a consistency and there’s simplicity, but then when you want to go into more detail, you can, I think what.

What we do a fantastic job of out our teams that they sell the narrative. And, you know, if you watch UFC countdown, there’s a preview show that we do. We release a week before the event. You can follow that narrative, you know who the athletes you can really learn about, you know, the why. The why I think is something that’s really interesting.

And Mark, you touched on your why, when you, when it comes to your experience, UFC, you like to see that the competitive aspect and the fitness level of a skill. And, and that’s, you know, there’s a lot of fans of the moment for that. And there’s a lot of fans that love our sport and to watch, watch the fights take places because of the why of they.

Fighting for their family. They fighting to try and prove something. What are, what are their motivators that, you know, what that gets into the octagon to want to compete, at this higher level, and you know, you know, to, to perform and perform mixed martial arts. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty special sometimes.

Faz: People that are listeners that who want to get involved more with the sport in Australia, what’s the best places for them to go to, to watch it. I know you have your fight pass and I think you have, you know, certain content on TV and certain channels, but maybe give us a bit of the view of, of where today we can access the content.

Peter: Sure. Well, firstly, and foremost us on say that, there’s nothing, there’s no better UFC experience than going to a live event. So if the UFC comes to town or if it comes back to Australia at some point, you know, and you feel came to check it out and nothing beats a live event experience, it really is transformational in a lot of ways.

And it’s a great entry point. If you want to take a mate, or, or, or just, you know, you see it for yourself, there’s nothing better, but. The, what we do for TV broadcast is, is also really special and translate so much of that live event experience to your television. And so we, we do 42 events a year. 12 of those events are on page per view, which we do via, via a Foxtel Main event  and fetch.

And, and we sell it by UFC fight pass online and, an ESPN and our broadcast partners. So for the 30 other events, We do that. I will be solely on ESPN. so, so definitely go and check out in those. those, a live events on Via broad cost. We have UFC fight Pass – our over the top network OTT . And that’s like a Netflix for flight sports.

It’s not only just MMA and UFC. There’s a whole bunch of great content from boxing to jujitsu to, you know, there’s many great, smaller organizations from across the world, including a whole bunch of other original programming, which we invest quite heavily into, into UFC fight pass to get a taste of not only.

The behind the scenes, but, you know, following our athletes and compilations and yeah, there’s a great line. There’s, there’s a library of all of our UFC events, if you’re bored and iso then I can highly recommend getting involved and checking that out.

Dom: And what about at the grassroots level? If I want to get fit and keep healthy, how do I get involved with mixed martial arts?

Peter: Yeah. So, you would have noticed that in the last 10 or so odd years, just how many martial arts gyms are opening up around the country, whether they’re jujitsu, gyms, whether they’re the  Mui Thai kickboxing boxing gyms, and they’re just sprouting up everywhere. And it’s, it’s fantastic to see a re-invigorate into the industry here.

and, and, you know, you just people for, have that, wanting to get involved themselves. And it’s really fantastic. We have UFC gyms in Australia. We have about 15 odd, across a few different cities. Now they don’t feel for you to go and be a fighter . It’s designed to train like a fighter. So you have to realize you will you’ll you’ll optimum and they have bright classes from judo all the way through to jujitsu to Mui Thai.

So you can experience a range of different. Martial arts class event, but, yeah, we’ve had some amazing stories of athletes who have literally gone from being a mom, wanting to lose a little bit, a little bit of weight after the pregnancies to going on, to fighting in the octagon. Within two, three years, there’s been some amazing transformations about athletes to, to get in introduced the sport.

Just like anything you gotta, you gotta take that first step and just, get, get to the gym and then the rest of these.

Faz: Yeah, definitely.

Dom: And so you alluded to it a little bit, but what’s next for UFC?

Peter:  Sure. Well, I mean, w w I think fire is always on everybody’s mind at the moment, and we will get to pilot surveys, some announcements, I think this week about where, and when that’s going to take place and we want to get up and running with our scheduled events.

Like I said, where we’re back on track and back on schedule in terms of how many events we have per year. So it’s about bringing that consistency back to that. me, myself, personally, you know, where we’re keeping a very close eye on to what other sports are doing in Australia. What restrictions of being lifted and whether we might be able to bring an event to Australia this year.

I mean, I’d love to see that if it’s, if it was safe to do so. so, but otherwise we were, we were supposed to have a show in, in Perth just last weekend on the 7th of July. So, you know, we kind of lamenting on the fact that we would have had a great event in Perth just last weekend and we would have loved to have been there, to put on that show, but, we’ll have to get back at some point to perth .

Yeah, definitely. And, and work out when we can bring the live events back to Australia, hopefully before the end of

Faz: the year. Definitely

Bosco: hope so. I think, I mean, I mean, some other sports are, I know the NRL talking about having crowds very soon, so, obviously there’ll be restrictions in place, but it’d be good to see.

Yeah. And it’s getting back to a certain normal, I guess.

Peter: Sure. I think that a lot of people are looking forward to that. I mean, we’ve made a lot of great progress here in Australia and in New Zealand in terms of doing the right thing. And I think that we’ve all kind of fought the good fight in that respect.

And if that means that we can do things like, you know, go out to restaurants, go out to, so to, you know, music and sporting events, all the sooner than that, that would be fantastic.

Faz: And I can vouch for a live event. I went to a live event in Vegas at the MGM, I think 2000, January, 2015. I think it was, it was amazing.

And I wasn’t, I wasn’t a fan. I was just, you know, I knew about it and I went to the, I went to the match and it was fantastic. I definitely recommend getting involved. Pete, thanks for your insight. I think I love what UFC stands for, you know, but more important. We love your business story as well.

And you know, where you came from, where you are now, and think that’s really resonates with us as a business. And I think it’ll resonate with a lot of people that are in business and. The entrepreneurs out there about how your, your brand and your business has evolved and, you know, thanks for sharing your time with us today.

And, what I’ll think we’ll do is we’ll get you on again in a couple of months when the world’s got back to normal and, you know, maybe hopefully people can start visiting, you know, events in your world as well and, and see where, where things have gone from there. But, again, thanks for being involved, Pete.

Really appreciate it.

Peter:  No, my

pleasure. Thanks again, to have me on, good to talk to the UFC and, And brainstorm about your business too. And you know, I’ve, I’ve said it that, UFC is one of those things that’s best, enjoyed with your mates. So, I’ll leave it at that, but yeah, I hope to see you guys again.

Same.

Faz: Beautiful. Thanks.

Peter: Thanks. Thanks.

Faz: Thanks for listening to the let’s be mates podcast by the team at MATE

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