Fight Island

     In the heart of the COVID pandemic the entire sporting world ground to a halt. There were two routes for every sporting association, cancel the rest of the season or find a way to isolate your league. College basketball chose the former and cancelled the entire March Madness tournament in 2020, forfeiting millions in revenue. On the other hand, the NBA decided to isolate their operation at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. This bubble required a heavy investment and could only be done by an incredibly profitable league. The UFC, a mixed martial arts organization, was at a cross-roads. The UFC is a relatively new league and could not afford to cancel their season or else they would void their tv contracts and endorsement deals, but the UFC was also not wealthy enough to be able to fund their own "bubble" to continue their operations. The ultimate decision- create "Fight Island", a two-week audience free UFC event in Saudi Arabia.

    From a financial standpoint the Saudi partnership makes perfect sense for the UFC. Abu Dhabi's government agreed to pay a hosting fee and cover the logistics for the fighters in exchange for the exposure the event brought. This expands on an already existing partnership in which the UFC signed a five year deal to bring at least one pay-per-view event to Abu Dhabi per year. The UFC has other ties to the UAE, including a previous 10% ownership stake by a company with strong United Arab Emirates connections. The fight island main event ended up raking in around 1.3 million pay-per-view buys, about 62 million euros in revenue. 

    Financially, the UFC Saudi Arabia partnership makes perfect sense, but is it ethical? According to Human Rights Watch's World Report 2019, "UAE authorities have launched a sustained assault on freedom of expression and association since 2011. The UAE arbitrarily detains and forcibly disappears individuals who criticize the authorities within the UAE's borders." The UAE also has various laws encouraging domestic violence towards women and violence towards homosexuals. The human rights abuses of middle eastern countries cannot be ignored and they should not be able to buy their way into the forefront of Western media without the violation coming to light. The lucrative deals these countries offer are ultimately too profitable for businesses to overlook and I believe legislation is needed to prevent these government entities from using sports to improve their reputations. If countries are truly interested in being apart of Western media and apart of our sports, they should come to terms with their human rights abuses and should have to adopt Western laws.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4aybdb/the-ufcs-fight-island-was-a-strange-portrait-of-covid-era-entertainment

https://blackbeltmag.com/where-is-fight-island

https://www.thescore.com/mma/news/1984020