Although UFC President Dana White said again Wednesday that the mixed martial arts behemoth is not for sale, he left plenty of wiggle room.
“We’re not up for sale,” White, a native of Hermon, Maine, said on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “We’re always working on deals and our expansion globally. I’ve been saying since this thing came out, no, we’re not for sale, but let me tell you what. If somebody shows up with $4 billion, we can talk. We can definitely talk.”
According to ESPN’s report, “somebody” may have shown up with something like that kind of cash. Darren Rovell reported Tuesday that there were at least four bidders and that talks were in the “advanced” stage. That might be a tempting profit for brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who own more than 80 percent of the privately held company and purchased it for $2 million in 2001. White with 9 percent and the Abu Dhabi government’s Flash Entertainment, with 10 percent, are minority owners of UFC, whose parent company is Zuffa LLC.
White declined to say whether there might be a partial sale.
“Obviously, if I’m in the middle of a deal right now, there’s a lot of confidentiality involved in it,” White said. “We’re working on expanding. We’re working on growing the company and moving into other territories like China and Japan, Korea. So, yeah, we’re always working on deals.
“As far as the UFC being for sale, I’ve said this a million times, we get offers on the UFC all the time. It started in 2010. We got our first offer for the company, which was over $1 billion, and we turned it down,” he said.
ESPN and other outlets indicate that Dalian Wanda, a Chinese conglomerate, has emerged as the front-runner to buy UFC, with WME/IMG, China Media Capital and The Blackstone Group also bidding. Aside from a big payday, it isn’t certain what a sale might mean for White, who has become the public face of UFC.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how that would all work out, but I’ll tell you this: The day we decide to sell, I probably don’t want to do this anymore,” White said. “I love this. I love this business. I love the sport. I jump out of bed every day excited to go to work.
“And listen, me and Fertitta brothers have been together a long time. We’re very close friends. We work well together. Something we did would be a mutual decision, and we’d probably all be looking to get out.”