UFC Knows Who’s Watching

Well fight fans – it’s Saturday night and you’ve got nothing going on.  Your buddies are all busy and your old lady has friends over so you can’t watch television.  Then you realize that the UFC has a fight on tonight – UFC 342 (whatever!) so you grab a few beers and head back to your bedroom with your laptop to watch the fights on line.  Rather than cough up the coin to watch it legitimately you decide to check out one of the websites that streams the fights live for free – SCORE! What a great deal – a few beers, fights for free – man I love living in America!

Not so fast Homer – recently the Zuffa, LLC (the parent company of the UFC) filed suit against a couple of internet websites (ustream.com and justin.tv) that allegedly pirate UFC events and content, and then allow it to be broadcast for free.  In simple terms – that’s stealing – and the UFC, with all of the tough guys beating the crap out of each other,  is not about to let their content be stolen by a bunch of internet punks.

Here’s what’s the UFC is planning to do – remember Napster a few years ago?  Remember all those brilliant college students that were “file sharing” music with each other (translated means, they were downloading music for free and then sharing the songs with the world).  Well, the Recording Industry Association of America, the group that says it’s looking out for and protecting recording artists, filed suit against some of the individual students.  Next thing the students knew, they were faced with a lawsuit and looking at the prospect of paying millions of dollars in damages to their favorite artist – yeah, the one they listen to all of the time and downloaded all of the music (that degree better get them a good job so they can pay their favorite artist!).

Now enter the UFC following in the same footsteps. UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta recently appeared before the House Judiciary committee and explained that 78,000 people watched UFC 111 via the internet without paying for the event.  That’s about $3.8 million of lost revenue due to pirated content.   Multiply that by 20 pay-per-view events per year and that’s over $76 million dollars! Now we’re talking real money!

So here’s how it plays out – the UFC subpoena’s ustream.com and justin.tv, and since ustream.com and justin.tv are going to take the fall for all you fellow pirates, when the UFC asks for the IP addresses of members that broadcast the UFC content or who watched without paying the UFC their money, well, ustream.com was more than happy to kick you guys under the bus – yup, the UFC knows who you are!

So unless you have more money than God or the Fertitta brothers, you’re not going to think that you’re getting over on the boys at the UFC when you watch the UFC from some lame “free” website – remember, nothing at the UFC is free and if you don’t pay for it now, you’ll pay for it later.  Maybe instead of having to pay money to the UFC they’ll make you get in the Octagon with Randy Couture or Chuck Liddell – write the check.