The young male demographic of Ultimate Fight Club fans, and the “tens of millions” of dollars in advertising offered to the company persuaded the Fertitta brothers to move into the intrastate online poker space, UFC chief exec Lorenzo Fertitta revealed in a televised interview with the program “In the Loop” on Bloomberg business news Thursday.
UFC has a massive following of young males who are also interested in online poker and fitness, prompting the company to extend the brand into online poker and around 100 fitness gyms, Fertitta told interviewer Betty Liu.
Major online poker companies had clearly recognised the potential of the fight club demographic, offering advertising and sponsorship offers worth “tens of millions” of dollars to the Fertitta enterprise, which it was unable to accept due to US legal constraints, Fertitta revealed.
With the legalisation of online poker at state level now a fait accompli, Fertitta Interactive formed the Ultimate Gaming company to operate its intrastate online poker offering Ultimate Poker.com, which to date remains the only legal online poker operator in the United States on its Nevada licence.
The UFC chief said that the Fertitta divisions collaborated closely and that plans were already well advanced to enter the New Jersey online gambling market when licensing and regulation were implemented in November this year.
See the full interview here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/we-felt-really-comfortable-with-fox-ufc-ceo-7Etd8qtLTT~3EY7WYQAAcg.html