ONE Championship boss hits back over cash fears, predicts US$100 million revenue

“No absolutely not,” he told the Post, when asked if Qatar felt embarrassed. “We have a fantastic relationship with the Qatar government. They are big shareholder in the company. We talk to all our shareholders and board members on a regular basis all the time.

“I’ve taken many trips out to Qatar and it’s always been very positive on both sides. We have tremendous love and respect for Qatar, and it’s reciprocal. It’s become one of my favourite places in the world.

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ONE reportedly suffered annual losses of US$111 million in 2021. Deal Street Asia also reported the organisation’s revenue in 2022 was between just US$5 million and US$8 million.

Asked if he had any financial worries, Chatri responded “literally zero”, and said ONE’s revenue would exceed US$100 million in 2023, and projected revenues of US$200 million in 2024.

“How many times has there been misinformation of these clickbait articles in the last five years for ONE and what happened? We went on to have record breaking years in terms of event viewership and revenue,” he said.

“This time it’s no different. It’s unfortunate people thrive on clickbait to drive their own readership, but it’s part of the territory when you’re the world’s largest martial arts organisation, people are going to try to take pot shots, it’s just par for the course.

“We have very good visibility that our revenues will be north of US$100 million this year. We have very high visibility for 2024 because of all these different deals we are doing and right now we are on track for US$200 million in revenue in 2024.

“We are broadcast in 190 countries so we have deals that are expiring and renewing any given month across the world and as these deals re-roll and renew, sometimes with existing partners or new partners, our price points have continuously gone up and that is part of the beauty of this business model.

“Building a sports property from scratch is chicken and egg, you need phenomenal TV ratings but in order to get that you have to have the biggest broadcast partners who then invest around the property and once you do, you get strong TV ratings and media rights starts to climb rapidly.

“We spent a good decade building a platform, getting the best martial artists, rounding up brands and government support, rallying investors who have invested over US$500 million so far into ONE.

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“It’s only recently we’ve been able to turn on the monetisation engine, if you will. Once you build the platform it’s not rocket science to monetise. The strategy has always been since day one to invest and build a global platform, that requires hundreds of millions of dollars, your investment phase.

“It’s unfortunate there’s haters who have an axe to grind but they can grind. My team and I, my board and my investors are 1,000 per cent in. It would be another story, there would be more credence to it, if all of our metrics were falling apart or something.

“But every single year, the last 12 years that I’ve built this business, our metrics have continued to go up. We are becoming more and more popular around the world, there’s no question of that.”

Chatri also said ONE anticipated profitability in its “core business” by the second half of next year.

“All signs are trending,” he added. “We’re seeing our unit cost come down and we’re seeing our revenues increasing. We have the most number of seven- or eight-figure deals in the history of the company.

“The morale of my leadership team, my board, and our institutional shareholders, is at an all time high because the hard yards are done. It takes a long time to build a business of this scale.

“Factors we can control are making sure we manage our cost structure, making sure we drive our revenue deals to closure, putting on phenomenal events, continuing to drive our viewership metrics across every platform. By every metric I track, it’s a record high.”