If there was any proof needed that the Irish were truly putting their stamp on the world of mixed martial arts, it came with the announcement last week that Dublin’s David Allen had been announced as the UFC’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
SportsJOE got the chance to speak to Allen, who is currently upping his preparations for Saturday’s UFC on Fox: Gustafsson v Johnson in Sweden, about his new role with the Las Vegas promotion, his plans for breaking into more markets and just how close we were to a UFC in Croker.
Allen, who had previously worked with global sports brands adidas and Nike, revealed his excitement about his new role with the UFC.
He told us: “It’s a great opportunity in a brand new, young company and I get the chance to work with a fantastic team to get started with an excellent event here in Stockholm.”
The Dubliner explained the key differences between his new role and that of his previous position as the UFC’s Director of Events, Marketing and Communications for EMEA, a post he held for over a year.
“It encompasses working with the whole team. My previous role had three main areas. With the events, I was responsible for managing the events which involved everything from the production to setting up the octagon itself, all the way through to the ticket-selling. In terms of the marketing, I had to ensure that everything we did was on-brand in order to built it. And the communications element was twofold. Firstly it involved the public relations arena in working with our athletes and the second aspect involved the digital realm, an area on which we pride ourselves.
“But my new role takes on a lot more responsibilities,” he explained.
“It involves everything from content control to production to dealing with broadcast partners. There’s just a lot more things to organise in order to build our brand right across the EMEA regions.
“When you think of it, there are 129 countries in the EMEA region and the UFC have actually only been to five so we really have more opportunities than we have resources at this moment in time. We’ve got an awfully long way to go and that’s what really excites me about this role.
“We have both a long-term vision and a short-term vision. We have a three-year plan which stretches out and focuses on the countries into which we want to embark.”
The UFC announced just yesterday that they had made headway with one of those countries when they signed a deal with Russian state broadcasting company VGTRK.
Speaking about the new deal, Allen said: “Russia is one of those big opportunities. We’ve just signed a deal with the state broadcast company which means we will be on free-to-air, something like the RTÉ back home, so everybody will have access to that event. That means for that event, we have the potential to reach 55 million viewers in the Russian market.
“And in the long-term, as I’ve said there are over 100 countries in the EMEA region that we haven’t been to so there are a lot of markets that we want to break into. But, at the same time, there are a lot of markets that we’ve already broken into that we want to return to so we’ve got a lot of things to try to achieve.”
Allen’s passion for the sport of mixed martial arts and his new job shone through when he discussed the sheer breadth of fighting talent that is currently signed to the UFC.
“The beauty of our sport comes from the fact that everywhere in the world, combat of some sort is practised. We’re all acutely aware of the fighters coming from Ireland and the U.K. but there are so many good fighters coming from all around the world. We’ve got fighters from France, Germany, Turkey, everywhere you’d care to imagine.
“Currently we’ve got around 560 fighters on our roster and, if you take this event here in Stockholm as an example, we’ve got fighters from 12 different countries participating on this card. There are five Russians, three from Sweden, two guys from back home in Ireland. We’re a truly diverse, international business when it comes to the nationalities of our athletes.”
The progress that the UFC has made in recent times, particularly in the last year, is something about which Allen spoke proudly and hopefully.
He said: “We’re a very, very young company. We’re only thirteen years of age, we’re a teenager essentially. We’ve still got a lot growing up to do but the beauty of the UFC, and MMA as a sport, is that we’re actually inventing the wheel. It’s a brand new model that we’re bringing so everything that we’re doing, we’re probably doing for the very first time.
“We’re constantly growing. Last year we held in excess of 45 events around the world. But if you take this event in Stockholm, it’s truly the start of something really big. This card will be broadcast to about 1 billion people around the world on Saturday night. It will be seen in 147 countries so the reach of this sport is completely different from anything that I’ve experienced before.”
Allen, an avid football fan who once refereed in the League of Ireland, explained that he was something of a fight fan for some time but boxing used to be his preference over MMA in his younger days.
He explained: “I wouldn’t say I was a mixed martial arts fan. I grew up on the South Circular Road in Dublin, next door to the National Boxing Stadium. I remember going there many times to see the likes of Mick Dowling fight and I actually travelled over to Loftus Road in London to see Barry McGuigan win the world title so I was definitely a fight fan.”
We asked Allen whether he was met with any raised eyebrows when he announced he was set to sign for a mixed martial arts organisation considering the slight stigma that still exists around the sport but Allen insisted that he experienced very little opposition.
“I wasn’t met with much resistance,” he revealed.
“I think it’s all about education in relation to what the sport encompasses. Listen, MMA isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, the same way that cricket isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But once you educate people about how talented these athletes are and how much training they put themselves through, it would be hard for anyone not to respect them.
“It’s about informing people about the human chess element of the fight night, explaining how fighters combine disciplines like Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu in order to become a true mixed martial artist. And when people become more educated about the sport, there are very few raised eyebrows.
“At the event on Saturday, for example, I’ve got a number of ex-colleagues from Nike and Adidas travelling to see this spectacular event because, as sports brands, they want to see what we’re all about.”
One such sports brand with whom the UFC are now inextricably linked is Reebok as the Las Vegas promotion recently signed an exclusive uniform deal with the sports apparel giant and Allen was genuinely excited about what the new arrangement meant for the UFC brand and its fighters.
“I think the Reebok deal and the outfitting arrangement we have with them is groundbreaking for this sport,” Allen revealed.
“The UFC, nor any other mixed martial arts organisation, have ever had this sort of outfitting deal before.
“What we’re doing with this Reebok deal is that we’re investing all the funds that come to us directly back into the fighters. We’re not taking any of the money from the deal, it’s going straight back to the athletes.
“And it’s not just about the money, it’s about the apparel that the fighters will avail of. Reebok are going to produce performance enhancing product that the fighters can train in. There will be apparel with better wicking ability for fighters so that they can train longer and better.
“We’ve got the support of the Reebok brand now and they’re going to create a whole division dedicated to mixed martial arts apparel. The same way that Nike has lines built around football or running, Reebok are doing that same thing with MMA.”
The conversation would have been incomplete without reference to the elusive Croke Park featherweight title fight that many believed would be on the way after Conor McGregor overcame Dennis Siver on Sunday.
Allen said that the UFC “never said we were going to Croke Park but that people intimated that we would. What we did, just as our team of scouts do with all venues, is that we evaluate a number of elements of the stadium to see if it works for what we’re trying to achieve with that particular event.
“Croke Park didn’t work for a couple of reasons this time. A few things went against us this time around but that’s not to say that we can’t rectify them and make them work the next time. So we’re not saying never. We never say never.”
“The most important thing for Ireland now is for Conor to carry the Irish flag into the fight capital of the world and make sure he does the Irish proud on the night and bring back the belt. Then we can revisit the conversation”
As we wrapped up the interview, we asked Allen of the importance that he placed on a European fighter winning a world title in order to continue the progress in Europe.
“I think it’ll be very important for the fans as well as all the practitioners of the sport to have somebody to look up to,” he answered.
“Whether it be Conor McGregor or Alexander Gustafsson or Joanna Jedrzejczyk, we’ve got a number of potential fighters who could win UFC gold this year.
“And there are a number of European fighters who are almost at that stage where they’re ready to challenge for championships with Gegard Mousasi from the Netherlands, Joanne Calderwood from Scotland, Nick Hein coming out of Germany. We’ve got some great prospects and it all leads to a really good future for the UFC and MMA in the region.”
