Longtime Southern California promoter Roy Engelbrecht will introduce Fight Club OC to SoCal fight fans for 2011. Fight Club OC will be a bi-monthly event with boxing and MMA on the same card.
Engelbrecht promoted the “Battle in the Ballroom” series in Irvine, California. With Fight Club OC, he is moving the promotion to The Hangar, a larger venue in Costa Mesa, California.
From Fight Club OC’s press release:
In addition to the mix of the two most popular combat sports in the world today, Englebrecht is also using this new venture to raise the bar in terms of how fans enjoy live events, including becoming the first fight series ever to offer All-Inclusive Ringside Luxury Suites, a separate entrance and parking lot for Season Seat Holders and sponsors, and a special Happy Hour event at Baja Blues right next to The Hangar!
It is anticipated that the events will be held ever Thursday starting in February 2011.
Payout Perspective:
This is an interesting concept for a local promotion. Boxing and mixed martial arts (especially MMA) are very popular in Southern California. It will be interesting to see the attendance figures for the bi-monthly fight series. Of course, the attendance and success will be dependent on the quality of fights.
I am interested with the luxury suite component of this promotion. I was not aware of a demand for luxury suites at local events. If this is a way to get in spectators, especially the up-scale OC crowd, then I think this idea can work.
We have seen promotions try combining MMA with Kickbox before and I can’t think of any that have stuck with that format. There are a few problems here.
First just because you are an MMA fan or a boxing fan doesn’t make you a fan of the other sport by default. I seem to remember there being a survey back around the time of the Toney fight and the cross over numbers were actually surprisingly low.
The other problem is that you now have to maintain two stables of fighters. It is hard enough to do it for one sport.
There’s a group in New York called “Friday Night Fights NYC” who have been putting on mixed boxing and kickboxing, pro and amateur shows for several years. They have them in a smallish space, but they are very popular and the place is always packed.
Unfortunately MMA isn’t sanctioned in New York, so we don’t get any of the really good stuff, but these kinds of venues are a great way for young fighters to get experience. Since it’s a regular event, they always know they can pick up a fight.
It probably doesn’t work for big promotions, but for local ones where most of the people in attendance want some excitement that night, or know someone on the card and are not necessarily hardcore fight fans, I think it’s a business model that can work.