IFL Prioritizes Las Vegas in 2008
The IFL announced that 2008 would see a change in strategy for the team-based mixed martial arts league. The organization, which began producing events in April 2006, has recently made public its intentions to revamp and change its focus away from a team-based league to a place where fight camps can compete amongst themselves. While the IFL will still have its own roster of approximately nine camps, including the familiar groups under Renzo Gracie and Matt Lindland, there will be no more New York Pitbulls or Portland Wolfpack, per se.
The IFL has also stated that it will not head out on the road to as many different cities in the future. Previously, its strategy was to head to markets where larger MMA promoters did not visit in an attempt to capitalize on the hunger among those areas’ local fans’ hunger for live MMA. However transporting the league’s staff, fighters, and production crew to almost ten different cities in 2007 proved to be an expensive endeavor.
It appears that one of the markets the IFL will concentrate on in 2008 will be Las Vegas. Currently, there are three dates that the IFL has requested to hold events at the Orleans Arena, according to the Nevada State Athletic Commission:
- February 29th
- June 27th
- October 17th
The Orleans Arena opened in 2003 and is the home of the ECHL’s Las Vegas Wranglers professional hockey team. It is a mid-sized venue with 5,736 permanent seats.
It may be worth noting that the UFC went through the same evolutionary process in its formative days. As can be seen on the UFC Event Map up until Zuffa LLC bought the UFC, the UFC was an unprofitable traveling road show which visited places like Brazil, Japan, and Birmingham, Alabama. In the 54 Zuffa Pay Per View events scheduled since the first Zuffa-run event at UFC 30, 26 (48%) have taken place in Las Vegas, piggybacking on the city’s historic reputation for hosting larger-than-life fight action and keeping costs low at the same time.
Can the IFL’s strategy stabilize the IFL, whose stock price hovers at fourteen cents at the time of this writing? We have seen many promoters attempt to carve out their own piece of the MMA fan’s attention, and 2008 may be a year when we see some perish in the effort.
- Caleb 
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[…] discussed recently the effort that the IFL will make to include Las Vegas in 2008, in that they have three of the eight events that form the base of its year scheduled in […]
Anonymous on January 1, 2008