Does Ariel Helwani have a Turki in his back pocket?

In a rapidly collapsing media world, how is MMA's biggest reporter going to make his new project work?

Sep 23, 2024

∙ Paid

A typical scene from MMA media relations in 2024. UFC CEO Dana White shares a tiny % of his gambling winnings with social media influencer Robbie Fox of Barstool Sports as a “wedding present.”

UFC CEO Dana White giving Barstool Sports' Robbie Fox $20,000 — UFC CEO Dana White gifting Barstool Sports' Robbie Fox $20,000

@jedigoodman Dana White came back after being down $2.3M and gave Robbie Fox $20K for his wedding. Robbie: I'm about to be the number one Power Slap reporter in the world. In the world. 😂

Who gets to tell the story of fight sports?

My former Bloody Elbow colleague Zane Simon had a piece yesterday that functions as a kind of pocket history of MMA media. From the exciting beginnings:

One of the more surprising … aspects of this industry is that MMA was the first ‘online’ sport.
…cagefighting boomed in the sphere of ‘new media’. Fans weren’t just trading tapes and renting UFC DVDs at Blockbuster, they were getting online to talk about it all.
The more they got to talking about it, the more they wanted to learn about it. Websites sprung up everywhere, seemingly overnight. The UFC encouraged their fighters to speak to the media openly and easily, and would give just about anyone with a laptop a press pass—meaning that access to a fast-growing world of combat sports was practically unprecedented.

To the state state of current affairs:

The gutting of media is complete, the jobs are gone, the war is won. In the couple years ahead of BE’s collapse, nobody asked me about working in MMA media anymore. Websites started cutting staff, and have steadily been closing left, right, and center. It’s not just a job nobody has, it’s a job nobody wants.
There are still a variety of people doing fun content on individual YouTube, Substack, and Patreon accounts out there. From technical breakdowns to critical analysis, editorial work, and even the rare bit of deep dive reporting. But it’s less present in the fan community than ever before. Replaced instead by influencer-led content, talking up rumors and social media beefs, or creating them when good enough quality can’t be found.

It’s not just MMA media. This is happening in a context of the collapse of news media as an entire industry.

Fast Company did a round-up of just a few of the recent casualties:

The Los Angeles Times laid off 20% of its newsroom in January. NBC News and MSNBC laid off around 75 employees in January. Sports Illustrated laid off most of its staff (around 100) after it failed to pay licensing fees to its parent company in January. Time laid off 15% of its staff, or roughly 30 employees, in January. Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng announced a staff reduction of 8% in January. Forbes reduced its staff by 3% in late January. TechCrunch laid off a handful of staffers and is going to end its paid subscription options. The Messenger, a news startup, shut down entirely at the beginning of February after less than a year in operation, leaving more than 300 employees jobless. The Wall Street Journal let 20 staff members go at its Washington, D.C., bureau in early February. CBS News also cut 20 jobs at its D.C. bureau in early February, as a larger round of 800 cuts at Paramount. The Intercept laid off 15 staff members, including its editor-in-chief, in mid-February. NowThis cut half of its editorial team in mid-February, a loss of 26 jobs. BuzzFeed sold one of its sub-brands, Complex, this week, and subsequently announced a 16% reduction in staff. This comes after shuttering its entire news division last year. Vice Media will stop publishing on Vice.com and will lay off hundreds, per recent reports. WAMU radio, the NPR affiliate in Washington, D.C., said it will shut down the local news website DCist and lay off its staff.

With so many losers, there has to be a winner, right? As it happens there is.

Social Media Has Already Won The Latest Press War

According to the Pew Research Center a majority of Americans now get their news via social media at least sometimes and while news web sites and apps remain the favorite source of news, social media is close and gaining fast:

There are several different pathways Americans use to get news on their digital devices. News websites or apps and search engines are the most common: About two-thirds of U.S. adults at least sometimes get news in each of these ways. A little more than half (54%) at least sometimes get news from social media, and 27% say the same about podcasts.

News websites or apps are also the most preferred source for news. About a quarter of U.S. adults (23%) say they prefer to get their news this way, compared with 18% who prefer social media, 12% who prefer search and 5% who prefer podcasts. The share of Americans who prefer social media has increased by 6 percentage points since 2023.

This means Ariel Helwani’s Uncrowned, in partnership with Yahoo Sports!, is fighting the social media tide and betting heavy on a news web site in an era where almost no one dares to launch such a beast.

After the paywall, we’ll talk more about Ariel’s new site and who might be helping him get it off the ground.

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