The Singapore-based company, in which Temasek, through its private equity investment arm Heliconia Capital Management, invested last year, is planning an IPO in the next three years, said Chatri Sityodtong, its co-founder, chairman and a lifelong martial artist.
Speaking to GlobalCapital Asia during a trip to London in late March, the former hedge fund manager for, among others, Lee Ainslie III’s $11bn Maverick Capital, would not reveal which banks the company had spoken to.
Even when a list of possible contenders — Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank and DBS — was fired at him, the veteran of over 30 professional muay thai fights did not flinch.
The beginning of any formal discussions, not least the award of underwriting mandates, is at least a year away. A final decision has also not been made on where the IPO will take place.
But Sityodtong has a clear idea and said that for a global listing of the size the company had in mind, a mainstream US stock exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange, would be ideal.
In addition to being the world’s deepest capital market, the US is home to some of the richest and most powerful sports media companies, including ONE Championship’s MMA rival, Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Start-up to unicorn
Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino boxer, is the only other known shareholder alongside Heliconia and ONE Championship’s management team, including co-founder and chief executive Victor Cui, a former senior executive of sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports.
Recent stories in the press have said ONE Championship’s IPO is likely to weigh in at $1bn. Yet those reports seem to confuse the total valuation of the company with the potential size of the IPO, which in reality is more likely to be smaller.
For now, Sityodtong’s focus is on growing the business. And based on current growth rates and a compound annual growth rate of some 300% since 2011, he said ONE Championship’s valuation should hit the $1bn mark in the next 12 months.
In under six years, One Championship has grown from a five employee start-up with one event a year to Asia’s largest sports media property, hosting over 50 live MMA championship fights a year across the region. It has a fan base of 320m and growing, and a global broadcast audience of 1bn in 118 countries.
Not fight club
“There are several multi-billion-dollar sports media properties in each region of the world,” he said. “In Asia, there’s nothing on a pan-Asia basis. Yes, there is the IPL [Indian Premier League] for cricket and the China Super League for soccer, but there is nothing pan-Asia that unites four billion people.”
If Sityodtong’s plans are ambitious, the companies he thinks ONE Championship should be compared to may surprise, too.
“We view our comps very much along the lines of an Uber, or Grabcar , or Go-Jek [car and motorbike-hailing companies in South Asia],” he said. “We’re in the TMT sector and that’s how I believe investors should see us.”
This article was written by Duncan Kerr, managing editor, Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership