Chatri Sityodtong survived on a diet of budget Korean buffets while an undergraduate at Harvard. Now, the protean martial arts expert, former internet entrepreneur and one-time hedge fund manager wants to create the biggest and most lucrative sporting spectacle in Asia, the world’s most populous region.
差立?西尤堂(Chatri Sityodtong)在哈佛读大学本科时,曾经靠廉价韩国自助餐苦撑。如今,身上贴有多个标签——武术专家、前互联网企业家以及曾经的对冲基金经理——的他,想打造亚洲最大、最有利可图的体育盛事。亚洲是全世界人口最多的地区。
The glitzy One Championship mixed martial arts (MMA) competition, which 46-year-old Mr Chatri founded and heads, hit Singapore at the end of May and is due in Myanmar, Macau and Malaysia over the next few months. Mr Chatri, who was raised in Thailand, believes the championships have the potential to attract 2bn television viewers and sellout events in a different Asian city every weekend.
综合格斗赛事ONE冠军赛(ONE Championship)于5月底落地新加坡,并且将在未来几个月进入缅甸、澳门和马来西亚。该赛事由现年46岁的差立创办并执掌。在泰国长大的差立认为,ONE冠军赛有望吸引20亿电视观众,亚洲各个城市每周末的比赛门票都会售罄。
“If you look at the history of sports in Asia, we’ve always only imported,” he says, pointing to the popularity of English football, US basketball and Formula One motor racing. “So I had a very simple thesis: I said, ‘Man, it’s time for Asia to have its own sports league — and Asia’s been the home of martial arts for 5,000 years.’”
“如果你看看亚洲体育史就会发现,我们一直都只是引进赛事,”他表示,并指出英格兰足球、美国篮球和一级方程式(Formula One)赛车的人气。“所以我产生了一个非常简单的命题:我说,‘现在轮到亚洲推出自己的体育联盟了——5000年来,亚洲一直是武术之乡。’”
Mr Chatri says five-year-old One Championship achieved record viewer figures for its show in Manila in April. But its finances remain closely guarded: he says only that the event is now “very, very close to profitability”, with revenues that are in “eight figures and growing very rapidly”. Investment in One exceeds $50m, and includes a stake bought last year for an undisclosed sum by Temasek, the Singapore state investment fund.
差立称,已经创办5年的ONE冠军赛,在今年4月马尼拉的一场比赛中刷新了观众纪录。但该赛事的财务状况仍然严格保密:他只是说该赛事如今已经“非常接近盈利”,收入达到“8位数,并且增长非常迅速”。ONE冠军赛的投入超过5000万美元,其中包括去年新加坡国有投资基金淡马锡(Temasek)收购了该赛事的部分股份,具体金额未被披露。
James Goyder, a journalist who has covered combat sports in Asia for a decade, says One has had to overcome a “lot of cynicism” from people who “expected it to fold after a couple of shows” like previous similar big ventures.
在亚洲报道格斗赛事长达10年的记者詹姆斯?戈伊德(James Goyder)表示,一些人“预计该赛事在两场比赛后就会罢手”,就像之前类似的大型赛事一样,ONE冠军赛不得不克服这些人的“冷嘲热讽”。
“I think those people underestimated Chatri,” Mr Goyder says.
“我认为那些人低估了差立,”戈伊德表示。
One Championship is the synthesis of Mr Chatri’s two long-time obsessions: martial arts and financial investment. He is a practitioner of Muay Thai — Thai boxing — and he took the name Sityodtong in honour of the master at whose training camp he studied.
ONE冠军赛综合了差立的两大长期嗜好:武术和金融投资。他是一名泰拳(Muay Thai)手,他给自己取名西尤堂是为了纪念他学习泰拳时的训练营创办者。
His life changed when his “quite well-to-do” family in Bangkok lost everything in the financial crisis that affected Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries in the late 1990s.
他在曼谷的家原本“相当富有”,但在上世纪90年代末肆虐泰国及其他东南亚国家的金融危机中,他家失去了一切,他的人生道路由此转变。
He had a place at Harvard, but little money to live on. He recalls visiting an all-you-can-eat Korean buffet that cost “three dollars and change” and became “the big highlight of the day”. His mother even lived with him in his university dormitory because the family had lost their home.
他考入了哈佛,但没有钱生活。他回忆起自己花“3块多美元”去吃韩国自助餐,这成了“那天最爽的时候”。他的妈妈甚至和他一起睡在大学宿舍里,因为他们无家可归。
Mr Chatri acknowledges that — for all the financial stress of that period — he still had the advantages of education and connections. He went on to study at Harvard Business School and to co-found an internet software start-up, which he later sold.
差立承认,尽管那段时间承受的经济压力很大,但他仍然接受了良好的教育并且建立了人脉。接着他就读哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School),和其他人共同创办了一家互联网软件初创公司,后来他出售了这家公司。
He then spent 10 years in the hedge fund industry but recalls finding the world of pure finance “empty”. He was ready to act on his insight about the gap in the market for big-money sports in Asia. “Every region of the world has several multi-billion-dollar sports properties entrenched in society and culture and tradition — and I see no difference here,” he says.
之后他在对冲基金行业工作了10年,但是他发现纯粹的金融世界是“空虚的”。他准备根据自己对亚洲体育市场缺口的认识有所作为。“全世界每个地区都有多个价值数十亿美元的体育资产深深根植于社会、文化和传统之中——我不认为这里有任何区别,”他表示。
Mr Chatri presents One Championship as a “responsible” outfit, compared with western combat sports, whose “entire marketing platform is focused on glorifying the fights, the violence, the blood, the antagonism”.
差立把ONE冠军赛标榜为一家“负责任的”机构,相比之下,西方格斗运动的“整个营销平台注重的是赞美格斗、暴力、血腥和敌意”。
He casts the event in a social role by featuring the “inspiring” life stories of fighters who have sometimes come from grinding poverty.
他借助那些出身贫寒的拳手“鼓舞人心”的人生故事,为该赛事赋予了社会意义。
Purses per fight range from $5,000 for an entry-level fighter to $300,000 or more for a top name — riches in a martial arts world full of stories of fighters being exploited by unscrupulous promoters. He says most events have been sell-outs or close to full in stadiums with capacities typically between 5,000 and 20,000.
每场比赛的出场费从初级拳手的5000美元,到顶级拳手的逾30万美元不等——在拳手经常被不道德的筹办者剥削的武术界,这是可观的财富。他表示,绝大多数比赛都座无虚席或接近满座,体育场馆的容纳人数通常在5000至2万人之间。
Mr Chatri says One Championship is made for changing sports viewing habits as fans have moved away from television and on to smartphones. “No one is going to watch a 90-minute soccer game on their mobile device,” he says. “But our contact is three [five-minute] rounds per fight and 80 per cent of our fights end before that, through either a knockout or submission, a finish.”
差立表示,随着粉丝远离电视、转向智能手机,ONE冠军赛处于有利地位,能够适应不断变化的体育观赛习惯。“没人会在移动设备上观看90分钟的足球赛,”他称,“但我们的比赛是每场3回合(每回合5分钟),80%的比赛结束得更快,要么是一记KO(技术性击倒),要么是认输。”
Nevertheless, television is still part of One’s strategy. It broadcasts via a mix of free-to-air television, cable and $9.99 event livestreams. The company says it now has a broadcast footprint in 118 countries with a potential 1bn viewers, while its social media video views have grown from 312,000 in 2014 to a projected 314m in 2017, based on company forecasts from data gathered by Nielsen, Facebook and Repucom.
尽管如此,电视仍然是ONE经营策略的一部分。ONE通过免费电视、有线电视以及9.99美元的赛事直播的混合方式进行播放。该公司称,ONE冠军赛如今在118个国家落地,潜在观众10亿人。与此同时,根据该公司对尼尔森(Nielsen)、Facebook和Repucom收集的数据所做的预测,其社交媒体视频观看次数将从2014年的31.2万人次增至2017年的3.14亿人次。
The company already bills itself as the largest sports media property in Asia and aims to build revenues further through brand licensing, among other means, for products such as protein shakes and video games, Mr Chatri says.
该公司已经自我标榜为亚洲最大的体育媒体资产,差立表示,打算通过蛋白粉和视频游戏等产品的品牌授权等其他方式,进一步创收。
It is too early to judge if Mr Chatri will hit his target of listing the company in New York or Hong Kong. But he reckons he has already proved his central idea that Asian audiences will flock to see performers of Asian heritage do battle in Asia.
现在判断差立是否会达到让公司在纽约或香港上市的目标,为时尚早。但他认为自己的核心观点已得到证明,即亚洲观众将蜂拥观看亚洲的武术传承者对战。
“I’ll just say it’s tribal,” he says. “People want to root for people who look like them, eat like them, think like them, live life like them — and that’s resonating.”
“我只会说这是部落传统,”他称,“人们希望支持那些长得像自己,饮食习惯、思维模式和生活模式和自己一样的人——而这正在产生共鸣。”