New Japan Pro Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Noah, Dragon Gate, DREAM, K-1, Sengoku, Jewels, Shooto, Inoki Genome Federation, Pancrase, Cage Force, DEEP, Spirit MC, Fighting Mixed Combative, Moosin, plus sumo and boxing.Dana White says these guys are keeping the UFC out of the Japanese market. SavSci Japan expert Lyman Hoyt explains the real problem, and how Zuffa can fix it.
These groups all receive higher profile coverage in Japan than does the UFC. Plain and simple, the UFC is of borderline relevance in The Land of the Rising Sun.
This isn’t to disparage the UFC, which has done a great job growing MMA in North America and parts of Europe. It’s an effort to put Dana White’s claims of Zuffa’s ‘inevitable’ worldwide dominance into perspective.
The first reaction of knuckledragging Brock Lesnar fanboys will no doubt be to say “Who cares about the Japs?” One person who cares—or should care—is Dana White. Japan is easily the #2 MMA market in the entire world. Though White tries to dismiss Zuffa’s failure to penetrate the Asian market as a function of its “Yakuza corruption”—and to be sure, there is an element of underworld involvement in fight promotions not only in Japan but in Korea—the reality is that the UFC has always been tone deaf to the cultural differences inherent in their fanbase.
They’re not alone in failing to understand and gain traction in the Japanese market. Vince McMahon and the WWE has also failed miserably in their efforts to promote in the country. And to be sure, you can make a lot of money elsewhere in the world. Still, any suggestion that a promotion can ‘take over the world’ as White has grandiosely proclaimed on a number of occasions without the Japanese market is utter foolishness.
While Dana’s f-bomb laden rants and confrontational business style has won him a lot of admirers in the US, it’s done nothing but further alienate Japanese fans and businesses from the UFC. The Dana White management style is an anathema to the way the Japanese do business. While he’s not alone in this cultural disconnect since plenty of US businesses have tripped over themselves trying to do business in Japan, in his particular industry with so many first rate fighters, fight sport savvy businesses and rabid fans in the country its particularly destructive.
The Japanese don’t inherently have a problem with ‘big personalities’—in fact, many suggest that the viability of the IGF pro wrestling promotion is simply a function of the country’s reverence for Antonio Inoki. Even so, Inoki has his detractors and some question his ability to make his current promotional incarnation viable in the long run. Still, his ‘big personality’ hasn’t been an issue with the Japanese fans and the IGF promotion will succeed or fail on its own merits.
The reason for the UFC’s utter failure to penetrate the Japanese market is simple—Dana White is an anathema to Japanese business culture. As long as he’s in charge of establishing the brand in the marketplace, they will fail. This is no personal slight to Dana who, again, is made to order for the US market. It’s the simple reality that doing in business in Japan requires a different approach than doing business in the United States. That’s why there are countless international business consultants who earn a nice living helping foreign corporations gain traction in Japan. Companies that learn to adapt their approach—and to some extent their products—for the market thrive and profit, companies that do not—and at this point, you can count the UFC among them—are doomed to failure in Japan, and will struggle to gain traction in other Asian markets.
Here are the three essential qualities for doing business in Japan, along with an analysis of what they mean to Zuffa’s efforts to build the UFC brand there:
Group Orientation/Collaboration: Japanese businessmen are notorious for sublimating their individual talents and personalities to the greater good of the group. Furthermore, Japanese business places a great emphasis on teamwork and collaboration. For US businesses seeking to enter the market, a certain degree of partnership with existing Japanese firms is almost de rigueur. MMA fans can see the biggest problem Zuffa may face from a mile away—their reticence to enter into co-promotional agreements. While their public disdain for co-promotion was a major sticking point in their negotiations with Fedor Emelianenko, it may very well be a case that they didn’t want to do business with M-1 Global. To a certain extent, it’s difficult to blame them. On the other hand, the UFC worked with Germany’s largest concert promoter (MLK) to enter that market with a fair degree of success. Even if the UFC didn’t want to go promote with one of the major players in Japanese fight sports, they’d be well advised to seek some sort of a partnership similar to their German initiative to help smooth their way.
Hierarchy: Japanese business and, for that matter, Japanese culture, is almost ridiculously hierarchical. The societal reverence for age, experience and accomplishment in Japan is well known, and that’s often a difficult concept for American companies and businessmen to grasp. Much of the reason for this is the relative ‘openness’ of US culture, particularly as it relates to business. US businesses love ‘mavericks’ and ‘Horatio Alger stories’. That accounts for much of the business media’s fascination with Dana White and they’re quick to celebrate how a former aerobics instructor is now the most powerful man in MMA and the driving force of a billion dollar company. That storyline doesn’t play as well in Japan, however. One approach would be for White to take a ‘back seat’ in UFC efforts to promote in Japan in favor of Lorenzo Fertitta—who has much more conventional business experience from his time in the casino industry—and perhaps Marc Ratner, widely respected for his time at the Nevada Athletic Commission.
Respect: Even among seedy elements like fight promoters—and even the underworld—respect in business dealings is essential in Japan. In a typical Japanese business deal, the first few meetings aren’t intended for any substantive decision making to take place. Instead, they’re used for evaluation of your professionalism or, as the Japanese like to put it, to determine ‘your suitability for conducting business with’. Considering that Dana White’s first introduction to the PRIDE staff and to the Japanese fight public was a press conference where he made the statement—more in reference to the proposed bouts between UFC and PRIDE fighters than anything else—“We’re going to kick your ass”. At that moment, PRIDE as a promotion died. The people that worked for PRIDE had no interest in helping White profit from the promotion. More significantly, he became little more than a clown to the Japanese public—like “Money From Government Grants” shill Mathew Lesko without the funny suit. To succeed in Japan, the UFC must realize that they’re not considered a major fight promotion in that country. They must understand that they’ve got to win over a skeptical public, but before that they have to win over a skeptical Japanese business community. They might be able to run their company like Tony Soprano ran the garbage collection business in the US, but that approach applied to Japan will leave them exactly where they are now—on the outside looking in at the huge, fight crazy economy.
Dana White’s fanciful stories about corrupt promoters and Yakzua gangsters out of Quentin Tarantino movies might amuse his sycophants in the MMA media, but countless US companies including fight promotions have done business successfully and profitably in Japan. The UFC might be able to convince the clueless US media that they’re making progress in Japan due to a deal on a low profile TV network or more recently a big ad campaign on a Japanese social networking site but they’re currently spinning their wheels and going nowhere. Properly promoting stars like Yoshihiro Akiyama will help, but the only way that Zuffa will be able to become a factor in the world’s #2 MMA market is to do what every other company has done to be successful there—learn how to understand the Japanese approach to doing business, and play by their rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment