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Chatri Sityodtong

lines on the record: 159
first: 2025-06-04
most recent: 2025-06-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That was Around the same time, maybe 2017, 2018. Sequet was around 2017, so maybe a year after that. So what happened was after the word got out in Asia, but around the world that Doug personally, or GGF, it's called, I think the Sequoia Global Growth Fund, which is managed by them by Doug and Mike, invested in one. That's when we got invited to speak at Milken, World Economic Forum. But at each of these things was somebody who loved martial arts or saw the purity of what Warner was doing and how different it was from anything else that existed on the planet. It was one thing after another. And again, like, you know, when you open this talk, you said, hey, I have this WhatsApp group with my buddies who are all your friend Doug introduced you to this one. That is literally how all the dots have connected is like somebody saw that and then you said I don't mean to offend you but it reminds me of pride in K1. And of course, I know your background having lived in Japan.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of Qatar invested in one as a result of this me sitting in milkin next to Hassan al-Tawadi, who is literally like a brother now. We're very close, who's a martial artist like you, Tim, okay?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The World Cup guitar. And this was also like eight years ago. So we're sitting on a panel and then it's NBA and then it's F1. And they just sat us next to each other. And Hassan turns me and says, Chacha, I want to meet you afterwards. He says, oh, yeah, of course. We have this meeting and he's like, Chatri, I've been doing Muay Thai for like five years. I love Dimitri Johnson. I love Rotang. And we had this one hour pow on. And I'm like thinking this is the chairman of Qatar World Cup, which is going to be happening in, I think, I don't know, four or five years from now, right? And he's like Chatri, hey, why don't you come to Qatar? Just I want to show you around. Hassan. And we became very fast friends and I flew to Qatar for the first time during COVID in 2020. Everything was shut down. I got some special visa to leave the country Singapore and got some special visa to be allowed to enter Qatar. I go there. Now I've been to Qatar and Qatar is literally like a second home to me now. Qatar investment authority, the government.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mike Morris Douglas, investing in one. And so CAA's division that invests contacted us and we did a call. But what transpired from there was a friendship with Fabian and many years and again he was instrumental in helping us crack the US market. And CA was also instrumental in getting us Sky Sports in the UK. You know, that's the biggest sports broadcaster. It's the ESPN of whatever it is, right? Of the UK, of Europe. It's literally one thing after another. I'll give you a great example. I am on this panel for Milkin Institute. It's a conference, a business conference. I'm on this sports panel. And literally next to me is a name now a very close brother.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I might be getting the dates wrong, but I think when Sequoia announced they invested in us, that came with a lot of interest.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. Maybe they saw the address of market was huge. Maybe they saw the brand. You know, it's hard for me to know exactly.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's still there. He's a very senior person. He's basically in charge of selling meteorites for properties for the biggest sports price. So he did NASCAR. I forget which ones, but the very big ones, MLB, et cetera. And again, almost 10 years ago, he spotted us and the investment arm of CA was looking at invest at an early stage company like ours. And Fabian was from the meteorite side and Fabio and I hit it off. He actually was one that helped orchestrate this Amazon deal. But that's what I mean, Tim. Along the way, so many incredible people appeared and just suddenly believed in what we were doing, believed that the world needed a major global sports property out of the continent of Asia. Because if you think about all the big sports properties around the world, global sports property only came from the West. We're literally the first and only global sports property coming out of the East, sending content around the world, okay?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Very problem, but they do all the sports media rights properties literally in 2016, 2017, around that same time period, Fabian and I, we met over a video call because one of the divisions within CA was looking at potentially investing in us. And Fabian and I just hit it off. And he's based in New York.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know where I read this, but I read this saying of go chase your dream and the path will appear. And the people will appear. Something along that lines, I'm screwing up the quote. But when I started this thing, it is crazy how much luck, again, just like that breakfast I said, right? But around that same time, a guy named Fabian Stecho from CAA, which is CAA's the second world's largest agency business, they do all the meteorites for all the major sports properties. They have all the major Hollywood stars. And, you know, it's a...”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They called and said, Hey, we want to put 100 million. And I was shocked. But Doug and Michael only met me for one hour. But they're legends for a reason, right? I don't know. They're a lot smarter than I am. So, you know, what do I know?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At Squid combed over all the numbers I remember that breakfast I can remember like yesterday. I just remember walking away feeling like everything was so laid back, almost disarming and so I don't know that maybe their line of questioning or how they did it. It's just like there was no gamesmanship. There's nothing. I was just like plump. Whatever they asked, the way they asked it, I felt comfortable enough to just give them good, bad, and ugly of the business versus in the earlier days I might have tried to paint the most positive light possible, right? I'm sure that if it was my very, very first time meeting Sequoia and I was that way, it may not have worked, but I don't, I just went with the flow. And I remember that morning, I just went with the flow. And that's why after the breakfast, I thought, man, there's going to be a lot more meetings because there's no way there's going to invest. And actually, they didn't tell me that this meeting was one and done. I had no expectation. They just said, hey, come to breakfast. That was literally it. And they didn't tell me anything. And it was, again, two hours later.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess they're legends in the business and they've earned their reputation that way and the experience base must be so vast in sussing out business models and founders and entrepreneurs and whatnot that they can, it's pattern recognition.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was so informal and so casual. And I had a presentation prepared. I had my laptop, you know, but it ended up just being like, you know, how do you like your eggs? And like, it just, it was very flat.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mike and Doug both. And I don't know how they solve it. Are dead right? If you ask me what is the necessary skill required, even to this day, it would be exactly what Mike said, and it's exactly what Doug said about the business. In one hour, I don't know if they had prepared a plan or I don't know, but they slice and dice and then. And again, like two hours later, literally, Shalendra calls me and says, we want to cut you a check for $100 million. And I think it was about a billion dollar valuation around there.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would not be able to replicate this, or at least Tim, you'd have to give me, you and I would have to go raise $10 billion together and you have to give me at least another 10 years to gather that many fans, to put out that many videos. We put out about 20,000 videos a year right now, all produced in-house. So it's just this. And again, Douglas Leone just nailed it. On one hand, Doug is this like business model genius that's slicing and dicing. On the other hand, Mike was slicing and dicing the human characteristics, if I was the right founder, if I was right entrepreneur, did I have the right”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Million fans, okay, globally. If I left one and I said, you have to now compete with one championship, I'm going to look at one championship going to do about 40 billion organic video views this year. They have 500 million fans. They're in 190 countries broadcast live every single week. They have the best athletes across every single discipline. Where do I begin? Do I fly to Amazon and say, hey, it's Chachra. Do you remember me? Or do I go to our world champions and say, hey, your contract's going to end?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said, There are no three engineers in this world that can dismantle what you've created right up at this point. Because at that point, maybe I had a few billion organic video views. And at that point, maybe we're in 117, 120 countries broadcast. There was clearly momentum being built and clearly had broken through a lot of barriers. Government started getting interested in us. So it was just, he could see that different stakeholders were going to derive economic value from the platform we've built. But he could also, and he literally said this to me, and I remember. He said, there's no engineering team in this world that can dismantle. And that was very powerful. So, you know, most companies, tech companies, software companies, can be dismantled by a great team. But does it better, faster, cheaper, or whatever, right? But no sports property, no global sports property can get dismantled in a heartbeat. We now have about 500 million fans, a little over 500.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a little bit crazy, so I have a high tolerance for risk. And I guess even though I did almost quit in 2014, I guess I do have a little bit of resilience. But I didn't think of myself in terms of the way Mike Mortz was saying. And Doug, his questions were about the business. And he educated me in that one hour that what I'm sitting on in a sports product is a platform business. He's the ultimate platform business, actually. He said most tech companies, SaaS or platform, this, that, they can get broken. And he gave a great example. And I don't want to name names of a tech company, but it was a relatively well-known tech company. It is a relatively well-known tech name. But he gave the example and said, you know, three PhD engineers in Stanford, if they come up with the right solution, can dismantle this, you know, at the time it was a $10 billion company, they can dismantle like that.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who can attract and retain the very best people on the planet? And not every business plan needs that, he said. But in this case, it requires a founder that can attract and retain the very best. And he just looked me in the eye, guys. I think you're the guy. I think you're going to be able to convince broadcasters, athletes, investors, group presidents, chief commercial officers, internal and external stakeholders to build this whole thing. I'm like, in one hour, how could he have guessed that about me? And I didn't even have that impression of myself. I just thought, hey, I'm a guy who loves martial arts.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was very interesting because I remember Mike Moritz asking very qualitative human questions about me, about my motivation, about how I hire people. It was just very qualitative. And so I didn't think the breakfast would result in an investment. I thought it would just be another prolonged process. I'd have to go to Silicon Valley and it'd be just a long, prolonged process. And it quickly sussed out very quickly. He said, this thing is so big. This project is so big. But it's going to require a founder with unbelievable resilience. And that's why you got to find the guy who, this is his life's calling. He said, it also requires a founder.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, attend Kukreja. I'm giving a shout out to Attend Krukja, Ripple. He is the best TMT investment bank out here in Asia.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember ten, eleven in the morning I'm walking and eat Challenger calls me and says, we want to put a check for $100 million. They think you're onto something special. And man, I'm eternally grateful to this day. I mean, eternally grateful to Mike Morris and Douglas Nillen. In that one hour, they slice and dice in the business completely and even me as a person. I'm telling you this, oh journey have been moments of serendipity, moments of just good blessings for us to get this far. It's mine blowing to me and I would never have done it if you told me do it again. It's just luck.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Main fund to invest into one. And again, I might begin the years wrong, but around 2017, if my memory serves me right, I think that was $100 million at a billion dollar valuation around there. I was in shock because after the breakfast, which I thought went okay, I know it was an hour, literally two hours later, Shai Lender says we want to cut you a check for $100 million. Two hours after the breakfast. So we have the breakfast at the morning.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's the four of us. And I'm sitting there. And they're asking all examples. And Mike Moore says, you know, ask all these questions. And I will never forget it at the end of the breakfast. Mike says, Ha tree. There are founders who, their entire reason for being born on this planet, and he named, I think it was like, you think you named Bill Gates or whatever it is, you know, for Microsoft that were put on this earth for that one reason, to go after something gargantuan. And you are that guy for this opportunity. And most founders are there for a business opportunity. They see a pain point in the market and they solve the solution and the IPOs or they sell the company and then they move on to the next thing. He just looked me in the eye and says, this is going to be a home run. No, they grilled me all these different kind of questions. So the funding actually came out $100 million funding came out of Silicon Valley. So this is the first sports investment in the history of Sequoia in Silicon Valley. So it didn't even come out of the Asia Fund.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So on Sunday, it was a Sunday Asia demanded to meet us, to meet me. So on Sunday I had breakfast, me and my partner had breakfast with Sequoia. And they told us, I mean, as Chalander said, we want you to drop the investment bank. We want you not to go on the roadshow. We will fund it. This is the first institutional funding, you know, and they funded, and it was a small check. I think it was like 15 million. But about a year later, I think, is when Mike Moritz and Douglas Leone were in town, only for a couple days because they were doing a thing doing Asia-wide tours, only a couple of days in Singapore. And Chad Lender said, hey, I want them to meet you.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He walked in to the elevator and Shilendra Singh, the managing partner of Sequoia Asia, was in the elevator. He happened to be carrying the one championship slides that hockey stick shards. And Shilendra said to our investment bank, Ripple. Is the name of the thing? And our investment banker's name, Atin Kukreja. It turns in and says, what company is that? And he goes, oh, it's a sports company called Won Shamisham. What is that? And on the elevator ride, Shai Lender decided I want a meeting with these guys. I'm going to fund them. Of the metric Literally, like this literally what happened”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is what I mean about serendipity. Long story cut short, it was around April of 2016. We had hired a small investment bank and we said we want to now go raise institutional funding and we didn't have any institutions at the time. It was still bootstrapping. But we think we had enough to go raise institutional funding. We had a slide with our metric, a couple of slides with our metrics, you know, hockey stick, all these big hockey stick charts. And that was like, I think four o'clock. The meeting ended with our bank. Walk out. And now we didn't think anything of it. Two hours later, the investment banker calls us and says, Sequoia, Asia wants to meet you. And we're like, how did you do what? Investment bank”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I call it $100 million breakfast because Sequoia Asia Orchestrated it. They thought we were onto something very big. And they said, Mike Morris and Douglaster Leon are coming and we're only booking a handful of meetings for them because they're a very busy schedule.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When in Super Bowl, the entire country watches. And that is something that one day I do want when we have a major world championship fight that the whole world stops to watch like Olympics. I think when there's a gold medal, like Olympic swimming final or 100 meter dash final, I think there's something like a billion, billion five people watch, right? I can see that happening with one. I can genuinely see that having a billion, billion five concurrent viewers watching or World Cup soccer finals I think did a couple billion concurrent viewers. I can see one doing it because just this year our numbers have we've already broken our previous high by 300 or 400% In our last event. So, can you imagine on these big numbers of 30 and 40 billion organic video views, we are still breaking our records on a single individual event by 3x.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Built the first page, and I was actually a social media manager. Something about my personality is probably very similar to your, Tim, is like when you do something, you're all in. Okay. So when I decided that Facebook was going to be it, I said to myself, I want to be the best Facebook manager on the planet. So I was obsessed, not about reading. I was obsessed about experimenting, learning every little trick. And, you know, of course, I was reading in variations, but I would look at all these other pages that were doing very well. And I would just steal ideas and think about concepts and just being completely consumed by it. And of course, it helped a lot that I myself, because I'm a lifelong martial arts, I know what the fight fan wants. I know. I know exactly, right? At the same time, I wanted to build a property that transcended fight fans. I wanted to be truly mainstream, right? Again, that's something that NFL has done incredibly well in America.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I have to give credit, and I tell our team this we have the very best social media team on the planet. Many of my teammates have been on this journey for a long time with me. But I do believe, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but it's the fact that I actually”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lap car race on your mobile, right? You're just not. That's what I mean about luck. But yes, everything you described about our content and how we explain a STAM fair text or, you know, yes, she's the best in the world, but does she twerk? Does she dance? Does she sing? Is she cute? Is her personality larger than life? And that's her real personality. You know, that's another thing about us. Everything we do is about authenticity. There's no manufacturing. There's no like, oh, well, let that person be a bad guy, that person be a good guy. Let's create drama between them. They hate each other. Let's stage a camera. For all of our content and everything we do is that it's real martial arts”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ping pong ball, the tennis ball, the soccer ball, the basketball, the football, you cannot see clearly on a mobile device. And I'll give you a great example. When Naomi Osak won the U.S. Open for the first time, and I remember because she's half Japanese, right? So I was like, oh my God, half Japanese version one like me, blah, blah. So I looked at Facebook and I could see, you know, it was highlights of her match. And I looked at it and I couldn't see the ball. And I'm like, two seconds, I just strolled past because I'm like, I couldn't consume it. That's what I mean by luck. Combat sports is the perfect content for mobile devices. And that's why you have the two giants, UFC and one today dominating in that sphere and why we have Milena and Gen Z audience and why other sports are struggling and trying to catch up, but they have the wrong content genre for mobile device because you cannot see the soccer ball, the football, the ping pong ball, the tennis ball. You can barely see the basketball. It is very hard to consume. And no one's going to watch 200.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today. What do they do? Their first window of media consumption is their mobile device. They wake up in the morning, they look at TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is. They look at it 10, 20 times a day before they go to bed. That's the last point of media consumption. What does that mean? You need to dominate the mobile device. And that was what we did in 2014. We said to ourselves, we are going to dominate the mobile device. Why is this lucky? Because mobile device took off. Facebook took off. All those social took off.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the same time, you have to be true to why we started this company. You have to be true to real martial arts, finishes, real bushiddo, the warrior way, you know, not bachardizing or cheapening into some sort of street fight thug by having your athletes create fake drama about hating each other or whatever it is. That's just not what I think will transcend and become truly mainstream. I think at the end of the day, people want to watch all of the world, the very best of the best go at it, but they want to know the stories behind why this person is what they're doing and why he or she is where they're at and what are the stakes of this fight. And of course we have to be very sharp about every single platform has a specific algorithm that it's looking for and marry that. So that's all the skills aspect of what we can control. But what I mean by luck is you look at the mobile device, okay? Millennium Gen Zs, which make up 80% of our audience.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or something very like, oh my God. Oh, something that's going to surprise and delight you in your day. So you're going to hang out with us and watch 10 times a day. You know, whenever you go TikToks, Instagram, wherever, you know, or do you in quai show, Webo in China, et cetera?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the controllable factors. Are the controllable factors obviously you have to know what the combat support fan wants, okay? But at the same time, if you're only appealing to the combat sports fan, it's a smaller market. If you're able to tell a story and make it more mainstream, again, about abject poverty or tragedy or adversity or whatever it may be, that can transcend beyond a combat sportsman and go viral around the world to human interest stories. So, of course, one is my team and I, and I was literally the first social media manager, and I understood that you have to crack the algorithm. But if you just blindly follow the algorithm, you'll put out junk because you're just chasing endlessly. You have to be very clear about who do you want to be? What are you trying to communicate? And what are you trying to do by giving this video to your fans? We always say we want to invoke emotion, strong emotion, laughter, sadness, inspiration.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, there's a lot of element of good luck. I don't want my team or Rye to be so arrogant and to say and have the world believe that it was just hard work in our genius.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sacrifices I went through, my parents going through, and if I win, of course, the person's big and blah, blah, blah, all the other stuff. If you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, you're unbreakable. That is what I, at the end of the day, try to remind our athletes that they are fighting for something much bigger than themselves.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have walked in their shoes in training and competing in injuries or whatever it is. So there's a real bond that I have with our athletes. And the fact that I train every day and I train with them, I mean, you know, I don't want to name names, but I train with our athletes, you know, different athletes that come by, or I'm flying to Tokyo or I fly to Denver or I go wherever, you know, because I'm always training no matter where I am, I always train. How do you produce a six Sigma performance? It's not because you train and you're, you know,”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Last show in Tokyo at Saitama in March, our last big show, we broke viewership record. We did 2.3 billion organic video views on digital and social, okay, 2.3 billion on single show. I didn't know at that time it was going to be that big at the time. And that's excluding our TV broadcast, right? So our TV broadcast around the world. Then we ended up trending number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, but trending in US and UK and France and Australia, Thailand, Japan. It was just trending all over the world. China. And I tell them, how do you want the world to remember you tonight? You have a chance to unleash your greatness upon the world in a way that you will make magical memories for your fans. You will create something extraordinary. And I've had fighters cry in those huddles I have. And then I walk away. And the reason why I can give this kind of speech is because I have walked it, I mean, maybe not at the elite level that they're...”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about or I ask them about why are they here? They've spent typically 10, 15 years training six hours a day, six days a week to reach the pinnacle of martial arts, the highest level in the world in one championship. And I asked them to think about all the sacrifices, all the heartbreaks they suffered through, the injuries they've gone through, how many birthdays did they miss, how many friends, parties, how many cousins or nephews or nieces, birthdays do they miss, how many times had to sacrifice to get to this point? And then I asked him, you know, is this your greatest love? Is this what you are put on the planet for? And I make them really go deep. And if you are able to tap into a person's why, the deepest why, and you're able to then also tap into everything they have to suffer. And I tell them tonight it's broadcast live to 190 countries around the world with the biggest broadcasters.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you're protecting that O, right? So when we sign athletes, we look for the best of the best in the world. Doesn't matter what discipline, but we look for that killer instinct and the finishing rate. We really spend a lot of time looking at that. So that when you get two pit bulls who are there to finish, they're both the very best in the world. So that's one layer. You got to get the ingredients right. But then, as you said, the incentives. We pay the highest in the world for fight versus, but the win purse, but also the bonuses, especially knockout, you know, finish bonuses. That's the quantitative side of things. But then also backstage, again, before every big event, I line up the entire card and I literally give, and I think some of it's on social media, some of my speeches, but I literally give like a two minute rocky balbo type of speech. And I don't do it for drama. I do it because I really want to inspire every single athlete to give their very, very best performance.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Play a game, score points. That's not real martial arts. And there's guys without a perfect record. And as you know, some of the Thai world champions have 400 professional fights and they have lost 100 times. That's real fighting. If you have fought 400 times and your record is 300 wins and 100 losses, that is an average world championship record in Thailand as an example of an elite fighter because there are no like padded records like, you know, if someone's 50 and 0, it's highly suspect that they were given easy opponents or they chose their opponents at the right time or there's a little bit of this kind of manufacturing. And you see that a lot actually in the West. In the West, there's a lot of 20, 150, 30, different combat sports. It seems like the West really puts a priority. But the problem with that is, you know, the longer you go with an O, the more defensive you become as a fighter.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you, Tim. I'm truly grateful because you can see that because we try our best to have the, you'll see a typical one chapter cardian tomorrow night we have one Friday fights, right? That's every week. We have 12 fights. You'll see like eight, ten of them will be finishes and all 12 will be barn burners, okay? We don't have one championship where in other organizations they may have a 12 fight card, but eight fights are a little bit of a snooze fest or decisions. And then, you know, the main co-main is amazing. It lights up the stadium. It's literally from the go. first fight all the 12th fight it's as if they're fighting for their lives so i think our scouts around the world scoured 10 000 of the very best martial arts on the planet we give out 50 offers a year and we have a criteria for what we look for okay so let's say you're the best in the world but you are a decision a points person it's very unlikely you'll be signed by one it doesn't matter if you are like 50 and 0 like floyd mayweather but if you're there to like”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Judge's score. It's about finishing a robber coming to your house, somebody coming to harm your family. Martial arts is about finishing a danger situation, right? So that you live for another day. That spirit, that bushido, that samurai warrior spirit lives in one and lives in our athletes. And that's why we have a 70% finish rate.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People get knocked out or tapped out or choked out. It's a global duopoly now, right? UFC dominates in the West, we dominate in the East. We're roughly the same size. They have a 38% finish rate. And why is that? Because in America, there's predominantly American wrestlers like yourself and American wrestling is not necessarily geared towards finishing. It's an unbelievable martial art that controls. You can take the fighter down, pick him up against a cage. You can hold him. You can ground and pound him, but it's not necessarily a finishing, finishing, right? Versus out here, we got a ruptang or we get a, you know, it depends on the discipline or we sign the rule Total Brothers. Those guys are killers. So we look for the best of the best, but we try to find athletes who come to kill. And again, I don't mean kill in a bad way. What I mean is the true origins of martial arts is self-defense. Self-defense is not about dancing for points. It's not about taking someone down and waiting and letting the”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But very equally important is finishing ability. So this is something that's I don't know if other organizations look at it. I'm sure they look at it collect it, but I don't know if they look at it when they sign athletes. One chapter has a 70% finish rate. That means of all our fights, 70%.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like your friend said, is not luck. We have a chemistry lab, if you will, where we slice and dice qualitative and quantitatively. It's a team of about 13 or 14 folks. And we slice quantitatively and qualitatively and, you know, and all that. And of course, one huge benefit is all of us on the matchmaking team. We're all martial artists. So it's like, you know, Matt Hume, you know legendary Matt Hume. folks like Rich Franklin, you know, legendary martial arts himself. And so got very lucky that happened to be all my friends, right? My martial arts buddies. And we're all working together and we get to cook up the best fights. And another advantage we have is because we're not only doing MMA, we're the world's largest martial arts organization, right? We showcased everything from kickboxing, Muay Thai, submission, grappling, boxing, MMA, and everything. And the most important thing for us is signing the very best of the best athletes, the very best of the best martial artists.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of 1% that we're standing here, and there are many, many inflection points of luck. Just blessing. Yes, my team and I work our asses off and we made the right bets when it came. But if you told me 13 years later, you know, you're a top 10, according to Nielsen, top 10 largest global sports media property, there's no way I would have thought that would have happened. It's crazy. We're broadcast live in 190 countries every single week with the largest broadcasters, like it's Amazon on America, but it's Sky Sports in Europe, it's in Japan, it's UNEX, and in Thailand it's Channel 7, in Middle East it's bean sports. It boggles my mind what has happened. It's like a lot of hard work, a lot of love, pain, and suffering, but I have to be 100% honest. It's a lot of luck, a lot of luck. But putting on great fights.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT