Feature: Working undercover for the UFC

A man, for the purpose of this story we’ll call him Tony, has a story he wants to tell. “Last thing I want is a lawsuit from Zuffa,” he said by way of introduction, asking that his name be withheld. It’s that kind of story.

It’s a story about the UFC and one of the many ways they go out of their way to tackle pay-per-view piracy. Tony was one of a number of men, working with the world’s largest MMA promotion to shut down pirates. The nights have all started running together in his memory, but they often started something like this…

Tony turned off the highway and onto a poorly lit back-country road. He was covering an east coast beat and he’d been driving out to this latest assignment for at least an hour, glancing over at hand written directions to the middle of God knows where. He checked the clock. 9:48PM. “Damn,” he thought. “Where the heck is this place?” After a few turns he passed a gas station, some houses, and then, in the distance, he saw what he was looking for. Bright pink letters, written in chalk, poked out from between a group of sleeveless smoking men. ‘UFC 117 HERE!’

If it wasn’t UFC 117 exactly, that was almost always how it went.

As he got closer Tony spotted posters across the bar’s front windows. In this case it would have been a wall of Anderson Silvas. Behind them he could see the bar filling up. And as he passed – with his window down on a warm August evening – he made out music, of some sort. He checked the clock again. Almost ten. Tony circled the bar and found a lot facing the backdoor. He parked, stepped out of the car, and drew his Blackberry. On tip toes, he looked towards the bar’s roof, but couldn’t quite see what he was after. He walked up the street, looking for a better view of a satellite dish perched atop the building. He made sure his phone’s camera had the flash turned off, and then he snapped a few shots of the dish.

I would be shaking from adrenaline because I was getting excited for the fights!

Again, maybe this time he wasn’t on tip toes. Maybe the music wasn’t quite so loud, maybe it was April. But it was always some variation of the bar and the satellite and the posters and the music.

As the hour struck ten, Tony strolled around to the front doors and slipped inside, past yet more posters of Anderson Silva. The place was packed and the music was loud, but it wasn’t anything he recognized; they weren’t singing in English. Tony looked to the walls; flags and soccer jerseys. It was a Brazilian bar. Everyone inside was Brazilian. Tony did not look Brazilian.

“I thought, I’m gonna stick out like a sore thumb!” said Tony as he recalled one of his many ZUFFA-mandated undercover missions from the summer of 2010. After working in law enforcement down south, and contracting out in the Middle East, Tony returned home; he was looking to become a private eye. Little did he know where it would lead.

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Not long after getting certified, he received a curious message online. It was from Joe Hand Promotions. They were looking for guys like him.

It is illegal, under US federal law, to exhibit a pay-per-view event in a commercial venue without a corresponding commercial license for that event. Pennsylvania-based Joe Hand Promotions has been distributing UFC pay-per-view commercial licenses since 2001. On June 28th, 2016 the UFC announced that they had renewed their agreement with Joe Hand Promotions with a multi-year-deal that will ensure that the company remains the UFC’s exclusive commercial distributor of pay-per-view events for the foreseeable future.

As recently as this year, a commercial license to screen a single UFC pay-per-view event could run as much as $1,680.* But some establishments balk at ponying up more than a grand for a UFC PPV, especially when they can get the home version for $50-60. Rig up a cable box – or a laptop with a UFC.tv account – to their big screen TV and who’s going to know the difference? That’s why Joe Hand Promotions has been hiring a lot of guys like Tony.

According to him, Joe Hand Promotions runs a network of fight watching flatfoots who go to bars across the United States looking to dig up evidence that one of these businesses is showing a UFC pay-per-view without paying the right price. Along with receipts to prove he was on the premises for an illegal screening, Tony had a to-do-list for …

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