Any tips on starting a small company?

[chaz4594]

Like the title says, Does anyone have any tips on how to start from a small company? I would just like some tips or advice on how to make the company bigger or any general tips. Thank You

[AlexB]

Assuming you have a small finance level, and don't want to cheat, don't bother with signing stars - when you are unknown, even a Low Level Regional (LLR) fighter is a headline star for you. And a LLR fighter on a winning streak is often a headline fighter for even a mid level regional company

Sign as many unknown fighters as you can on long term deals as they will only cost you 100 per fight, and sign LLR fighters on as long a deal as you can to keep long term costs down.

Reduce every fighters merchandise cut to 10% or less, keep strict control of win bonuses, and make sure you use a plus/minus win scale - that way losing fighters will gradually cost you less and less.

Basically don't get greedy - just use fighters who are at or ever so slightly above your level, and if you have to fight another company for a fighter, ignore the guy and look for someone else - keeping control of costs is key.

[BHK1978]

Originally Posted by chaz4594

Like the title says, Does anyone have any tips on how to start from a small company? I would just like some tips or advice on how to make the company bigger or any general tips. Thank You

This is going to sound like a non-reply but, just keep putting on shows. When you are a small company, you will find that your company will grow by leaps and bounds.

Also, try to not put that many fights on your first couple of cards so you do not end up losing money. I would say no more than three or four fights per card.

[xspudx]

...It seriously does it for you.

What I did is put 6 shows on a year. 3 tv shows, 3 ppvs, ppv's were tournaments for lw, mw and hw divisions. I'm at high level national 3/4 years in.

[Damian]

I just made it to Low Level National, starting at Unknown, it'd pretty tough. I can't remember what setting it is, but I started with $100,000 (one of the lowest ones). I ran 9 big events and 3 TV shows (they seem to do more for popularity but you will lose a lot of money running them)

Best advice is to sign Unknowns. I found I could get win bonus' as low as 15%, all other bonuses at 1% (get them on LONG 10 fight - 5 guaranteed deals over 48 months) That way when they get known, you're still paying nothing for them and that'll help massively when the company reaches Mid/High Regional and it's costly to sign 'stars'

I tried never to pay over £3k to a star (may be best to sign them on Associate deals to keep costs down too) but eventually had to bring in some names charging up to £7 so I could get into National (star power really flopped towards the High Regional mark) and I made it to National with just enough funds to run ONE more show... that finally brought the money back in.

So it can be tough, but is really fun... and frustrating when the computer steals your best fighters

[Lt. Lucrativo]

As others have suggested, signing talented young fighters to 10 fight exclusive contracts is key, as you can build up really popular fighters with as few as four or five wins and still have them locked in for several cheap fights with your company. On the other side of the coin, though, cheap, talentless cans should also be your bread and butter. You need a variety of fighters to use to make your budding superstars look like superstars. As a small company, you can get away with almost never putting on a competitive fight and just constantly putting your stars over cans--when starting small, I usually try to save my first really competitive fight between talented fighters to headline my first Pay Per View.

The key thing, I think, is to protect your undefeated fighters until you're in a position where you can take full advantage of putting them in a competitive fight where they're legitimately at risk of picking up their first loss--and in my opinion, that doesn't come until you can put them on PPV and really use them to draw money. This is because fighters on undefeated streaks seem to pick up much more reputation and popularity from each win than fighters who have losses on their records and they're also bigger draws than fighters who have similar popularity levels but also have losses--the AI MMA fans absolutely love undefeated fighters.

In the meantime, keep putting your talented fighters on protected long-term contracts over cans and building up their undefeated streaks. Throw in some can vs. can fights to make sure you've got a few cans who are coming off of wins and thus have enough credibility to be used as sacrificial lambs against your stars in main events. And as you grow and start to be able to use slightly more expensive fighters, you can start looking to sign a few cans or formerly talented but washed up fighters who have a little bit of popularity and/or reputation that you can transfer to your budding stars to make them even bigger names.

By the time I'm ready to start looking for a PPV deal, I like to have at least three or four undefeated fighters per division sitting at around five or six wins (with a good four or five fights left on their contracts) and having low to mid-national level popularity. That gives me easily a year's worth of PPV main events that will really draw money to work with and means that it's easy to grow the company really quickly to the point where it's possible to sign a deal with a larger PPV provider and start to work on increasing international exposure. Having a mess of cheap PPV main events in your pocket also means your money woes are over as you've got star fighters who are going to draw a whole lot more money than you're going to have to pay them.