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VIVA: The $250 Million Superyacht Of UFC Owner Frank Fertitta III

From his current position as CEO of Station Casinos to how he – alongside brother Lorenzo and childhood friend Dana White – transformed the UFC into a multi-billion-dollar promotion , there’s virtually endless information about how Frank Fertitta III made his fortune. How he chooses to spend said fortune, however, is a little more mysterious (at least for the fun stuff). One such indulgence we know the elder Fertitta brother has treated himself to is the ultra-luxurious Feadship-built superyacht known as Viva, which comes with an eye-watering price tag of US$175 million / AU$252 million.

Conceptualised by Azure Yacht Design & Naval Architecture in collaboration with De Voogt Naval Architects, while also showcasing interiors accomplished by Peter Marino, Viva was only completed in the Netherlands last year and delivered shortly thereafter.

RELATED: Inside Lawrence Stroll’s $282 Million Superyacht ‘Faith’

Back to the matter of Viva, it boasts an overall length of 308 feet / 94 metres with a 13.6-metre beam and gross tonnage of 2,999 – making it the 85th largest superyacht in the entire world; seventh largest ever constructed by Feadship – and can comfortably accommodate 14 guests across seven cabins alongside a capable crew of 18.

Viva has been called the “most environmentally-friendly luxury vessel of its kind” due to it featuring a hybrid propulsion system that allows the boat to cruise using diesel-electric power, as well as a waste treatment plant and heat recovering systems.

RELATED: Inside Aussie Rich Lister Ian Malouf’s Stunning €35 Million Superyacht Rebuild

Formal dining area
Beauty salon
Helipad w/ helicopter registered as N702FF (believed to have been chosen for Frank’s initials)

Viva has a steel hull and aluminium superstructure.

The annual running cost of this enviable billionaire’s toy? Over US$17.5 million / AU$25 million.

Viva was last sighted en route to Martha’s Vineyard by way of Nantucket — but you can check it out for yourself via the Superyacht Times’ video below.

NOTE : As interior photos have yet to be released, the shots embedded are just samples.

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Lonian Yacht: An Insider’s Guide

The Lonian Yacht, with an “L”, is a one-of-a-kind luxury yacht built by world-renowned Dutch shipyard Feadship in 2018 with naval architecture by De Voogt Naval Architects. The Lonian features exterior design handled by Sinot Yacht Architecture & Design, who handled all the interior design alongside Richard Hallberg Interior Design, and they succeeded in making something very unique.

Arguably the most unique thing you’ll notice about the Lonian if you ever see it docked anywhere is that it’s not alone. It has a support vessel called the Hodor, which measures a staggering 217 feet and features a crew of 22. That’s just the support ship.

As for Lonian itself, it features a steel hull and an aluminum superstructure. The exterior is a deep navy blue, and the entire yacht features liberal use of stainless steel and glass in its design elements. The yacht was also designed with unusual passages and openings that go from the inside to the outside and a dramatic bow. There are 22 openings across the ship to give the vessel a feeling of openness that’s not present on most yachts.

Who is the Lonian Yacht Owner?

Lonian was commissioned by American businessman Lorenzo Fertitta who you might recognize as the former CEO of the UFC. He’s also the former CEO of Station Casinos and a man that likes to have fun if both his work life and his yacht preferences are any indication.

How Big is the Lonian Yacht?

The Lonian is a decent-sized superyacht at a solid 285’4″ in length. Considering her support vessel is also over 200 feet, it’s safe to say a lot of space is being used for fun on board, but we’ll get to some of those details shortly. The Lonian also boasts a volume of 2,691 GT and a beam of just over 45 feet.

How Much Did the Lonian Yacht Cost?

The Lonian came with a $160 million price tag in 2018. It’s believed that the yearly operating costs for the Lonian are between $15 million and $20 million. However, because the Lonian also has the Hodor as a support vessel, that cost will likely be even higher since they’re paying double fuel, extra crew, extra taxes, fees, etc.

Is the Lonian Available for Yacht Charter?

The Lonian has not been made available for charter. The owner has been very strict about what information he shares and doesn’t share regarding the yacht, including interior details. At the same time, some features have been very public, including a video of the entire construction process. However, the owner requested that the media allow him a year of privacy without people trying to take photos and ask questions.

The result is that we do know a lot about the vessel now, but there are other factors, as we’ll see, that remain secret. Since no one has ever been able to charter the yacht, the whole experience is only known to the owner and his guests.

How Fast is the Lonian and What Engines Does It Use?

The Lonian is powered by Feadship’s first hybrid diesel and electric propulsion thanks to a pair of MTU 16V4000M73 2560kW engines. This gives the Lonian a cruising speed of 12 knots and a top speed of 18 knots. The yacht carries 160,000 liters of fuel on board and has a range of about 5,000 nautical miles at 12 knots.

What’s the Interior of the Lonian Like?

Several exciting design elements are on board the Lonian, but the swimming pool is one of the most visible and incredible. The pool is positioned 50 cm above deck height and surrounded by a relaxation area and deck with lounge space. But the bottom of the pool is entirely translucent and serves as the ceiling of the beach club on the deck below. The vessel’s cinema is also integrated, as the screen is part of the end of the pool.

A fully integrated sound system is also part of the cinema and the rest of the yacht’s design. The complex system was a custom job, and designers built a lifesize mockup of the pool section to ensure it would work properly and the pool could work without flooding the vessel.

Guests can arrive via tender when the yacht is at sea and board, thanks to a boom that serves as a gangway to the guest quarters. The telescoping boom attaches from the starboard side to a tender, and guests can hop on and off as they please. Of course, as you can see in the photos, there’s also a helipad on the skydeck for guests who fly in while the boat is at sea.

The boom gangway leads to a pair of VIP staterooms that both have balconies with exterior sliding doors. Elsewhere in the yacht, there are eight more staterooms plus the owner’s deck.

The owner’s deck has a private jacuzzi with a custom heating and cooling system that can turn up the heat to 38 degrees Celsius or even cool it down to a brisk 10 degrees for those extra hot days. A flush foredeck and a skylight allow those inside to enjoy the sun without leaving the comfort of their private suite.

There is room for 12 guests in 4 sizeable double-sized staterooms and the two VIP suites. There are also 15 crew cabins and one captain’s cabin on board to handle 27 crew in total.

The Lonian features the first-ever design from Feadship as well. A transom hatch features a flush swim platform that opens and closes like a convertible car. When the teak hatch opens, the door can drop down to close, and the hatch may close again.

Tenders can be loaded and unloaded with a crane on the helideck capable of lifting nearly 4 tons.

Features and Amenities

We’ve already covered several of the vessel’s features, but let’s break down what’s available. The support ship Hodor is where the Lonian stores most of its toys, so we can also include what we know here.

The large, glass bottom pool with an integrated movie screen is a one of a kind
Temperature-controlled jacuzzi on the owner’s deck
A fully equipped bridge deck gym. The chilly jacuzzi temperatures were included with this gym in mind so it could be used as a plunge pool after a workout
An AW169 helicopter. The Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol got calls from concerned citizens when the yachts came into port with the aircraft on deck, as people were afraid it was a military vessel
Panoramic full-beam views are available from the full-beam main deck lounge
A glass elevator traverses all five decks for guests to move about the vessel

The list of amenities on the Hodor, which has been described as a floating toy box, is remarkable.

A submarine garage for a Seamagine Aurora-3 submersible
A helicopter hangar
A scuba diving platform with onboard air compressors
A hospital with decompression chambers
A 7.3-meter Novurania catamaran RIB
A nine-meter Metal Shark landing craft
A 16-meter Hydra-Sports 53 center console sports boat with quad Seven Marine 627 engines
A Ski Nautique
A 388 Skater race boat capable of a 150 mph
Nine jet skis
Four Yamaha quad bikes
Two Yamaha side-by-side ATVs
Four Yamaha TW200 trail motorcycles
Two Laser dinghies
One Hobie Cat

The Bottom Line

The motor yacht Lonian is a unique yacht owned by the former owner of the UFC, Lorenzo Fertitta. It was built by Feadship in 2018 and features a Sinot-exclusive yacht design and exterior styling. The vessel measures nearly 286 feet in length. The yacht costs $160 million and likely has a higher upkeep cost than most yachts since it is always accompanied by a massive support vessel called the Hodor. The Hodor acts as the tender garage and toy box for the Lonian and features a more excellent array of toys than any other yacht possibly could because of the space it provides. The Hodor alone requires a crew of 22 to maintain it.

While many details are known about the Lonian, the owner has never allowed anyone on board to take interior photos, and Feadship has only provided scant interior design details. As a result, while we do know a lot about yachts, we have no idea what it looks like inside.

My grandfather first took me fishing when I was too young to actually hold up a rod on my own. As an avid camper, hiker, and nature enthusiast I'm always looking for a new adventure.

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Sail The Ocean With The $250 Million Superyacht Of UFC Owner Frank Fertitta III

Frank Fertitta III's superyacht is the definition of luxury in the ocean.

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One of the most expensive superyachts in the world, opulent interior and exterior, the legendary makers of the superyacht.

It has only been a few months since Frank Fertitta, who also owns the UFC, received delivery of the magnificent yacht "Viva" in June. "Viva" is a 94-meter-long luxury yacht built by Feadship at their shipyard in Kaag, Netherlands.

Viva was recently completed and delivered in the Netherlands. She was designed by Azure Yacht Design & Naval Architecture in collaboration with De Voogt Naval Architects, while Peter Marino designed her interiors. Let’s take a look inside the $250 million superyacht of UFC owner Frank Fertitta III.

There is an almost endless amount of evidence regarding how Frank Fertitta III acquired his wealth, ranging from his current position as CEO of Station Casinos to how he, along with his brother Lorenzo and childhood friend Dana White, turned the Ultimate Fighting Championship into a multi-billion dollar business.

However, the manner in which he chooses to spend such wealth is somewhat less evident (at least for the fun stuff). The ultra-luxurious superyacht Viva, which was built by Feadship and has a jaw-dropping price tag of $250 million, is an example of such a luxury acquisition. The eldest Fertitta sibling stated that he made this transaction for himself.

It should be noted that Feadship appears to be the Fertitta family's preferred shipbuilder. Lorenzo Fertitta is the owner of the 285-foot-long (87-meter-long), Feadship-built Lonian , which costs $160 million. Tilman Fertitta, the cousin of the Fertitta brothers, is the happy owner of a more modest Westport Yachts-built vessel in Boardwalk. This vessel achieves a maximum length of 163 feet or 50 meters and costs $27 million, which is significantly more reasonable than the preceding vessel.

RELATED: A Peek Inside Tennis Superstar Serena Williams' Luxurious Car Collection

Peter Marino designed the interior, and Azure Yacht Design designed the exterior. At the stern of the upper deck are a gym, a beach club, a theater, a beauty salon, underwater lighting, an elevator, and a helipad. In addition, the ship has a cinema and a beauty salon. The hull of Viva is composed of steel, while the superstructure and decks are made of teak and aluminum, respectively. It has two diesel-electric MTU engines , each with 16 cylinders, 3,916 horsepower, and 2,050 revolutions per minute. It can achieve its top speed of 20 knots while maintaining a cruising speed of approximately 12 knots.

Its freshwater tanks have a capacity of around 71,000 liters, while its fuel tanks can hold approximately 280,000 liters of gasoline. The owner wanted their new mega yacht, which is 94 meters long and built by Feadship like their prior mega yacht, which was 32 meters shorter, to have a smaller environmental impact than their previous mega yacht. In addition to adopting hybrid propulsion, the owner requested that the exterior and interior design of the superyacht adhere to a minimalist aesthetic because they belong to the "less is more" philosophical school.

Consequently, one can witness clean lines and an abundance of glass. The interior design of the superyacht is reminiscent of a beach cottage. In order to reduce fuel consumption, the hull has been made more aerodynamic. The motor yacht Viva measures 94 meters in length. The superyacht has a beam of 13.6 meters and can carry 2,999 gross tons of cargo. On board the superyacht Viva, there is space for a maximum of 14 passengers.

RELATED: The $4.8 Billion Vessel: Here's What Makes History Supreme The Most Expensive Yacht In The World

The Viva is the seventh-largest yacht manufactured by Feadship. In April 2021, Viva departed the Dutch shipyard and steered with extreme caution through the Dutch canals, coming dangerously close to colliding with canal-side structures. Feadship, which has its headquarters in the Netherlands and a history dating back to 1849, is frequently recognized as the most successful company in the sector of manufacturing pure custom million-dollar superyachts .

Each vessel in the Feadship fleet sets a new standard for craftsmanship, design, engineering, and construction. This is because each new Feadship indicates an improvement over their prior efforts. This is what the corporation refers to as its unrelenting pursuit of excellence. In every manner, the brand-new superyacht Viva exhibits this degree of excellence.

In addition, the year 2022 will mark 73 years since the founding of Feadship. Although the three key players in the First Export Association of Dutch Shipbuilders each had histories dating back several decades further, the official creation of what is now the world's foremost superyacht brand took place in an Amsterdam café in 1949.

Every new Feadship is an accomplishment in and of itself, as its builders constantly strive to redefine what defines perfection and ensure that each new model is structurally and technologically greater than the one that came before it. This strategy produces yachts that cannot be duplicated because they include space-age technologies and ultramodern design techniques. The Viva superyacht is, without a doubt, the finest of its kind.

READ NEXT: The Sandman Craze: Everything We Know About Sandman Season 2 On Netflix So Far?

Sources: Boss Hunting , Superyacht Times , Superyacht fan

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Pride of America returns to Kailus Bay Wednesday. (Laura Ruminski/West Hawaii Today)

Passengers return to the Pride Of America Wednesday at Kailua Pier. (laura Ruminski/West Hawaii Today)

The Hodor, support yacht for Lonian is anchored in Kailua Bay Thursday morning. (Laura Ruminski/West Hawaii Today)

The super yacht Lonian is anchored in Kailua Bay Thursday morning. (Laura Ruminski/West Hawaii Today)

Kailua Bay’s been busy this week, hosting the first Norwegian Cruise Line call in over two years on Wednesday as well as a super yacht and its support yacht on Thursday.

Norwegian Cruise Line’s 921-foot Pride of America made its first call Wednesday in Kailua-Kona, more than two years after its last visit on March 11, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. The vessel with capacity for 2,500 passengers will resume its normal weekly Wednesday calls going forward, albeit operating at reduced capacity around 50% to 60%.

Also gracing Kailua Bay Wednesday was super yacht Lonian, a 285-foot luxury vessel launched in 2018 at a reported price tag of $160 million. The yacht, sailing under the flag of the Cayman Islands, is owned by billionaire Lorenzo Fertitta, former CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). With a networth of $2.7 billion, according to Forbe.com, Fertitta is the 1,179 wealthiest person in the world.

The Lonian, according to Super Yacht Times, has three decks to host 12 guests and 27 crew. It also features facility for landing helicopters.

On Thursday, another large yacht showed up in Kailua Bay. The Hodor, is a 216-foot vessel specifically built to support the Lonian.

The Hodor, also sailing under the Cayman Islands flag, serves as a trailing garage, housing the “toys,” which include ATVs, motorcycles, boats and a helicopter, according to Super Yacht Times.

Also seen off the Kona Coast Wednesday was the Oscar Elton Sette, a multipurpose oceanographic research vessel that conducts fisheries assessments, physical and chemical oceanography research, marine mammal and marine debris surveys. The 224-foot NOAA vessel is homeported in Honolulu.

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Conor McGregor compares yacht to billionaire's across the water

McGregor is holidaying abroad and compared his yacht to former UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta.

10:26, 10 AUG 2023

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Conor McGregor has compared his yacht to former UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta as he continues to holiday abroad.

The Dubliner was home for a brief stint last week before jetting off again to soak in the sun. And the Dubliner shared a video aboard a yacht as he compared it to former UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta's boats.

McGregor can be seen filming a bench with weights and says: "Just here on the top board of my triple deck getting a bit of work in and look who I see. Over here that's Lorenzo Fertitta's yacht and there's his shadow yacht to carry all the toys. The gang is in town, Just getting a bit of work in lads I'll be over shortly."

Fertitta is worth a staggering €2.5bn and sold his shares in the UFC back in 2016 and stepped down as CEO of the company.

McGregor himself is well on his way to similar wealth and is worth around €500m.

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Ronda Rousey (left) and Holly Holm face off before a UFC event in Australia. Rousey has helped the organization become a lucrative business

How UFC's $4bn sale marked a journey from the shadows to the mainstream

In 2001 a small group brought a mixed martial arts organization for $2m. Today it is a global brand – and there is still room to grow

T he architects who built mixed martial arts into a globally popular sport have ceded control of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. An official release announcing a $4bn sale of the UFC to a group led by talent agency WME-IMG was made on Monday morning.

It is confirmation that the current ownership group accomplished what they set out to do: mold brawling combat into a vastly lucrative 21st century sport. This sale is proof, if any was needed, that the organization is now firmly in the mainstream.

Las Vegas casino magnate brothers Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III, along with their brother-in-law Blake Sortini, purchased the assets of the UFC in January 2001 for $2m. Former fighter manager Dana White was named president and ran the day-to-day business.

Fifteen years later, the contrast is striking. On Saturday, the league’s 200th big-ticket event attracted more than 18,000 fans to the T-Mobile Arena in the UFC’s hometown of Las Vegas; the take from ticket sales alone was $10.8m.

It’s hard to say what the finances and potential upside for WME-IMG look like – UFC is privately held – except to say that its TV deal with Fox can only get more lucrative, said Brandon Ross, an analyst who covers the business for financial services firm BTIG. “Since the time that they signed the deal with Fox the sport has become much more popular and a bigger part of the zeitgeist,” Ross said. “People actually talk about UFC at work now, which is not something people did a couple of years ago. You have to think there are going to be some nice step-ups in those television deals that will result in growth.”

With the caveat that the UFC is often criticized by fighters themselves, such as Matt Mitrione , for the vast disparities in its pay scale, it is popular enough that top talent are now able to command high payouts , too: Brock Lesnar took home a reported $2.5m for Saturday’s fight.

So, how did UFC transform itself? Under the stewardship of Zuffa LLC, named for an Italian word that translates to “scrap” or “fight,” UFC shoved its way out of the shadows. In doing so, Zuffa carved out a successful and unique business model for the UFC, but with that success, it has had to leave some of its founders behind.

“This is not a spectacle,” Lorenzo Fertitta said in 2001, in one of his earliest interviews as the head of the UFC. “This is a sport. Now, what that means is that we need to focus on the fighters. A much as I love the UFC – and essentially what I bought was those three letters and that logo – I understand that it’s not necessarily just about the UFC but about the athletes.”

With investment from the Fertittas to rebrand and lay the foundation for UFC’s growth, the notorious and limping cage-fighting company soon forged past negative media attention focused on the bloody violence in the Octagon and political opposition from states like New York, which banned the UFC outright until earlier this year, and figures like Senator John McCain, who likened the action to human cockfighting and advocated to have it banned from cable television.

By 2016, UFC had grown palatable enough among sports fans to set the record for the most expensive sale of an organization in sports history. Every state in the US has adopted some policy towards mixed martial arts regulation. That legitimacy is a function of Zuffa’s lobbying, and its hiring of Marc Ratner from the Nevada State Athletic Commission to lead the regulatory charge. The breakthrough in Nevada in 2001 was key to returning the UFC to cable pay-per-view, which helped convince sponsors and corporate America that its product was fit for mass audiences.

Other innovations, such as the wildly popular Ultimate Fighter, a reality TV series that followed contenders’ attempts to win a UFC contract, pushed the organization further into the mainstream. UFC has also won acclaim for its determination to give its female stars equal billing with their male counterparts: Ronda Rousey, for example, is arguably as big a draw as fellow fighter Conor McGregor.

And then there is the audience. UFC fights draw a loyal – and young – audience that purchases hundreds of millions of dollars on pay-per-view per year and are attractive to advertisers. A heavily millennial demographic helped solidify MMA’s growth, not just in the US but around the globe. And it is this group that WME-IMG – which also represents Rousey – and its partners hope to reach through UFC content. The appeal to traditional media companies was strong enough that one of the contenders for the company was the Dalian Wanda group, the Chinese consortium that recently purchased the film studio behind the Batman and Pacific Rim films, Legendary Entertainment.

A report from Moody’s Investors Service affirmed the value of the company’s potential for international expansion. “We believe that one of Zuffa’s biggest growth opportunities is in international markets, where MMA has some of its strongest followers including in Japan, Brazil, and other Latin American and western European countries,” wrote analysts. “Moody’s notes that Zuffa’s events have a year round season and are not tied to specific teams [like other US sports] and as a result the company has unique flexibility to grow internationally. UFC is expected to find an easier time spreading in Latin America, Europe and Asia, than other US sports , and Zuffa is well positioned to capitalize on the expansion and increasing fan market share of the sport internationally.”

It’s also a brand that does well in the post-TV world, where advertisers are looking for televised events to plaster their brands across arenas and stadiums in an effort to reach dwindling viewership: “On-site sponsorship and monetization is very important now,” Ross said. “It’s important because television advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to reach audiences on televisions.”

The Fertittas and White are now even richer men than they a week ago (Flash, a venture of the Abu Dhabi government, bought 10% in 2010 and still control that percentage) – but what does the future hold for the men who made UFC what it is today? Lorenzo Fertitta resigned from the casino business to join the UFC full-time as chairman and CEO in 2008. The move preceded a significant expansion of the company that pushed it beyond a mere fight promotion to a content provider producing thousands of hours of media delivered over television and online streaming services.

With news of the sale to WME-IMG, which, according to Sports Business Journal, secured the largest ownership stake in UFC and operating control, Fertitta is expected to step down from the UFC and concentrate on his role with Red Rock Inc, the new corporate name of his family’s Station Casinos. In April, upon Red Rock’s initial public offering, Fertitta entered into a five-year employment deal with the company. Several other executives are expected to leave Zuffa for Red Rock. There has also been speculation that Fertitta would be interested in becoming a minority owner of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, should they relocate to Las Vegas.

White, however, will stay on as UFC president (he is estimated to have made $360m from his 9% share in the company). It is difficult to imagine the UFC without White, who confirmed the deal to multiple media outlets on Sunday. White expressed that he will miss working with Lorenzo Fertitta, though he suggested that WME-IMG are the right partners to lead UFC into the future.

White’s reputation precedes him. To his benefit, White exudes the charisma of a great fight promoter, which is what he is. But he’s also prone to leaping headfirst into the organization’s spats: for example in 2009, he had to apologize after using homophobic and sexist slurs against a member of the media There’s a new, similarly colorful boss in town with the group’s acquisition. Ari Emanuel, WME-IMG’s co-CEO, was famously fictionalized as Ari Gold in HBO’s Entourage.

The news of the sale was far from a shock. As MMA insiders descended upon Las Vegas last week for UFC’s busiest stretch of 2016 – from Thursday to Sunday it promoted three fight cards featuring four title bouts, as well as a massive fan convention – there was an expectation simmering that an ownership change would soon be revealed. Zuffa vigorously denied that any sale was completed, and UFC executives went so far as to circulate an internal memo to employees saying as much. Both Lorenzo Fertitta and White went on record again last week denying the UFC had been sold.

But by Sunday the cat was out of the bag. Based on the financial return alone, Zuffa’s decision to sell following a record-setting 2015, when UFC brought in more than $600m in revenue, made sense. However the Fertittas’ motivations to get out of the fight business extend beyond money considerations.

While its gate receipts, merchandise numbers and pay-per-view sales continue to flourish, especially as star fighters like McGregor and Rousey emerged, only recently have dynamics shifted to the point that UFC may be compelled – via federal legislation, an antitrust lawsuit, a fighter-based trade association, or the force of will from its top stars – to alter the way it conducts business. There are still concerns over fighter pay – purses are still well below those of boxing’s biggest names – and UFC is notorious for occasionally banning journalists (including one of the Guardian’s regular writers) who do not toe the party line .

That background will need to be navigated by the new ownership group. Despite the uncertainty, WME-IMG and its partners appear positioned to reap the rewards of Zuffa’s hard work when the UFC’s broadcast rights agreement with Fox ends in 2018. Negotiations for a new deal, which could see Fox bidding against ESPN, are expected to generate significantly more money than the seven-year deal it signed in 2011.

Zuffa made the UFC a global brand, though it hasn’t yet cracked open the doors to mainland China. In June, WME-IMG announced a deal to expand its reach with sports and entertainment into China, and with UFC content as an asset this kind of arrangement would fit very well for the entertainment powerhouse.

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What the UFC turning 20 means to co-owner and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta

Growing up, I was introduced to the fight game at a very young age by my dad. For me, like many others in Las Vegas, boxing reigned supreme and was without question, our hometown team and professional sport. The energy and excitement throughout the city during big fights were inescapable.

One of the first fights I ever attended live with my father was Leon Spinks vs. Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight title at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1978. Ali was a childhood idol of mine and I remember the emotion of seeing him lose a split decision that night. It left a lasting impression.

My passion for boxing stayed with me as I got older, and eventually led me to the role of Vice-Chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. It was an incredible experience to serve in a regulatory capacity early in my career, working closely in the sport I had come to know and love.

I had a lot of memorable moments during my time with the NSAC, none more emotionally charged than in 1997, when I sat on the five-person commission that had the fate of Mike Tyson's in-ring future in its hands. Tyson had bitten Evander Holyfield's ears in a fight weeks prior and it was up to us to levy the punishment. The meeting was intense and under the scrutiny of media outlets around the world, giving me the type of firsthand experience I could only get from being in that commission seat on that day.

Yet throughout my time both as a fan and commissioner in the sport of boxing, I couldn't help but feel like something was missing. Sure, everyone knew Tyson and Holyfield, De La Hoya and Chavez. But there was no overall connectivity from fight to fight, no brand to tie the sport together like other major league sports. Much like today, you'd get really excited for the "big" boxing match and then your interest would taper off until many months later when the next big fight rolled around. There was very little in between for you to identify with and the sport of boxing suffered because of it.

After my time on the commission, I was introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and then to the UFC by Dana White. We started rolling BJJ with a friend of ours in Las Vegas, John Lewis, and almost immediately, Dana, my brother, Frank, and I were hooked. Dana was also managing fighters at the time, so we got the chance to meet some of the fighters competing in the UFC and our interest in the sport grew. After starting to watch the events, we kept asking ourselves the same questions over and over: could this be bigger than it currently was? What was it about the UFC that captivated us?

Soon thereafter, and against the well-meaning advice of family and trusted advisors, including our father, my brother Frank and I purchased the UFC for $2 million in 2001. It was a huge risk that at times looked doomed. But we stuck with it, confident that those three letters - U.F.C. - would become the brand to propel mixed martial arts into the same category as the other elite sports.

I often get asked how we did it. The truth is, we believed in the inherent appeal of the sport and moreover that the appeal was universal. And when in the early days, it seemed as though we were alone in that belief, we took some big risks to prove it. The biggest bet came in 2005, when we invested more than $10 million to produce the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. We hoped that if people had a chance to see the fighters outside of the Octagon, to really get emotionally invested in the fighters and their stories, they'd follow them back into the Octagon on fight night.

That first season of TUF was an important milestone for the company. So, too, was the Forrest Griffin-Stephan Bonnar fight that capped it off, sending ratings soaring and overnight helping to secure the UFC's future.

Looking back, there have been so many great moments. We've developed many superstars, including guys like Chuck Liddell, Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones. Recently, we welcomed women into the Octagon, led by a superstar in her own right, Ronda Rousey. We've also put on some of the greatest fights of all-time, such as Jones vs. Gustafsson, Melendez vs. Sanchez, and my personal favorite, Shogun vs. Henderson.

In addition, we've sold out some of the most prestigious arenas in the world, including the 55,000-seat Rogers Centre in Toronto, the O2 Arena in London, the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, and the Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm, along with countless other arenas both domestically and abroad. Each of those cities witnessed the power and impact of the UFC brand. That global reach continues today thanks to our television deals with partners across the world, putting the UFC in almost one billion homes worldwide.

As excited as we are to celebrate the first 20 years of UFC, we're even more eager to embark on the next 20-plus. We'll be bringing the UFC to new regions around the world, launching the UFC Network widely, producing international versions of The Ultimate Fighter and we will put on an event in the state of New York. The opportunities are endless and that's what drives us every day.

This week, Las Vegas is buzzing with anticipation for the matchup between Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks at our 20th anniversary event. UFC 167 is the big fight everyone is talking about and I couldn't be happier. It is a chance for me to reflect on the past and look to the future, a future that would have never been possible without the greatest fight fans in the world. I look forward to sharing this moment with my kids like my dad did when I was growing up.

Lorenzo Fertitta

Lorenzo Joseph Fertitta (born January 3, 1969) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is chairman of Fertitta Capital, director of Red Rock Resorts Inc, and former CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship . [2]

Early life and education

Fertitta enterprises, station casinos and red rock resorts, inc., zuffa, llc and ultimate fighting championship, fertitta capital, philanthropy, personal life, memberships, external links.

Lorenzo and his older brother Frank Fertitta III were raised in Las Vegas , Nevada , after their father, Frank Fertitta Jr. , moved there from Texas with his wife Victoria ( née Broussard) in 1960. Fertitta Jr. became a dealer at the Stardust Casino before graduating to management positions at the Tropicana , Sahara and Circus Circus casinos. [3]

In 1976, after observing that no casinos effectively catered to the city's residents, Fertitta Jr. built The Casino, a 5,000-square-foot establishment on Sahara Blvd. The Casino would be renamed Bingo Palace before it eventually became Palace Station . [4]

Fertitta Jr. worked at Station Casinos , a developer and casino operator in the U.S, alongside his sons until retiring in 1993. Until his death in 2009, Fertitta Jr. remained active in other family business ventures, community service and philanthropic efforts, with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman referring to Fertitta Jr. as "one of the most successful business persons in the history of Las Vegas." [5]

Fertitta graduated from Bishop Gorman High School , a private Catholic prep school in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1987. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of San Diego in 1991 where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity. [6] He earned an MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University in 1993. [7] [8] [9]

Since 1991, Fertitta occupied various executive positions within Fertitta Enterprises, a family investment office and entertainment company. He served as vice president from 1991 to 1993, before becoming president and CEO from June 1993 to July 2000. In these roles, Fertitta managed an investment portfolio consisting of marketable securities and real property. [10]

Throughout their time in high school and college, Lorenzo and Frank III worked for their father, Frank Fertitta Jr., at Station Casinos. After Fertitta Jr. retired in 1993, Lorenzo and Frank III led Station Casinos to its first IPO that same year, raising $294 million and becoming principal shareholders and co-founders of Station Casinos Inc. in the process. [11] Station Casinos was then taken private in 2007 in a management-led leveraged buyout. [12]

On February 2, 2009, Station Casinos declared plans to file for bankruptcy . The filing came in response to a lawsuit that challenged the gaming company's debt swap and prepackaged bankruptcy proposal. Station Casinos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 28, 2009 and, with a subsequent reinvestment of $240 million, emerged from this process in June 2011 with a new ownership structure that allowed the Fertittas to retain full control. [13] [14]

On October 13, 2015, Red Rock Resorts, Inc. filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC to take Station Casinos public again through an initial public offering (IPO), creating a holding company for the organization, known as Red Rock Resorts, Inc., which owns a portion of the Station Casinos entity. [15] [16] [17] On April 26, 2016, Red Rock Resorts, Inc. raised $531.4 million in an IPO that priced 27.25 million shares under the ticker symbol "RRR". Deutsche Bank Securities, J.P Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs & Co were among the underwriters for the offering. [18] The Fertitta family continues to own a stake in Red Rock Resorts Inc. [19] In January 2017, Fertitta was named Vice Chairman. [15]

Fertitta as owner of the Palms Casino nightclub KAOS lost an $8 million lawsuit in 2022 brought by DJ Kaskade for nonpayment of his two-year performance contract. [20]

In 2001, Lorenzo, along with his brother Frank III, established Zuffa, LLC to acquire the assets of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a mixed martial arts promotion and live event provider, from Semaphore Entertainment Group for $2 million. Lorenzo Fertitta assumed positions as chairman and CEO of UFC, while appointing childhood friend Dana White as President of the organization. [21] Zuffa, LLC operated the UFC until its sale in August 2016.

As Chairman and CEO of UFC, Fertitta worked with the athletic commissions of New Jersey, Nevada, California and Mohegan Sun to establish a unified rule set for MMA competitions. The sport operates in all 50 U.S. states and is broadcast to more than 150 countries. [ citation needed ] Approximately 135 UFC-branded gyms operate in North America and Australia. [22]

In January 2005, UFC entered a deal to broadcast televised content on Viacom Inc.'s Spike cable channel, an agreement that ran until the end of 2011. On August 18, 2011, UFC and Fox Broadcasting Company announced a seven-year, $813 million television rights deal that spanned Fox's flagship channel, its cable channel FX, and other stations including Fuel TV and Fox Deportes. [23] [24] [25]

As CEO of UFC, Fertitta worked with Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo to regulate MMA in the state, an initiative projected to yield more than $32 million in economic activity for New York's economy each year. [26] Governor Cuomo signed legislation authorizing competitive mixed martial arts in New York State on April 14, 2016, with UFC hosting its first show at Madison Square Garden , UFC 205, later that year. The event set a record for live gate receipts at the venue, drawing $17.7 million. [27] [28]

In July 2016, Zuffa , LLC and the brothers announced the sale of their shares in UFC for an estimated $4 billion to WME-IMG , a sports and entertainment talent representation firm led by Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell . Private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) were also a part of the deal. Upon completion of the transaction, Lorenzo Fertitta stepped down from his role as CEO. [22] [29] [30]

On May 1, 2017, Fertitta Capital, a private investment firm, was launched with an initial seed investment of $500 million from Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta III. The firm has a permanent capital base and invests throughout a business's lifecycle and across the capital structure in consumer-facing companies in the technology, media and entertainment sectors. Nakisa Bidarian, former CFO of UFC, will lead Fertitta Capital as CEO and co-founder and be responsible for the deployment of the Firm's capital. [31]

Fertitta's philanthropic efforts include supporting his high school alma mater, Bishop Gorman, as well as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In September 2016, the Fertitta family made a $10 million donation to UNLV to fund a 73,000-square-foot football facility that will be named The Fertitta Football Complex. [32]

Fertitta is a supporter of veterans and active duty students, having made contributions to the Lone Survivor Foundation , the Fisher House and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund , which provide support for the families of military personnel lost or severely wounded in service to the United States. [33] [34] [35]

On November 11, 2016, Lorenzo and Frank III established the Fertitta Veterans Program at New York University Stern , a full-time MBA program designed to support U.S. military veterans' transition to business school. As part of the program, 20 full-time MBA military students receive scholarship support and participate in a six-week, six-credit summer term that facilitates their transition to the academic and professional communities. [36]

In addition, Fertitta supports local Las Vegas charities including the Nathan Adelson Hospice, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and Three Square, a charity focused on providing wholesome food to those in need. [37] [38]

Fertitta resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his wife Teresa and three children.

He is third-cousin to fellow entrepreneur Tilman Fertitta . [1] Lorenzo and his wife are major donors to the Republican Party and Republican candidates, having given more than $9,700,000 from 2009 to 2020, [39] [40] making him, along with his brother, one of the largest contributors in Nevada. [41]

Fertitta owns the 87 meter yacht Lonian and the associated 66 meter support vessel Hodor. [42] [43] [44] [45]

Former Chairman of the Nevada Resort Association [46]
Former Member of the Nevada State Athletic Commission (November 1996 to July 2000)
Former Board Member with the American Gaming Association
Former Advisory Board Member of Nevada First Bank [47]
Former President and chief executive officer of Gordon Biersch Brewing Company [48]
Director of Station Casinos LLC
Director of Station Holdco LLC
Vice Chairman of Red Rock Resorts , Inc. [2]

Lorenzo Fertitta

Lorenzo Fertitta, the billionaire majority owner of the UFC, rarely grants interviews, but he agreed to sit down with David Samuels for his story for The Atlantic . Here is a partial transcript of their conversation

David Samuels: All right, man. You’ve put something incredible together here.

Lorenzo Feritta: It really has turned out to be that way. You know, when we first got involved in this thing—obviously, I’m sure you’ve heard this story, me and Dana were buddies.

DS: He was your cardio-boxing instructor?

LF: Yeah. Well we went to high school together, so I’d known him for a long time. We kind of hooked up again at a wedding, he told me what he was doing. And I was like ‘well, that sounds interesting, I’d like to try that out. I need to get back in shape.’ So I started training with him, and our friendship just came together again. And I started hanging out. And at the time, I was on the boxing commission. Both me and Dana had a great love for boxing. So it just blossomed into being best friends again, going to fights together and talking about fights, and that’s really what our life and relationship revolved around. And then we came across this, and thought, well let’s buy it.

DS: Isn’t that the kind of dumb thought that people with a lot of money aren’t supposed to have?

LF: Absolutely. But it was out of pure—I don’t know what you’d call it. It’s a vanity business. We actually went down to a fight, when he was managing Tito Ortiz, we went down to a fight in New Orleans, and we got to New Orleans, and there was no feeling that there was even an event going on. Nobody knew about it and there was nothing going on. We got in the car and we drove out to the venue and it was kind of far away, and there was nobody there. I said, ‘you know, I want to buy a UFC t-shirt, it sounds cool.’ Nobody was even selling t-shirts. They weren’t selling programs. Maybe 15% of the seats were full. It was just amazing, and I was sitting there watching the event going ‘wow, this could really be something. What am I missing? What’s different about me—am I really that sick and twisted—that I REALLY like this? Not that I kinda kinda like it, that I really like it, and nobody else cares.’

I think the biggest thing is there was this stigma associated with ultimate fighting and the UFC. And there was such a bad feeling about it, and negative connotation associated with it, particularly among regulators, in general, because of the way they handled things in the early days. You know, they shied away—they kind of took on these governmental bodies saying you can’t tell us what to do, we’re gonna do it the way we want. You know, we don’t fall under your regulatory authority. Well, who’s gonna win that one, okay? You’re not gonna win that fight.

DS: How much money have you put into it since that initial 2 million bucks?

LF: I think we got up to like 44 million

DS: What was the year that you stopped putting money back in?

LF: I think we broke even and stopped putting money in—I think 05 was the breaking even year.

DS: And since then have you taken money out?

LF: Yeah, yeah, we’ve taken some money out.

DS: Have you gotten back your 44 million yet?

LF: We’ve never disclosed that. Um, so I’d rather not. But it takes a lot of money to get back 44 million, I can tell you that. But I’m happy with where we are. We’re on a good trajectory.

If you look at the business model of a boxing promoter, there’s really not a lot to the business model. Most operations are like four or five people. You have the promoter, a secretary, maybe a PR guy, and a fax machine. I mean, what do they really do at the end of the day for an event? They don’t risk any capital. They don’t put up any capital. They don’t do the production. They don’t do any of the creative, any of the production. They don’t do the marketing. Literally what a boxing promoter has to do is schedule the press conference and buy plane tickets, make sure the fighters arrive on time.

DS: And your business model here is what?

LF: We call it the wheel. The UFC wheel. You’ve got your core— the pay per view. That’s essentially your product, right? And then, you know, you have spinoff things. You can sell it on DVD. Then after you sell it on DVD, you repurpose it and sell it too, put it in syndication on UFC Wired, or on Spike TV. Then you have products that you then put on the internet through VOD and other VOD platforms. Then you have other licensing opportunities like apparel and merchandise and video games, and all the way down. So it’s a complex business.

And we want to build the infrastructure to be able to handle that. So we’re going to have a real marketing department, okay? And not just rely on the pay per view providers to say that they’re gonna market for us. I want to control that. We have an in-house team of people that have direct contact with the cable companies. There’s literally maybe a thousand different cable companies in the U.S. that you have to distribute this product to. And I don’t believe in just letting somebody do that for us, so we’re very involved with how that works. As well as with Direct TV and Dish. Beyond that, we have our PR department. And it’s not just about going and hiring a PR firm and saying go do this for us. We have it in-house. We want to build the relationships in-house, we want to know these people. Every other sport just hands everything over to a network and says you guys do whatever you want with it, we’ll have some input or whatever but HBO rolls in and does boxing. Even the NFL. The major networks roll in and they just do everything for them. We do everything. And one thing about Dana that has made us very successful—he is passionate and meticulous about the product, and he gets how the product should be, and how that needs to resonate with the consumer.

DS: He does a good job at what he does, but you’re the guy who’s put together a world-class business before, and when I look at this organization, I’m clear in my head about who’s probably thinking about this stuff and making these larger strategic decisions. When I talk to people in the organization, they all say ‘Lorenzo does that.’

LF: It’s just a different thing. But I will say that me and Dana make decisions together.

DS: You and your brother Frank have made a fortune from the Station Casino chain, which was founded by your dad.

LF: A lot of guys get frustrated because their dad won’t give them any control at all. I had a different sort of frustration. My dad literally said, 'Okay, here are the keys, you run it.' It’s like either you’re gonna drown or you’re gonna figure it out. It’s like throwing a baby into water. He did the same thing with my brother. He graduated from USC, and he was running the joint right away. And it worked out pretty good. My dad came to Vegas from Galveston and worked his way up in every casino in town as a dealer, and then a pit boss, and then a casino manager, before he started the Station Casino as a place for local people to gamble. He retired in 1993. We had one casino, and we went public that year. I can remember being on the road show, talking to all these big institutional accounts. I was 24, and my brother was 31. Now I guess with the internet age, it’s not as weird. You expect young guys to be doing this stuff. But back then, it was kind of weird. We built the business up to—what do we have now, 17 casinos? 18 if you include the one we manage. I think we’re the 5th or 6th largest casino company in the country. We’re traded on the New York Stock Exchange. We did a private transaction—I don’t know how many billions of dollars last year.

DS: You don’t take UFC bets at the Station Casinos. Why?

LF: When we bought the company, I went straight to the regulators here about it and said ‘Okay, this is what we’re doing. Do you have a problem if we take bets?’ And they’re like, ‘you know, legally, no, we don’t. But you know, why don’t you just see how things go?’ And I just made a conscious decision that of course there would never ever be anything untoward or wrong or illegal for doing that, but just from a public perception standpoint, a guy that makes a bet, maybe. Once those fights start, we hand those keys over to the state of Nevada. We don’t pick the refs, we don’t pick the judges, we make no decisions. Totally out of our hands! The average guy doesn’t believe that, know what I mean? So a guy makes a bet, and the judges make a bad call, the referee makes a call and he’s like you know—it’s just not worth it.

DS: I want to go around that wheel. Let’s start with the Spike tv connection. The idea of having a reality show that feeds into a professional sport gives the fan the sense that ‘I could, in some alternate universe, in my imagination, become a participant. The barrier between their world and my world is not absolute.’ In other words, one of the fantasies that you’re offering people in this sport is the reality contestant fantasy—that an average person, or a person with skill in the sport, could make that leap from the couch to the Octagon. Talk about how that idea came together and how the relationship with Spike came together.

LF: We went around when we first bought the company, and got together with United Talent Agency, UTA. At the time UFC was a small deal. I think they felt like we were lucky that we were working with them. Today it would be a whole different story. Dana and I flew to LA maybe 50 times. We met with—you name it. MTV. CBS. ABC. ESPN, HBO, Showtime, Spike, USA. We probably met with the Food Channel too. I don’t know. We met with everybody. And to a ‘t,’ every single person said ‘this won’t work. Get out of my office. This is a joke. It’s boring.’ We were just looking at each other going, ‘what are we missing here?’

So we had to take a step back. And we partnered up with Craig Pelligian, the reality show producer, who we had originally met through UTA, and then that relationship went away, and then about I don’t know how many years later, let’s say two years later, he called and said he wanted to do a reality show about a casino, and the only person he knew in the casino business was me. And would I be interested. And originally I said ‘nah, I’m not really into that kind of stuff, I kinda have a low profile.’ But we started talking about it and I said, 'You know what, it actually might help our business, and so for business’s sake, you know, we’ll talk about it.' So we ended up doing a deal. American Casino went on the Discovery Channel. It actually did okay.

So I got on the phone with Craig one day. I said you know the Ultimate Fighting thing again, he says ‘yeah, we gotta figure a way to get that on.’ I said ‘yeah, but we met with everybody, and everybody’s turned us down.’ And just through talking to Craig, he goes, ‘you know another way you could do it, is you could just bankroll, and then go and sell to sponsors yourself to finance it.’ I go ‘wow, I didn’t even know that, I didn’t even think of that. Maybe that’s what we do.’ So that’s essentially what the strategy was. So we sat back down with Spike. And Spike wasn’t real enthusiastic about it, but after about 3 or 4 meetings, they’re like yeah, okay, we’ll do it. It was gonna be the Trojan horse. We were gonna let people see kind of how these guys are, that they’re not thugs, that they have backgrounds, they’re real guys, it’s gonna be great, they’re gonna live in a house and they’ll fight each other, and it’ll be great. And then I pick up the paper, and it’s like Oscar De La Hoya announces that he’s doing this reality show called the Next Great Champion, or whatever it’s called. And then a couple weeks later, Mark Burnett’s doing The Contender. So that didn’t help either. Because in trying to go and talk to a sponsor, it was like, this is the stupidest thing ever. If I’m gonna put money on anything, I’m gonna do it with Mark Burnett or with De La Hoya.

And do you know how many commercials we sold and how many sponsors we sold that first season? Zero. Spike didn’t promote it at all. We had funded this thing, 8, 10 million bucks to produce this thing, and about three weeks before it was gonna air, we’re like, they’re not gonna commit to any advertising or promotion.We’re screwed. So we spent like three million dollars buying billboards and radio and tv—going look—someone’s like—I’ve been playing blackjack for 8 hours, and I started with a thousand dollars, and I got 5 dollars left, I might as well put it all out. Who cares at this point. So we’re like, let’s just go all in. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, we’re toast. Put it on, and the ratings came back after the first one, we’re like holy shit. We started looking, compared to Spike’s ratings, we’re like ‘Wow! Those are huge!’

DS: My calculations are that the venue is making gross probably 4 or 5 million bucks a fight, in terms of hotel rooms, gambling, food and beverage. And you’re getting the gate and you’re paying them what to use the arena?

LF: Arena fee is around a hundred—I really don’t want it out there. It’s a six figure.

DS: Now one thing that people have been talking a lot about lately, some politely, some not, is the percentage of that pay per view and gate that’s going to fighters. It’s a low number, it’s 5-8%. You look at boxing, you’re talking about numbers that are, depending on who’s fighting when, 50%. Guys are going out in the ring, they can get killed. Why is the percentage that’s going to fighters in mixed martial arts so low?

LF: A, that’s not true. That’s not true. B, What you have to understand is that the fighters make a base amount. Okay? And on top of that, they have incentives based upon how we perform. Because what was happening was, I was losing so much money every event that I wasn’t willing to go and guarantee big amounts. What I would say to a guy, —I’m talking about the guys that we think make a difference, like Chuck Liddell. ‘Obviously we want you in, we can pay you x, and you know, once we hit a certain mark, we’ll cut you in on the pay per view. Okay?’ I think Randy Couture broke his confidentiality agreement, put it all out, so everybody got a pretty good idea of how it works. It’s kind of, ‘you eat what you kill kind of thing.’ And the fighters like it. You know, they’re fine with it. So when people say, guys are only making 5-8% or whatever, that’s not counting the back end of the deal, which is multiples upon multiples greater than what the base amount is.

DS: They’re getting less than boxers.

LF: Because it’s a different business model. In boxing, what happens is, the boxing promoter comes in, he doesn’t risk any capital. HBO comes in and does all the production. And does all the marketing. And they’re also carrying all the overhead. They got all the staff and everything. It shouldn’t be and it can’t be an apples and apples comparison. Now, do we make money? Absolutely we make money. But it’s not as simple as saying that boxers get paid 50% and we pay out 5-8%. That’s not correct. The guys that are complaining about their pay are making millions. I think Dana even put out there that—in '07, or '06, when Tito Ortiz fought three times, he made like 6 million dollars. Okay? And he’s the biggest guy saying I want to make more money.

And one thing that nobody could ever say about me or Frank or Dana is nobody’s check ever bounced, and we never went to anybody and said look, you know what, we can’t afford to pay you as much as we said . Everybody always got paid for the deal they were contracted for. And I will say this. We are the only promoters in the history of combat sport, that actually have paid fighters more than they’re contracted for.

I believe that what we built here is an incredible machine and an incredible brand. You hear a lot of criticism, ‘these guys all they care about is the brand, it’s not about the fighters.’ Well let me tell you what. This brand has made a lot of money for a lot of fighters who in and of themselves didn’t have a brand of their own before they fought in the UFC. So the brand creates a lot of value for these guys.

DS: How do you understand your audience right now? Who are they?

LF: At the end of the day, me and Dana are really 23 year old fight fanatics. I might have gray hair and be turning on forty, but I think like an 18-25 year old. I listen to that music. I like it. I dress like that. That’s just my lifestyle. I think we get our demographic and get our fans. And that’s what I was talking about with Dana. He knows that when he gets excited about a fight and the way it feels and looks and comes across, that the general public in our demographic is gonna get it.

DS: What is it about this sport now that is getting this audience under 35? I go out there, you’ve got 12, 13-year-olds to 35-year-old men and women, and they’re psyched. Is it because they were exposed to martial arts and different fighting styles when they were younger?

LF: It’s clearly a generational thing. You go back to the old western like a John Wayne movie where John Wayne would hit a guy, drop him, and then what would he do, grab him and literally pick him up and stand him back up! Right? So he could hit him again. I mean, it’s crazy! Who would ever do that? That’s not how fights work. We’ve all seen fights in bars and wherever, I don’t care if it’s a cowboy fight or whatever kind of fight. They didn’t used to fight like that. But that’s the way that TV influenced American culture, which evolved into, You don’t kick a man when he’s down. You don’t hit a man when he’s down.

Well, you go to Japan and Brazil and these other countries, they don’t think like that! You know, it’s not in their culture. And I think maybe through martial arts movies, or our impact on popular culture in the United States, that the younger generation didn’t grow up thinking that way.

Also, I think for the young male, it’s obvious there’s been a lot of research and everything that people’s attention spans are getting a lot shorter. You know, the ADD world that we live in. And you know, when I talk to my nephews, for instance, I’ll say, ‘Did you watch the fight the other night?’ They’re like ‘Oh there’s a UFC?’ I’m like, “No, the boxing match.’ They don’t watch that. It’s too long! I don’t want to sit there for that long. I said ‘Well what about UFC?’ They said it’s short, quick, and concise.

And there’s the holy shit factor. Actually, they said ‘the holy fucking shit factor.’ It happens at every fight. At least one or two times in every UFC show, whether you say it out loud or you say it to yourself, you go, ‘holy shit did that just happen?’ I mean, you might see somebody do a flip, get kicked in the head, get knocked out with a punch. At some point, you’re going ‘whoah, did that just happen? Did I really just see that?’ That’s the nucleus of what our product is.

DS: Do you think you’re gonna see more servicemen coming in? I mean, they’re training in a bunch of this shit, they’ve seen combat, they’re gonna need some outlet, you’ve got a hundred thousand guys now that have cycled through Afghanistan and Iraq in combat situations. If one percent of those guys want to fight, then you’re already dealing with a pool of—

LF: That’s possible. You know, it’s a good question. I’ve never thought about it that way. Really, what I think about more is that—look, this is an outlet where guys really can have careers and make a lot of money. Make millions of dollars. And if not millions of dollars, then enough money to live a damn good lifestyle and have a career. If you think about martial arts just in general in the United States, you could be in any major city, okay? Not even in any major city. In any quasi-major city. And be anywhere in that city, and draw a three-mile concentric ring from where your standing. And there will be a martial arts studio within that 3-mile concentric ring.

DS: One martial arts studio? There will be several dozen.

LF: There might be tons! But I’m saying at least a martial arts studio. To think, put it in a magnitude of how many martial arts studios there are. I think the last I saw, and don’t quote me on this, I don’t even know if it’s a relative statistic—one time, somebody told me there was like 12—it’s the largest—if you can call it a participatory sport, it might be the largest in the United States. It’s something like 11 or 12 million people have done or are doing some type of martial art, at some point in their life. Whether they took a karate class, tae kwon do, kickboxing, whatever it might be. So okay, you think about that just base of people. Okay. So as the pyramid is very large at the bottom, and you whittle your way up, that’s the elite, the best, the guys. Now a portion of those guys are gonna want to compete and put their skill level to the test. In addition to that, you have wrestling, okay? Historically, real wrestling has been an incredible sport, particularly all around the United States, but there’s never been an outlet.

DS: Nobody wants to watch real wrestling besides wrestlers.

LF: And if you don’t win a gold medal, there’s no outlet to make money, and even if you do win the gold medal, you probably won’t make money either. So what we have become is a great outlet for a guy—you don’t have to be an elite wrestler, you can just be a good high school wrestler. If you have that base, then you have the ability to be a good mixed martial artist. Got these guys now, they can be millionaires and have a career

DS: I have a cousin who’s a former elite Israeli commando, and he’s a black belt in jujitsu and has a bunch of other martial arts skills. For him, this is like a complex physical and spiritual discipline. He’ll go with his master to some place in Japan, and you know, I make fun of him sometimes, it’s like from a bad old karate movie. But it’s real to him. And he sees these skills as both a deadly and profound matter and as something that shouldn’t be mixed up with money. Is there a way that you turn these things that do have a spiritual component to them, and you turn them into a professional sport, you start putting millions of dollars out there, and you just fuck up the karma of these disciplines that were supposed to be about a more complex mastery of body and mind?

LF: You know, look, everybody’s got their own opinion. I certainly don’t subscribe to that. Boy, this is probably going to get me in trouble. Shit. I think there was a lot of people over the last 3 or 4 decades that made a lot of money putting out what I’ll call myths. Meaning that if you keep taking my class every week and paying me 40 dollars, I will show you that tae kwon do or kung fu or karate is the best martial art, and you will become a killer, and you know, it will take over your mind, spirit, and body. Well, the bottom line is, a lot of that shit doesn’t work. It’s not really fighting. So for me, I’m a purist. And the ultimate reality is what happens inside that octagon on a Saturday night.

DS: Which brings me to the Gracie family. How would you define their role and their impact on mixed martial arts and on the UFC?

LF: It’s almost impossible to define it. They’ve had the most significant role that there is, ever. I mean, they created the whole way, the whole thing. They were the myth-breakers. They showed everybody that this is the most effective form of fighting.

DS: When you hear Rickson Gracie talk about how, at the age of 47 or whatever he is now, that he could beat the crap out of these UFC fighters that he sees on TV now, is that an older man’s understandable vanity? Or is he telling the truth?

LF: Let’s do it! I mean, that’s the ultimate test, that’s what I said, right? Let’s find out! If that’s the truth, then let’s find out! I mean, don’t just say it. Let’s do it!

The Woodlands

Tilman Fertitta’s 250-foot, $150 million Boardwalk

Tilman Fertitta's 252-foot, $150 million superyacht Boardwalk courses through canals after departing Feadship's Aalsmeer shipyard in The Netherlands on its way to sea trials. (Photo courtesy of Feadship)

Tilman Fertitta's Boardwalk by Feadship encountered 19 locks and bridges on its way to sea trials. (Photo courtesy of Feadship)

Momus Queen Blayne Fertitta and Tilman Fertitta in 2019 partying port side of his first Boardwalk yacht during The San Luis Salute in Galveston. (Gary Fountain Photo)

The Feadship team moves Tilman Fertitta's super yatch, Boardwalk, through the narrow canals of The Netherlands on its way to sea trials. (Photo courtesy of Feadship)

An areal view of Tilman Fertitta's Feadship Boardwalk of which he is expected to take possession in April. (Photo courtesy of Feadship)

Tilman Fertitta's super yacht, Boardwalk, by Feadship makes a beautiful departure as it heads for sea trials.

Tilman Fertitt's 77-meter Boardwalk from Feadship passes the last bridge on the to sea trials, passing the city of Rotterdam. (Photo courtesy of Feadship)⁠⠀

Tilman Fertitta Gets a New $150 Million Super Yacht — Take a Look at the Floating Paradise

Houston billionaire adds boardwalk to his empire.

Tilman Fertitta's 252-foot, $150 million super yacht 'Boardwalk' courses through canals after departing Feadship's Aalsmeer shipyard in The Netherlands on its way to sea trials. (Photo courtesy of Feadship)

I n the stratospheric world of billionaire Tilman Fertitta, more is more. And bigger is better. Consider the hospitality mogul’s ever-expanding business empire and then add his newest toy — a superyacht set to splash through the waters of the Med in April.

Our curiosity was piqued when we saw info on a 77 meter (252 foot) Feadship yacht that “was commissioned by an experienced yachtsman, the project has been designed by De Voogt Naval Architects,” according to Boat International . The extraordinary yacht’s launch has additionally captured the attention of Super Yacht Times , Mega Yacht News , and Yacht Harbor .

The name of the floating behemoth: Boardwalk . The same name as Fertitta’s 50 meter (163 feet) Westport motor yacht that has ridden the Fertitta family across waves of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean for a decade.

A little more research reveals that indeed the new vessel, which is headed this month for sea trials, was commissioned by Fertitta in 2016. Four years is fairly standard for yacht construction from the hull up. It was launched from the Feadship’s Aalsmeer shipyard in The Netherlands and in early January.

With an estimated price tag of $150 million, the yacht has seven staterooms, a swimming pool, and, of course, a helipad accommodating Fertitta’s favored mode of travel.

The original Boardwalk remains in Fertitta’s possession and there is no indication that he will sell or charter it. As he has often said, he has no intention of letting anyone but family rest their heads on Boardwalk pillows. We would guess that deep-pocketed Fertitta will keep the smaller yacht in the Caribbean where the larger yacht would have difficulty maneuvering through the waters there.

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In the world of superyachts , Boardwalk is a serious contender but falls short of the ridiculously huge mega yachts such as Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ Bravo Eugenia, which measures 356 feet, or the 351-foot Benetti Lana, which charters for $1.9 million a week.

Get a closer look at Tilman Fertitta’s new yacht in this video:

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These Trumpy Billionaire Bros Are in Hot Seat Over Union-Busting Claims

Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta may have to testify about allegations of union-busting at their casinos.

Noah Kirsch

Wealth and Power Reporter

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo Getty

A labor dispute of cartoonish proportions is playing out in Las Vegas, pitting two Trump-supporting casino billionaires against one of the largest private union drives in the country.

Brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta have been ordered to testify about allegations that their gaming business, Station Casinos, egregiously tried to undercut labor organizing efforts. It is just the latest chapter in a complex saga that has played out for a decade. An administrative trial involving some of the claims is underway before a National Labor Relations Board judge.

The Fertittas are best known for Ultimate Fighting Championship—the mixed martial arts promoter they sold for more than $4 billion in 2016—and for donating millions of dollars to Donald Trump and his dark-money machine , America First Action. Much of their wealth, however, lies in a gambling operation founded by their father, which is now the subject of the union-busting allegations.

“It's extraordinary that you would bring in the very, very top person in the company [to testify],” says Bill Werner, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who researches employment disputes. “What the union is saying: the Fertittas made this decision.”

The trial follows a blistering opinion issued by a federal judge in July, which ordered Station to begin negotiating a contract with roughly 1,350 culinary workers over a contested 2019 union vote at Red Rock Resort.

In the run-up to that vote, Station had announced that it would grant employees new benefits, including a pension plan, reduced health-care contributions, and a medical center, according to court documents. The union ultimately lost the right to organize by a margin of 627 to 534.

“Red Rock’s offer of benefits was a hallmark violation,” Judge Gloria Navarro wrote in her opinion. “Many employees admitted not voting for the Union because they feared losing the new health care and 401(k) benefits that Red Rock had just promised.”

A 2019 union vote at the Red Rock Resort is at the center of the legal drama.

Ethan Miller/Getty

Adam Christian, a union supporter who has been a server at one of Station’s properties for 15 years, believes that many of his co-workers were intimidated into voting no.

“They decided to throw the kitchen sink at everybody and not even give detailed information to us to be able to even make an informed vote,” he says. “I just want to be treated fairly by a company and have something in writing.” Christian claims the casino stopped letting him serve Frank Fertitta meals once he started wearing a union button on his shirt, even when the billionaire sat in his section.

A spokesperson for Station Casinos denies that the new benefits were related to the union drive, saying it made “changes before it even knew there was to be an election.” In an appeal to the July ruling, the company called the decision “not only unjust, but also unprecedented.”

The Fertittas are likely to challenge the order to testify until the last moment, Werner says. In the meantime, supervisors at their casinos are choosing sides.

Last month, dozens of managers arrived at the union’s offices wearing matching shirts and chanting, “We despise union lies.” Most were not even eligible to join the unit.

“In our nearly nine decades of organizing, the Culinary Union has never seen company managers or supervisors picket, especially on their day off when it is 99 degrees outside,” the union’s secretary-treasurer, Geoconda Argüello-Kline, said in a statement . “We hope that they stay hydrated and cool.”

Union activity at Station Casinos has bubbled for a decade, driven in part by a history of harsh workplace practices, some employees claim.

Steve Bailey, a bellman at Red Rock Casino, says that he was pressured to skip breaks when he first started at the company 14 years ago. He bristled at other policies too, including a requirement that on-call employees be available 24 hours a day if managers decided to summon them into work.

“If you did not answer that call within five minutes, it was considered a refusal,” Bailey says. Three refusals resulted in automatic termination, he said. “I was so apprehensive about missing a call that I would put my phone in a plastic bag… and I would take it in the shower with me.”

Bailey also claims that employees have faced pressure to work private events for the Fertitta family, and that managers have sometimes used surveillance tapes to nitpick job performance. There is little recourse, he says, when employees are asked to perform tasks outside of their job descriptions.

As one example, Bailey was recently asked to drive a gambler to another property, he said. He resisted, since he lacked formal training, and ultimately said no, but he worried about repercussions: “I felt like my job was in jeopardy,” he said.

A Station spokesperson says that “the Culinary Union has a fraught relationship with the truth from the top down. The very few of our employees who have complained typically have an agenda.”

The years of tumult have not impeded the Fertittas’ financial success—including the massive UFC sale five years ago.

The brothers had purchased the fight promoter for just $2 million in 2001 after growing addicted to martial arts while taking classes in the basement of one of their casinos.

“What makes UFC so great,” Lorenzo Fertitta told Forbes in 2008, “is that every single man on the planet gets it immediately. It’s just two guys beating each other up.”

Previously, gambling had been the true family trade. The Fertittas’ dad, also named Frank, founded Station Casinos in 1976, and it grew to specialize in properties off the main Vegas strip, catering to locals over crapulent tourists.

Lorenzo Fertitta, left, and his brother Frank, right, with artist Damien Hirst at the Palms Casino Resort in 2018.

David Becker/Getty

The company is technically still private, though it is partly owned by Red Rock Resorts, a publicly traded business that the Fertittas control. Red Rock’s stock is up more than sixfold since the start of the pandemic—when it suffered a precipitous drop—and it’s now worth over $5 billion, an all-time high. Each Fertitta brother is personally worth $2.7 billion, Forbes estimates.

The brothers have not been shy about that money.

In late August, Lorenzo’s 285-foot megayacht, Lonian, caused a stir when it docked off the coast of Newport Beach; some locals believed it was a naval ship. Lonian, which cost a reported $160 million, features a glass-bottomed pool and helipad. It even travels with its own special friend, a 217-foot support yacht called Hodor outfitted with a spare helipad and additional gear.

Frank is known to splash out, too. His daughter’s 2018 wedding reportedly cost $25 million, thanks to a cake that stood more than two stories tall, a blinding amount of crystal, and an entertainment lineup that included Seal, John Mayer, and Bruno Mars. According to the Review-Journal , event staff were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

As for the labor dispute, the ongoing trial is unlikely to end the war, since the Fertittas could easily drag out the fight for another decade or longer.

“This will all be resolved when the culinary union has a contract with each Station property,” says Werner, the University of Nevada professor, about one slice of the battle. “I predict that happens never.”

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here .

READ THIS LIST

Lorenzo Fertitta Yacht: Lonian

August 15, 2022, introduction.

Lorenzo Fertitta is an American billionaire. Furthermore, he is the chairman of Fertitta Capital, the director of Red Rock Resorts Inc., and was the CEO of the UFC. His cousin is fellow billionaire Tilman Fertitta. You can read about Tilman’s own yacht here . Furthermore, Lorenzo has made many philanthropic donations during his career. Some of which are to the Lone Survivor Foundation, the Fisher House, and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund . Check out the Lorenzo Fertitta yacht below.

The yacht has seven bedrooms and over seven bathrooms, with over 280 feet of space inside. Within the seven cabins on board, there is a beautiful master suite, as well as two luxurious VIP suites. Furthermore, there is also a very large pool, a jacuzzi, and enough room for a helicopter landing. This superyacht took about three years to complete. The yacht also has a smaller, 216-foot companion boat called Hodor. Hodor is used mostly to store water toys and vehicles such as ATVs and motorcycles. Moreover, is there anything this yacht does not offer? Lastly, would you like to live in this yacht? Please leave your thoughts below.

Specifications: Lorenzo Fertitta Yacht

Bedrooms: 7

Bathrooms: 7+

Square Feet: 285 feet long

Price: $160 million

Lorenzo Fertitta Yacht Net Worth: $2 billion

Photos: Lorenzo Fertitta Yacht

In conclusion, I hope you enjoyed reading about Lorenzo Fertitta's yacht. Furthermore, please leave your thoughts and comments below. Finally, read some other articles like this one on our frontpage .

Lastly, which other celebrity yachts would you like to see on our site? Please leave the names of other celebrities that you would like to see on here. Check us out on Instagram too and like and follow. Leave your thoughts on our Facebook wall, or on Instagram in the comments of our posts.

ufc ceo lorenzo fertitta yacht

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These Trumpy Billionaire Bros Are in Hot Seat Over Union-Busting Claims

Noah Kirsch

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo Getty

Ethan Miller/Getty

David Becker/Getty