Biography
Born in Canada and initially raised in Edmonton, Alberta, the diplomatic work of his Filipino father, Victoriano, would take young Victor Cui to different parts of the world. At age five Victor lived in Ghana, where he had first experience in combat sports when Victoriano built a boxing ring. When he was twelve, Cui's family returned to Canada where he later earned a Bachelor's degree in International Politics, a black belt in taekwondo, and spent four years as a Royal Canadian Navy officer. Cui founded and late sold a publishing company in Canada prior to entering the sports media industry and did "a post-graduate program with a focus on Asia-pacific business management and an EMBA in luxury marketing." Cui was in charge of communications for the Canadian branch of the PGA Golf Tour, and he was also a managing editor for a golf publication. Cui briefly entered politics as a campaign manager for a successful Mayoral candidate in Edmonton.
Cui moved to Singapore and joined the then named ESPN Star Sports, a network which provides sports programming to 24 countries in Asia. ESPN Star Sports was founded in 1994 as a joint venture between the Walt Disney Company and News Corporation. Cui spent six years with Star Sports' Event Management Group division where he studied sports and how to increase their revenue. Questions about a sport's fan base, scalability, popularity, as well an athlete's popularity, were a part of his work. According to Cui, "You name the sport and I have done the analysis on it: bowling, tennis, football, golf, darts, marching bands, billiards."
It was that experience of studying the sports marketplace which lead Cui to act upon his longtime fandom of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), a sport he felt translated well beyond cultural and language barriers. Between May and October 2010, Cui did a test run with some small-scale MMA events to determine interest level for MMA in Asia. Cui promoted twelve events under the banner Martial Combat for a period of six months at Singapore's Resorts World Sentoas, and all the cards were televised by ESPN Star Sports. The results of Martial Combat convinced Cui there was an appetite for MMA in Asia, and, against the advice of many, Cui created One Fighting Championship. Cui told Wall Street Journal Asia that One FC is "backed by a very successful group of serial entrepreneurs, all multimillionaires that have taken businesses from scratch to IPO [initial public offering] ." Cui told the aforementioned publication that the main source of revenues for One FC are from advertisement and broadcast rights. Cui's assessment is that Asia has a low cable TV penetration with a small market for online purchases. Months before One FC's inaugural ONE Fighting Championship 1: Champion vs. Champion (2011) event at the 12,000-seat Singapore Indoor Stadium, tickets were reportedly quickly sold out soon after it was announced. Using his prior relationship with Star Sports network, Cui was able to have a television presence for the first presentation of One Fighting Championship on September 3, 2011. One FC 1 was also carried on a local station in Singapore, Media Corp Channel 5, and streamed worldwide for free on the upstart promotion's website. Four months after "Champion vs. Champion", in January 2012, One FC and Star Sports made a decade-long deal to broadcast the MMA promotion's events to approximately 24 to 28 countries covered by the network. The following June, News Corp. purchased complete ownership of ESPN Start Sports and it was re-branded FOX Star Sports.
In starting One FC, Cui envisioned a "hybrid" of MMA fought under the Global MMA Rule, which is a combination of Unified Rules (non-Asian) and rules that had been used by Asian promotions like Japan's Pride Fighting Championships and DREAM. One FC follows the Unified Rules in terms of weight classes, lengths of rounds, and the maximum time for non-title and title fights. Like other Asian promotions, One FC is more permissve in the types and placement of attacks during a bout. Unlike most Asian promotions, One FC's bouts happen inside a cage and not a ring.
In an August 2014 interview with The Strait Times, Cui projected that in three or four years One FC will be worth billions of dollars in its IPO. Earlier that month, boxer Manny Pacquiao made an undisclosed investment in the privately-held promotion and became a board member. That same month, One FC had its first event in the Middle East with Dubai's ONE Fighting Championship 19: Reign of Champions (2014), then its first Cambodia card a month later with ONE Fighting Championship 20: Rise of the Kingdom (2014). Cui had done previous sports-related business in Asia, from his role in sponsorship/marketing campaigns for events such as X Games Asia and Commonwealth Games in Malaysia. He was later able to make a deal which granted the Singapore-based One FC access to the highly desired marketplace in mainland China. With an estimated populace of 1.3 billion people, cultural and political sensitivities have made it difficult for foreign companies to gain entry to the People's Republic of China. In June 2014, One FC announced a goal of having 10 events in mainland China in 2015 as result of an agreement with China's AMC Live Group, an event promoter.
