Lorenzo Fertitta believes UFC likely headed to Italy, Spain, and France in the near future

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The UFC has been bent on expanding their product to all areas of the world over the last several years, and they continue to enter new markets year after year. In 2012, they've already gone to Japan for the first time under Zuffa ownership, and they'll now make their debut in Sweden this April, but that's not all that's on tap in Europe for the organization.

"I think Italy will be next," UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta said in an interview with MMAFighting.com. "Me and Lawrence [Epstein, the UFC's general counsel] went out to Italy and met with the owners. There's really only one venue in Italy that makes sense for us. There's an arena right outside of Milan, it's owned by a family, and once again, they had these misconceptions about what this was. 'Oh my gosh, you're going to have these guys get in there and fight in a cage,' and all this other stuff."

"But we went out there, sat down with them, explained who we were, what our background was, safety, regulation, all those things. [We] invited them to the fight in Birmingham [for UFC 138], and they were blown away. They said, 'You guys are welcome any time you want.' So I get an e-mail from Lawrence earlier this week. They're having a fight later this month; they've already sold 15,000 tickets."

Fertitta said ratings in Italy have been surprisingly good, and additionally, Spain and France are both looking like realistic host countries for the organization sooner than later.

"We just launched in Spain on a major market where we launched The Ultimate Fighter, and I just got an e-mail this morning, ratings continue to go up," Fertitta said. "I think we're doing well over 250,000 viewers, which is a big number for that market given the population. So that's another market that we'll be looking to go to pretty soon."

"France is a massive opportunity," he continued. "[The] Sports Ministry is definitely positive on the issues. The issue is a little bit different because here in the United States, the government actually regulates the sport and they have an entity that regulates it. In a lot of these other countries, it's different. They are more in tune with the Olympic style of regulating things where you have a federation. So they're fine with it, as long as there is a federation put in place to oversee the rules and regulations."

"So a federation has been established, so it's just a matter of getting it recognized by the Sports Ministry, which we actually have met with, and they have been very positive. David Douillet [France's Sports Minister] is an ex-Olympic Gold Medalist in judo, so he understands the sport. We're very encouraged that you'll be eating croissants watching the UFC pretty soon."

Penick's Analysis: They are absolutely dedicated to bringing this sport to as many places as possible, and these are encouraging signs of progress in Europe overall. The UK market hasn't been as big for them as they had hoped it to be, and as such their frequency of events in the region has stalled, but they're trying to expand beyond that. They've run one card in Ireland, and two in Germany thus far outside of their trips to the UK, and with Sweden and possibly Italy this year, they'll continue to build up different parts of the continent.

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