ONE Championship’s Qatari Investors Reportedly ‘Embarrassed’ Over their involvement with the promotion
ONE Championship is making a new pitch to the Qatar Investment Authority in hopes of securing another round of investor funding.
Per a report from DealStreetAsia, the Singapore-based promotion has raised over $500 million in funding to date, including $150 million in ONE’s last round of investments led by Qatar Investment Authority. With that money now running out, ONE is making a new fundraising pitch to the QIA as “ONE’s runway is expected to expire by Q3 of next year.”
It remains to be seen if ONE Championship can secure additional funding, but according to the report, “the Qataris have been increasingly embarrassed about their involvement with ONE, which has been under the spotlight for its weak financials among other things.
It is also being reported that at least two local partners the QIA has brought in, Qatar Airways and Ooredoo, have stopped supporting the promotion financially.
ONE Championship planned to make its debut in Qatar before the end of 2023 with a “mega-sized” event boasting five world title fights. That card has since been pushed back to March.
ONE Championship’s Finances Remain a Continuous Source of Confusion
All of this brings into question ONE Championship’s overall financial status, though there seems to be no clear answer. ONE regularly files financials with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, and those have shown growing revenue figures of $67.7 million for 2021 and a reported $80 million estimate for 2022. However, DealStreetAsia claims that the figures include ‘non-cash components,’ and “ONE’s true cash revenue in FY2022 is likely to be just $5-8 million.”
“What you’ll see is revenue actually… this year we will cross north of, a little over a hundred million dollars in revenue,” ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong told CNBC following DealStreetAsia’s report. “And next year, approaching 200 million dollars if not a little bit more than 200 million. That would be our biggest incremental jump in revenues I think in the history of the company” (h/t BloodyElbow).
“More importantly, we anticipate core business profitability by the second half of next year,” Sityodtong added.
Despite Sityodtong’s routinely optimistic commentaries and bombastic claims, ONE’s financial filings through the years show losses growing at an astronomical rate. ONE’s documents indicate that they lost $111 million in a single year, with accumulated losses of $383 million as of 2021.
With the promotion gearing up for another pitch to investors, we can only assume that ONE’s financial woes have continued into the last two years.
