"My big first business mistake" - Dana White reveals incredible story of securing the UFC.com domain name
Dana White is known for being an extremely shrewd businessman, but he didn't have his best day at the office when trying to secure the UFC.com URL from a small computing business in the early 2000s.
White was on The Pivot Podcast and detailed how his profanity laced refusal to pay five figures for the web address cost him ten times as much in the end.
He said:
"So this guy owned 'User Friendly Computers,' and this was my big first business mistake. I call him up and say 'We wanna buy the .com from you.' And I don't remember the number, he wanted, something like $20,000. And I 'Motherf***ed' him up and down, 'You piece of s***, $20,000?' Dada dada dada. 'F*** you,' he hangs up the phone. So we battled for years. The UFC just starts to go like this [up and up]. So we end up paying like, you know, some crazy number, $150,000 or $200,000 for the thing eventually when I should have took it for $20,000 in the beginning."
For those who were following the UFC back in the early 2000s, the promotion was stuck using UFC.tv as their main URL for years before finally making the deal for UFC.com in 2006.
The original UFC.com before Dana White paid six figures to buy it for the promotion in 2006 https://t.co/juq4yL0RuH
UFC.tv would end up being where they sold unaired prelim fights for $2.99 per bout. The web address now redirects to the UFC Fight Pass service.
Watch the full Dana White interview on The Pivot Podcast below:
Dana White almost left the UFC when it was sold in 2017
Dana White's more successful business moves eventually led to the UFC being sold to WME-IMG (now known as Endeavor) for over $4 billion.
In the same podcast, the UFC president reveals he almost quit his job over that decision. He said:
“It was actually a really bad time for me, I didn’t want to do it. The Fertittas were ready to get out and they had a sit down with me. ... They sat me down and said, ‘We’re gonna sell this thing and we’re ready to go but nobody will take it unless you stay so you have to do this.’ I was kind of in a weird place because I had done this thing with them, these are my best friends, we’d done it together and I got a little f***** up. I took off for a while, went up into a hotel room, and didn’t come out for a few days. I was a little f***** up over the whole thing. Then I snapped out of it and got my s*** together.”
Dana White said the decision to stay was made easier once he met WME-IMG head Ari Emanuel, and now he'll need to be 'dragged out' if they want him to leave.
The UFC's new leadership backstage at @JimmyKimmelLive
Dana White, Ari Emanuel & Patrick Whitesell
#UFC #MMA #WMMA https://t.co/wjg3FkrFp9