In the 2025 debut of Coffey Talk, Professional Fighters League founder Donn Davis discusses tweaking the mixed martial arts league’s season, why he left the cushy world of venture capital in his mid-50s to start PFL and how there is too much “ego money” in sports investing.
Davis, 62, founded PFL in 2018 and has built it into the second-most popular MMA league in the world, after UFC. Unlike other leagues, PFL is built on an elimination format that crowns a winner in each of the eight weight categories by season’s end. This year Davis has changed the structure of PFL’s season, shortening it from eight months to about five and making competition single-elimination. The goal is to simplify the league format (no more points tables) to make it even more broadly appealing.
“We’re averaging 500,000 viewers per fight, but we want to continue to be able to grow,” Davis said. “We haven’t changed the win-and-advance meritocracy. We just made it simpler and shorter.”
In the 25-minute interview, Davis also talks about why PFL has been rolling out regional leagues to serve the 90% of its audience that is based outside the U.S. PFL has regional circuits in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and, next year, Australia, in addition to the PFL World Tournament.
“PFL Europe, PFL Africa, PFL Australia. You start locally, you win, you get exposure, you make money, you move up to global,” Davis explains.
Before launching PFL, Davis had a long career in the sports and media business, first as a lawyer for the Chicago Cubs and rising eventually to be one of the top executives at AOL Time Warner during its height of dominance. In 2005, he along with billionaire Steve Case co-founded Revolution, an investment firm where Davis served as manager of the growth funds. There, Davis invested early in businesses, including DraftKings, Sportradar and Zipcar. Then, instead of forming his own independent venture capital firm or retiring—the typical move of successful VC executives at age 55—Davis jumped to form PFL.
“What I saw seven years ago was a fundamental change of opportunity in sport,” he said, explaining it was due to the rise of streaming, the different interests of younger generations and the globalization of sports. “The big four North America sports leagues ain’t gonna be the big four anymore,” he added. “Ten years out, 20 years out, it’s going to be the NFL, the NBA, Premier League and MMA.”
The difference between those three leagues and MMA right now? “Nobody gets to go to the Hamptons country club and say “I just did MMA.” There’s no ego around it, but there is ego around these other things. So there’s a lot of ego money overpaying for assets that allow you to claim to your friends you’ve done something. There’s not enough money around what I believe are great business opportunities in sports.”
Coffey Talk, hosted by Sportico sports finance reporter Brendan Coffey, is a weekly video interview series with some of the sports business world’s most influential people. Previous episodes featured billionaire investor Marc Lasry; Mark Affolter and Jim Miller, the co-heads of the sports and entertainment fund of Ares Management; and Sameer Ahuja, who runs GameChanger, the ubiquitous youth sports app.
You can also watch the videos on Sportico’s official YouTube channel.
