Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2013 Fighting Culture: Toward a Cultural Economy of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Michael E. Armstrong Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FIGHTING CULTURE: TOWARD A CULTURAL ECONOMY OF THE ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP By MICHAEL E. ARMSTRONG A Thesis submitted to the Department of Sport Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2013 Michael Armstrong defended this thesis on June 28th 2013 The members of the supervisory committee were: Joshua Newman Professor Directing Thesis Michael Giardina Committee Member Jennifer Proffitt Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii This thesis is dedicated to my parents whose continued support made this whole process possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the help and support of my supervisor Dr. Joshua Newman, and the members of my committee, Dr. Michael Giardina and Dr. Jennifer Proffitt. Their feedback and guidance was instrumental in completing this project. I would also like to thank all those in the Department of Sport Management, the wider College of Education, and Florida State University for encouraging and advancing my academic career. Finally, a special thanks goes to my colleagues in the Tully Media Lab for putting up with me, lending a hand, and keeping me more or less sane throughout this project. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 Mixed Martial Arts & The UFC ................................................................................................. 4 The Labor Structure in MMA ................................................................................................... 13 The Contract .......................................................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ......................................................................... 28 Economics of the Spectacularized Sporting Body .................................................................... 29 Demand for the Product of Sports Labor .............................................................................. 30 The Sport Labor Market ........................................................................................................ 35 Toward a Cultural Economy of the UFC .................................................................................. 43 On Culture ............................................................................................................................. 45 On Cultural Economics ......................................................................................................... 46 Culturalizing the Economic: Beyond Bourdieu .................................................................... 51 The Economization of Culture: Watching as Working ......................................................... 57 Resolving the Dialectic in the Society of the Spectacle ....................................................... 59 Situating the Fighter in the Spectacle of Combat Sports .......................................................... 67 A Spectacle of Reality .............................................................................................................. 77 Conclusion: Fighting the Cultural Economy ............................................................................ 86 CHAPTER THREE: METHOD ................................................................................................... 88 Paradigmatic Foundations ......................................................................................................... 94 Studying the Spectacle .............................................................................................................. 95 Critical Discourse Analysis: Reading the TUF Text ................................................................ 97 Self-Reflexivity ....................................................................................................................... 101 CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS ................................................................................................... 103 Identification ........................................................................................................................... 103 Production ............................................................................................................................... 113 Situation .................................................................................................................................. 118 Physical Location ................................................................................................................ 119 v Sporting Context ................................................................................................................. 121 Corporate Context ............................................................................................................... 127 The UFC Spectacle ............................................................................................................. 138 CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION ............................................................................................... 145 TUF Spectacle ......................................................................................................................... 146 The Fighter Contestant ........................................................................................................ 146 The UFC Contract(ed fighter) ............................................................................................. 148 The UFC Organizational Identity ....................................................................................... 149 Occlusion ................................................................................................................................ 152 Institutional Human Capital .................................................................................................... 157 An Apparatus of the Spectacle and the Collapse of a Metonym ............................................ 162 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 168 APPENDIX: IRB APPROVAL LETTER .................................................................................. 174 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................175 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................188 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1 Annual cumulative PPV buy rate based off available public data from multiple sources ..............8 2 PPV buys by UFC event ......................................................................................................9 vii ABSTRACT This research looks to extend beyond the sports economic theory to present a cultural economic conception of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Utilizing the theory of “spectacle” put forward by Guy Debord I conducted a critical discourse analysis of season one of the UFC’s subsidiary realty TV show The Ultimate Fighter. Results indicated a specific construction with regard to the fighter-contestant identity positioning them as members of the lower/working class and, as such, the positioning of the UFC as an emancipatory institution. Such construction is interpreted as creating cultural forms that have the potential to aid in the UFC’s extraction of surplus value from its labor force while propagating and legitimating the current systems of late capitalism and neoliberalism. viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION In December, 2011, the ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’ (UFC) CEO and 40.5% stockholder Lorenzo Fertitta, along with the organization’s president, front man, and 9% stockholder, Dana White, were named among the Sport Business Journal’s “50 Most Influential People in Sport Business.” The article opens: “Media moves as well as labor harmony (or lack thereof) shake up our annual list of the executives who set the agenda for North American sports.” This was, of course, in reference to the previous seasons’ lockouts in both the National Football League and the National Basketball League and harking back to 2005 in the National Hockey League (or perhaps written as a premonition of the NHL lockout occurring nine months after the article’s release). While the players of three of the United States’ most popular sports were entering into drawn out revenue negotiation with the league’s ownership, the UFC was able to keep its labor force “under control” through strict individual contracts and centralized private governance.