Business owners have learned the hard way that showing pay-per-view mixed martial arts contests and other sporting events without paying the proper fees can be costly.

In the past two years, distributors and sponsors of these events have filed nearly three dozen federal lawsuits in Minnesota alone against taverns, restaurants and their owners, seeking damages in excess of $140,000 a pop.

While it costs about $50 to order a UFC event on pay-per-view in a private residence, it costs bars, restaurants and other commercial establishments $750 to $1,500, depending on their size.

The event’s promoters say bar owners will try to beat the system by “pirating” it. They might misrepresent the business as a residence when ordering the program, move a residential receiver to a business location, stream the program via broadband, or use a “Slingbox” to relay the program from a home account to a business.

Mingling among the fight fans Saturday will be an army of private investigators and freelance “auditors” armed with smartphones and camcorders who are paid a bounty for finding establishments that show the event without paying the commercial licensing fees.

A search of federal court records found thousands of lawsuits nationwide filed since the early 1990s.

Most suits of this type settle for undisclosed terms. In cases where the owners blow off the lawsuits, though, the plaintiffs have obtained default judgments in Minnesota ranging from $5,000 to $146,000.

There’s no telling how many cases are settled in advance of a lawsuit. Proprietors say plaintiffs come in heavy, demanding $20,000 or more, then often offer to settle in the low teens.

“It’s criminal, what they’re doing,” said Jeffrey W. Jensen, co-owner of J.T.’s Hideaway, a small bar in New Prague, Minn. that got slapped in July with a lawsuit demanding damages of $170,000. “I have nothing. I mean, we’re behind on our house. We’re behind on our bar payment,” he said. “We’re not rolling in dough here.”

Jensen insists that he didn’t mean to do anything wrong in July 2010 when he called his local cable provider, Bevcomm, and ordered up UFC 116 at the request of a customer who wanted to see Minnesota heavyweight Brock Lesnar fight Shane Carwin.

“I didn’t know I had to go through a promoter,” Jensen said.

Ignorance is no excuse in such cases, though it can soften the blow when it comes to damages.

Minneapolis attorney Tim Maher found settlements around the country varied tremendously, but averaged about $16,000. In his own experience it has cost defendants $2,500 to $7,500 to keep from going to court, he said.

UFC president Dana White has vowed to go after anyone who pirates the company’s events, whether it’s a bar or a website.

Big money is at stake. The financial research firm SNL Kagan says UFC delivered $310 million in pay-per-view programming in 2011, maintaining its position as the largest player in the field, ahead of boxing and wrestling.

PiracySurveillanceJob.com has an advertisement offering $100 for verified leads on commercial venues that try to get around the required fees. It pays $100 to $175 to bounty hunters who can produce video evidence and a notarized affidavit.

“I think there is a misconception out there that the piracy and resulting lawsuits create a revenue stream for our client. This is not true,” attorney Ryan Janis said in an e-mail. “The truth is, after taking into account lost licensing fees, legal fees, private investigator fees, court costs, salaried staff time dedicated to piracy, and other attendant costs, pursuing piracy is not a very profitable activity for our client.”

Still, he called it necessary “in the current technological landscape where some feel proprietary information or programming can be had for free, despite federal laws to the contrary.”

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