UFC among sports’ big spenders with D.C. lobbyists
Anti-piracy aims have driven the UFC lately to spend more on federal lobbyists than any other sports organization except the…
Anti-piracy aims have driven the UFC lately to spend more on federal lobbyists than any other sports organization except the NFL, a new report says.
UFC spent $110,000 in the first quarter of this year on firms that lobby at the federal level, according to a report released this week by First Street Research Group, which tracks spending on lobbyists. Only the NFL exceeded that figure, giving $300,000 to companies that lobby Congress.
Last year, UFC was third at $410,000, behind the NFL’s $1.62 million and Major League Baseball’s $520,000.
The main item has been a bill that would upgrade illegal streaming to a felony that can be prosecuted on a federal level, said Lawrence Epstein, executive vice president and general counsel for Zuffa. Originally introduced as a separate measure, it was rolled into the unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act and Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act. Lawmakers tabled both bills earlier this year after an outcry of opposition.
Movie studios, music publishers and other entertainment companies led support of SOPA. Zuffa has been a relatively minor player on the issue by comparison, but no sports organization has more to gain from increased penalties for illegal streams, Epstein said.
Zuffa has long decried illegal streams of its pay-per-view programs, which generate most of the company’s revenue. In recent years it has sued many individuals, websites and businesses accused of streaming UFC programs without permission.
“We’re the sports organization with the most skin in the game when it comes to pay-per-view and potential damages to our company as a result of online piracy,” Epstein said.
USA TODAY spoke to Epstein about Zuffa’s lobbying activity.
Sergio Non: What’s the benchmark of success for you in Washington?
Lawrence Epstein: Short-term, as a result of our efforts, Senators Cornyn and Klobuchar introduced a bill to essentially make the online streaming of live online content a felony. It’s currently a misdemeanor under a federal law. We want to elevate it to a felony.
We got Sens. Klobuchar, who’s a liberal Democrat, and Cornyn, who’s a conservative Republican, to co-sponsor that legislation, which shows this is really a bipartisan issue.
Unfortunately, that bill became part of the Senate’s Protect IP Act, PIPA, and became part of SOPA on the House side. And as I’m sure you’re aware, those bills were much more expansive than simply taking something that’s already a misdemeanor and elevating it to a felony regarding online streaming. (SOPA and PIPA were) putting all sorts of other issues dealing with rogue websites and all sorts of things, which caught the eye of Google and certainly many other tech-oriented companies.
A grassroots campaign was put together which was very effective and destroyed the chances of SOPA and PIPA getting a vote. We got thrown in with a bigger ship and unfortunately our little issue sunk with that bigger ship.
So in the short term, our goal is to resurrect that Klobuchar-Cornyn bill and move that forward in the United States Congress. That was part of what we were doing yesterday, was trying to at least lay the groundwork to get that done, hopefully before the end of this year.
SN: Zuffa had a minor brush with the backlash against SOPA when the UFC.com website was redirected for a little while. As you continue these anti-piracy efforts, how much concern is there it might provoke a reaction from the technorati who are MMA fans?
LE: We don’t want to upset any of our fans. But frankly, people that are going to look to take down our website and try to hurt our business — we don’t need them as fans.
We’re not like the recording industry, for example, that frankly just didn’t meet the demands of the consumers.
The consumers wanted digital music. They wanted music they could easily download and they wanted it in digital format. The record industry didn’t want to do that and as a result, there were problems.
We’ve taken a totally different approach to new technology. We embrace it. We are, I would say, the most technologically advanced sports business that’s ever existed. You can watch any of our content any time you want on any device that’s out there.
We love technology and we want to deliver it to our customers, the UFC content, in any way, shape or form they want it.
You’ve got to pay for it. But we’re not like the record industry that wasn’t delivering the content in the way that consumers wanted it. You just have to pay for it.
Are we afraid of backlashes? I think Dana’s addressed that issue straight on in taking on Anonymous and calling them out. So I don’t think we’re afraid of those guys at all.
It’s disappointing the way they react to things. I, for example, wrote an op-ed article supporting SOPA and PIPA in our local newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and I got just comments like I’ve never seen. These were all ad hominem attacks on me, calling me names and not really addressing the issues.
This is the way these guys sort of operate. They’re not focused on taking the issues on and having an honest debate about the issues. They just want to yell names and take down people’s websites and redirect them towards pictures of Adolf Hitler.
Once again, we are all for an honest debate on who’s right. We’re willing to do that any time. We’re not going to, as Dana said, bow down to these terrorist actions that Anonymous and other hackers have tried to employ against us, because we’re simply trying to advocate for something we think is right. It’s crazy.
I don’t know if you’ve read Steve Jobs book, but he had some really, really powerful comments in the book talking about how piracy is incredibly bad for America; and how he never would have been able to build Apple into the company that it is without having copyright protections and all sorts of things that the law currently provides.
It’s just amazing to me that these guys who are technologically savvy just don’t get that. They just don’t get that all the stuff that they’re using to do these actions that are very, very negative are the result of people that were innovators, and those innovations should be protected. It’s not rocket science.
I don’t want to rant too much here.