Chatri Sityodtong claims fake news on ONE Championship’s $383M losses — that they reported themselves

ONE Championship’s financial losses keep growing at an alarming rate. Earlier in October, Bloody Elbow reported on the promotion’s recent filings with the Singapore government, showing $110 million in losses for 2021 alone, and $383 million in accumulated losses.

Like he did a year ago, when ONE filed their annual financial statements with ACRA (Singapore’s close equivalent to the SEC) and showed $48 million in losses for 2020, ONE’s CEO Chatri Sityodtong again basically claimed “fake news” on their own 2021 report.

“I think if you want financial information, go to the most credible sources in the world, like a Bloomberg or Financial Times, which also wrote articles on ONE. Are you gonna go to an MMA website, right?” Sityodtong told Ariel Helwani, when asked about Bloody Elbow’s report citing their documents. “So that just on that level, but on the bigger picture level, okay so it is inaccurate again.”

When repeatedly pressed on what part was inaccurate, Sityodong dodged the questions.

“Go to Bloomberg, go to Financial Times,” he again said, claiming his interviews with the two outlets saying they’re about to be profitable is the actual truth.

As mentioned above, their documents were reported to ACRA and filed by ONE Championship themselves. These financial statements are publicly accessible and it also shows Chatri Sityodtong, real name is Chatri Trisiripisal, and other ONE Championship directors signing off on the document.

Bloody Elbow also spoke to ONE Championship and asked for comments on the financial statements they filed with ACRA prior to publication. They did not dispute any of the figures, and told Bloody Elbow they’re still “confident that we’re on a clear path to build a sustainable and profitable business.”

Deal Street Asia, a reputed financial publication based in Singapore, also requested and obtained ONE Championship’s 2021 financial statements from ACRA. Their report showed the same massive losses Bloody Elbow cited.

It is worth noting that with ONE Championship recently re-domiciling in the Caymans and their more opaque structure on business, this 2021 report could possibly be the last financial statement to be publicly accessible.

While Sityodtong tried to claim that reports revealing their massive losses were “inaccurate,” he also went on to explain in the interview why their massive losses are okay. He claimed “we have burned approximately 350 (million),” then compared ONE to Tesla and Amazon.

“If you just take a look at that Tesla story, let’s say. You know, I think Elon, I don’t know how many billions of dollars he lost, but it’s not losing to him,” Sityodtong argued. “He was investing in factories, investing in new batteries, investing new technology, investing in scaling his production facilities, right? It’s the same equivalent, except for us, it’s brand, product, platform, roster and geography. So again, inherently sports properties are massively profitable, when you reach the scale of NBA, NFL.”

Sityodtong then claimed again that they’re on the brink of profitability.

“Like I said, Blomberg and Financial Times are the probably the most credible amongst the most credible financial publications. Read there, and I’ve given interviews there and I believe that profitability will be within three years based on our current trajectory,” Sityodtong said.

ONE has been repeating these bold claims to the public about being “very, very close to profitability” every year, but the numbers they file to the government in private tell a completely different story of rapidly growing losses.

ONE Championship’s finances: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021