Donn Davis founded the Professional Fighters League (PFL) in 2017. He launched it the following year and has been serving as the league’s chairman since then. The PFL is the first major mixed martial arts organization in which individual athletes compete in a regular season, post-season and championship, rather than the promoter-based format, more commonly associated with UFC and boxing.
Why the PFL Exists: A League Built for the Underserved
When he first envisioned the PFL, Davis relied on a simple yet powerful founding thesis: fans, fighters, and commercial partners were being underserved in the fastest-growing sport on earth. The PFL would be their platform.
“Six hundred and fifty million fans, thousands of fighters, there’s more opportunity than just the UFC. (…) The UFC is a great company, but MMA deserves another great company," he claims.
Today, the PFL ranks among the fastest-growing combat sports leagues in the world.
In this exclusive video interview for WSC Sports, Davis breaks down how the PFL is using technology to scale its business, reshaping the fan experience, and using content as a primary driver of reach and relevance beyond the fight nights.
Why 30 Fights a Year Isn’t Enough
“We have to fill every day with great content, great storytelling, great highlights," says Davis.
The PFL stages about 30 live events each year. That leaves 335 other days to engage fans, build brand equity, and stay relevant in a world where attention moves fast.
“We're a seven-year-old company, so think of us as still a middle school kid. We've got to make our name on a global basis, and we have to make our name to everybody: commercial partners, fans, media partners," explains Davis. "And you can't do that with just thirty live events a year.”
To maximize the reach of each event and engage in year-long storytelling, the PFL uses WSC Sports. The league works with twenty media partners around the world for live events and is now able to produce countless pieces of content for social and digital platforms.
Unseen Moves, Unmatched Moments
Davis points to two kinds of content that matter most: the kind that reveals the human side of the fighters — misunderstood athletes with stories that rival any mainstream star, and the kind that makes you say “I’ve never seen that before."
A perfect example that Davis references was seen in a PFL Africa event, where he witnessed a so-called question mark leg kick for the first time. While we might all be familiar with Hail Mary plays in the NFL or Home Runs in the MLB, the PFL manages to bring unseen content to the masses.
Understanding the Now, Now, Now Generation
Understanding your fan base is crucial to produce relevant content. Davis shared insights about PFL fans and their expectations.
"Sixty percent of our fan base are 18 to 35," says Davis. "They ain't waiting for hours. They want it now, now, now.”
That’s where infrastructure becomes decisive. To meet the pace of modern fandom, the PFL uses WSC Sports to power its entire highlight operation.
Everything from live fight clips to multi-language story packages is automated, formatted, and ready to post in seconds.
This in turn helps the PFL turn every fight into a full-funnel content machine. At the same time, the partnership allows the PFL to focus on what it does best.
We are not a technology company. We are a storytelling, media and fighter company. So we must partner with best-of-class, industrial-strength companies like WSC Sports.”
Davis sees partnerships as the multiplier to meet the demands of modern fandom without burning internal bandwidth. WSC Sports powers the fan-connection infrastructure, while the PFL focuses on building its brand, audience, and narrative.
From Local Leagues to a Global Tournament Structure
With MMA being one of the fastest-growing sports, the PFL is eyeing new demographics across the globe.
“When I think about PFL over the next five years, what excites me the most are two words: global and growth," says Davis.
The league recently launched three new local leagues in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, and plans to add PFL Pacific, PFL Asia, and PFL Latin America in the next three years.
The next milestone?
A truly global MMA Champions League, inspired by the tried and tested European formats in soccer. A structure that hasn’t existed in MMA until now.
“That's what we want to build with PFL, that demands more storytelling, more technology to make the sport easy to understand for fans," explains Davis.
Making a Mark, Not Just Another League
At the end of the day, Davis aims to leave a mark on the MMA world.
Footprints in the sand, do something that wouldn’t have otherwise been done. That’s what we’re trying to do with the PFL.”
With plenty of space to grow and serve fans, the PFL is not engaging in disruption for the sake of it. Rather, the league is engaging in a true differentiation strategy, with new technology and new format.
This pioneer attitude is turbocharging its worldwide growth. While many martial arts organizations focus on building a fight calendar, Davis is on a course to create a global sports league with storytelling at the center. The PFL aims to be a co-leader in MMA five to ten years from now.
With WSC Sports as a core partner, the PFL can tell the right story to the right fan, on the right platform. And in a sport where every punch could go viral, the PFL is bracing itself for global relevance.
