A peek at ONE Championship’s FY2024 numbers
SO! ONE Championship released its FY2024 financial numbers a few days ago. As usual, there was a two year delay on this report (we’re in the year 2026) so we’ll have to caveat for that. Let’s take a look at it together.
Topline figures show improvement but cash is tight
On the surface, it certainly looks like ONE has improved its topline figures. Revenue has grown, while losses have shrunk.
Group revenue grew 37% to $93.2 million in FY2024
Cost of sales slashed by 22.6% to $25 million
Total losses for the year shrank 47.7% to $47.1 million
Net cash outflow used in operating activities roughly halved to $28.4 million
But the big expense items — notably staff and marketing costs — have either remained the same or risen. Employee benefits were flat at $21 million in FY2023 and 2024, while marketing expenses grew 17.6% to $70.1 million. (See highlighted below)
You can see signs of layoffs (see rise in termination benefits below), as well as a reduction or possibly an adjustment of employment packages where salaries and bonuses were reduced, but compensated with share-based payments (highlighted below.)
It signals some level of tightening at the company.
ONE’s loss before tax from continuing operations contracted 41.1% to $47 million — likely due to a reduction in overall operational activity from fewer and cheaper events, as well as the discontinuation subsidiaries like ONE China and ONE Esports.
Cash is low. ONE Championship held just $16 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of FY2024. At the same time, some $20 million was suddenly invested into bond funds in FY2024 (from nearly nothing in FY2023) presumably to preserve the little cash they have on hand.
But take a step back and you’ll find these to ultimately be very small figures compared to the losses ONE has racked up.
ONE Championship has $576 million in accumulated losses compared to the $586.6 million in share capital raised from investors like Peak XV Partners (former Sequoia Capital India), Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Guggenheim Investments, Temasek Holdings, Heliconia Capital, Mission Holdings and others.
In addition to this, ONE has also accrued $431.5 million in unutilised tax losses meant to set off against future taxable income. According to the report, “no deferred tax assets have been recognised due to the uncertainty of the utilisation of the benefits.” (See below.)
But how much of ONE’s revenue was cash? Very little
One of the biggest issues the global MMA and investment community has had with ONE was the opacity around the nature of its revenue and how it was recognised. For the first time, ONE’s auditors (Ernst & Young) have started to report exactly how much of it was cash versus non-cash. The results are pretty astounding.
ONE has 5 revenue streams: i) Ticketing; ii) Sponsorship; iii) Broadcasting; iv) Digital platform; v) Merchandise. Its top two revenue contributors are broadcasting (81.4%) and sponsorship (15.2%) in FY2024.
According to ONE’s FY2024 report, 93% of ONE’s broadcast revenue was non-cash, while 22% of its sponsorship revenue was non-cash.
So this would give ONE Championship:
$5.3 million in broadcast cash revenue
$11.1 million in sponsorship cash revenue
If we were to assume that all other revenue streams were in cash, the total actual cash revenue ONE generated in FY2024 would be:
$5.3m (broadcast) + $11.1m (sponsorship) + $0.3m (ticketing) + $2.3m (digital platform) + $0.5m (merchandise) = $19.5 million in FY2024
That’s barely enough to keep ONE fully operational because its net cashflow used in operational activities for FY2024 was $28.4 million.
The numbers also underscore the weakness of ONE’s events business. ONE Championship held a total of 59 events in 2024, comprising 4 international cards, 46 ONE Friday Fights and 9 ONE Fight Nights.
ONE 165 (Tokyo) — Jan 28
ONE 166 (Qatar) — Mar 1
ONE 167 (Bangkok) — Jun 8
ONE 168 (Denver) — Sept 7
ONE Friday Fights 47-92 (46 fights)
ONE Fight Night 18-26 (9 fights)
Even with 59 events, out of which 3 were major international cards in Tokyo, Qatar and Denver, total ticketing revenue was just $304,000, while sponsorship cash revenue came up to only $11.1 million.
What next for ONE?
That’s hard to say but things do look challenging. ONE’s 5 year broadcast deal with Amazon Prime is set to expire this year and it’s not clear if this contract will renew. If this ends, it will be a major cut on ONE’s already modest broadcast revenues.
ONE has already turned to ESPN to broker a new deal to broadcast to Australia and New Zealand, but it’s unlikely to be a major contract given the limited size of the ANZ market.
On the events side, there were online murmurs that the Singapore-based MMA promoter has cancelled its US event for 2026 and laid off its already small US team.
Qatar was for a brief moment a promising market having scored the QIA as a key investor back in 2021 and again in 2024, but even that’s starting to look uncertain with the ongoing Iran-Gulf crisis unfolding today.
ONE’s most recent Qatar event was February 2025, with no new announcements made for that market so far. At the same time, UFC held its own Qatar fight in November last year, signaling that the Qataris are quite open to hosting its competitors in Doha.
Furthermore, ONE’s FY2024 report added that ONE’s Cayman entity has acquired $9m worth of ordinary shares from its Singapore entity in March 2026 in what looks like another creative attempt to engineer its finances.
Mission Holdings, the investment firm owned by long time ONE investor, Saurabh Mittal, continues to be ONE’s ultimate holding company.
ICYMI:
ONE Championship’s FY2023 results are out. Let’s dive right in (Kristie Neo’s Substack)
🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
Join our private WhatsApp community here → Sign me in! 🔒
Interesting reads this week! 🤓
Dubai rolls out $272m economic stimulus package amid Middle East conflict (Arab News)
In the AI smartphone race, security will decide the winner (Nikkei Asia)
The hunger for ‘content’ is keeping us culturally stuck (Financial Times)
Energy crisis hits currencies of Asian economies reliant on Middle East (Nikkei Asia)
Was the Iran war really necessary? (Straits Times Opinion)
What’s on Linkedin and X:
