Competition is a good thing. In fact, it’s the backbone of a free market economy.

Competition not only provides the consumer with alternative for his or her hard-earned dollar. It also causes manufacturers (or fight promotions, in this case) to raise their games, offering a better product for the price in order to out-perform market rivals.

Personally speaking, I’m all for competition. Whether it’s a myriad of new mixed martial arts news sites popping up around the Internet or one of our established competitors signing a major breakthrough deal, it’s good for business all the way around. Those who think otherwise are simply lazy, choosing to rest on their laurels rather than grinding away at the salt mines in an effort to improve.

The same thing applies to MMA fight promotions in the US. Make no mistake about it: The UFC is the 600-pound gorilla that dominates the sport domestically. But the exciting new alternatives or complements to the UFC are blowing up at the same time. The WEC’s deal with HDNet, Strikeforce setting records in San Jose, California last weekend, the Klitschko brothers (former boxing champions Vitali and Wladmir) supposedly using K2 Promotions to headline a star-studded MMA event in Los Angeles this summer, Pride someday invading America, and yes, the newly formed IFL putting on its first show.

All of that is exciting for the sport because in the end, everyone wins in a free market economy. One promotion’s success will help expose new people to the sport in general, raising the profile of the entire industry. Matchmakers will be forced to put on better and better matchups in order to retain or increase their promotion’s market share. Fighters will be able to maximize their earning potential more easily, as competing offers for their services will undoubtedly raise their market value. And shoddy promotions offering pathetic, uncompetitive fights for paltry wages will be driven from the sport, to some extent.

Keeping that in mind, I want every new MMA promotion to achieve the highest level of success possible, including the IFL. And with the deep pockets of comic book magnate Gareb Shamus and Kurt Otto, a successful architect and real estate entrepreneur, I certainly wouldn’t bet against the IFL.

Nevertheless, there are a few issues or questions surrounding the IFL that gives me a bit of pause, at least initially.

Team concept a tough sell in MMA

Am I a fan of the team concept? No. MMA is an individual sport. It’s about two men doing battle in a cage or ring. Nothing else matters. Unlike in other team sports, nobody else can help either combatant win a fight. So, the whole team thing just doesn’t jive at this point in the game.

I can, however, see where the idea for some sort of team association arose. In golf, for example, one of the biggest events in the sport is the Ryder Cup, which pits a team of American golfers against a group of European golfers in bi-annual competition. It’s like the Olympics of golf, in a sense, taking advantage of fans’ (and players’) strong national pride to create an atmosphere where individuals are playing for something bigger then themselves – their country (or continent, in the case of the Europeans).

But the actual format of play also helps to build a sense of camaraderie and unity among the players and a sort of group or team focus by the fans. During the first two of the three-day competition, individual golfers compete in the alternate shot and four-ball formats. Both are designed to force two teammates to rely on each other in search of victory – the former requires that a tandem play the same ball, alternating shots until it the ball rests in the hole; the latter has a tandem each play their own ball with the lowest score on a hole counting as that tandem’s group score. Then, last day, it’s mano-a-mano as a series of singles matches that provide overall team points brings the competition to a close.

All that plus a deeply ingrained sense of history and tradition makes the Ryder Cup, a team competition, one of the premier events in an individual sport.

Tennis does something similar with both the Davis Cup and the Olympics. Boxing also has the Olympics for its amateurs, though there is no form of partner competition to really help fans identify with the team concept.

In MMA, there is nothing at all to help the fans identify with the team concept. Nobody is fighting for a concept bigger than themselves, such as their country, region or even a city. There is no form of partner competition to force fighters to work together thus reinforcing the team concept to fans - can you imagine a tag-team fight? Placing legendary ex-fighters as the figureheads of the respective teams does little, in my opinion, to create a sense of urgency in fans to root for a particular five-man team, rather than just pulling for individual fighters like on any other UFC, WEC or Pride card. And it does little to build camaraderie and team unity amongst the fighters.

Moreover, a four-team league severely limits matchups. What will the IFL do, create an MMA season, of sorts? That provides some sense of a team-like atmosphere. But a four-team league means a season can only last three events unless the promoters begin to recycle matchups. Rematches, as we’ve learned in both boxing and MMA history, are only interesting if the first bout was particularly thrilling, resulted in a surprising upset or ended in controversy. Otherwise, the bouts have a “been there, done that” feel.

Even though I don’t see how a team concept will work in MMA doesn’t mean that I’m right and the IFL is wrong. It just means that I don’t understand the long-term vision or plan at this point. The IFL may have a tremendous plan in place to address all of the above-raised concerns surrounding the team format. For example, expanding the number of teams or the individual team rosters in the coming months certainly solves the question of a shortened “season” or avoids unwanted rematches. Maybe that’s in the cards. I just don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that I’m going to give them the short-term benefit of the doubt – a grace period, if you will – to get the ball rolling and demonstrate why the idea works. Why? Because innovative thought shouldn’t be stifled by overly harsh criticism, not until the innovation has a chance to prove its worth. Raising appropriate questions is certainly the responsible thing to do, but to just dismiss the team concept without testing it out seems a bit unfair. So, I'll remain cautiously pessimistic about the subject.
The IFL is here, there is no doubt about it. Barring some unforeseen disaster, its first show will take place on April 29 at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Yet, questions still hover over the fledgling mixed martial arts promotion, at least for this writer. As I mentioned in yesterday’s column, one is the team concept. Three more concerns include the dot-com craze that seems to be attracting new promotions, the IFL’s current litigation with the UFC and the whole announcing fights and selling tickets to those fights when some of the participants aren’t signed to IFL contracts yet.

Will the innovative IFL be a casualty of the MMA “dot com” craze?

I remember back when I first started law school. It was the summer of 1995. The phenomenon that came to be known as the dot-com boom was still in its infancy. The stock market was driven by semiconductor and biotechnology companies at the time. Everyone was making money, particularly in the region known as “Silicon Valley.”

Spanning from San Jose, California north about 30 or so miles, the hi-tech center of the universe made the rich richer and just about anyone with any tech-related job extremely comfortable financially.

Within two years everything changed dramatically. Actually, that is probably a gross understatement.

By 1997, venture capitalists were literally throwing obscene amounts of money at Internet-based dot-com companies. Overzealous thirty-something CEOs took the funding and launched massive, jaw-dropping marketing campaigns to build brand awareness. Of course, that brought in more funding. $20-40 million in additional funding over the next few rounds of venture financings was the norm. All of it led to the massive surge of dot.com initial public offerings from 1997 to 1999.

I watched as friends, acquaintances and colleagues at the Silicon Valley law firm where I worked made millions, if not tens of millions, from stock options related to those IPOs. One unnamed law school classmate of mine, a guy who couldn’t get a job at any of the local firms, settled for a low-paying job with a startup in 1998. Two years later, he was worth about $15 million.

The problem, however, was that these companies had unproven business models at best and putrid models at worst. Everything was geared toward building brand awareness in order to generate funding, rather than developing solid revenue models to sustain the business long term.

Companies like Pets.com, Webvan.com, Kozmo.com, Flooz.com, eToys.com, Boo.com, MVP.com, Go.com and countless other dot coms looked like sure things at one point, attracting investors like buzzards fighting over a fresh carcass. And then they lost everything.

Take Webvan, for example. Founded in 1999, it was the first online grocer. In about 18 months, Webvan raised $375 million IPO, expanded beyond San Francisco to eight major US cities, and maxed out at a $30 per share stock price (bringing its total valuation to approximately $1.2 billion). Just over six months later, Webvan shut the doors for good, leaving 2000 workers out of a job.

And that isn’t a remarkable, isolated incident. It happened again and again, sometimes to companies that experienced even greater stock market success, such as eToys, who went from $84 per share to $0.09. Why? Everyone wanted to be part of the get-rich-quick scheme of the dot-com phenomenon. Everyone wanted to be the next eBay.

Remember that friend I mentioned earlier. He flirted with insolvency after the market crash of 2000-2001. Today, he earns a normal salary for an in-house attorney, but the millions are gone – all of them.

So, what does all that have to do with the exploding sport of mixed martial arts?

The recent explosion of the sport strikes a lot of parallels to the early days of the dot-com boom a decade ago. With the UFC’s massive success spawned principally from the Spike TV relationship, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to jump into the sport to start their own fledgling organization.

Sure, we’ve always had the WEC, KOTC, IKON (formerly Superbrawl), Extreme Challenge, and other regional shows. But those shows rarely attracted the top names in the sport because the smaller promotions didn’t have a budget to compete with the UFC. Instead, they were more of feeder promotions, developing some of the country’s top talent before those fighters headed off to the UFC or Pride.

Now, with the possibility of television deals (the WEC also has a national TV deal with HDNet, by the way) and the ability to sell out 15-20,000 seat arenas, the sport is starting to attract multimillionaire businessmen, many of whom are fans, who see an opportunity to make a buck. Guys like Gareb Shamus and Kurt Otto, the wealthy founders of the IFL, are stepping into the fray with supposed bigger budgets than the traditional regional promotions mentioned above, ready to try and compete with the UFC.

While the market seems thirsty for MMA and there is certainly room for more than just the UFC, the thought of five or six UFC-level alternatives seems a bit foolish. There aren’t that many top fighters, for one. Trying to compete with the UFC’s brand awareness is a losing battle, for two. And the UFC’s market penetration or market share will make it extremely difficult for an overnight promotion to compete in any real sense, for three.

There will undoubtedly be a shakeout of the new upstart companies over the next few years, much like we saw with the dot-com companies – yes, some not only survived but still thrive today. We saw it happen when the semiconductor, biotechnology and mobile phone service provider industries exploded. And we’re seeing it right now with mobile entertainment companies, just like we will see it with MMA promotions.

When the dust settles in a few years, there is certainly the possibility that one or two viable alternatives to the UFC will exist. But the question still remains whether the IFL will be one of them, much like eBay survived the dot-com shakeout, or whether it is a fly-by-night company more similar to Webvan.

Litigation attracts attention, but fighting the establishment is risky

No press is bad press, right?

Let’s be honest for a moment. A big part of the IFL’s current allure is the fact that it decided to take on the UFC in a real vale tudo fight, corporate style. Hiring former Zuffa employees Keith Evans and Steve Tornabene amidst dazzling claims of corporate espionage and incredible allegations of anti-trust-like countermeasures by Zuffa President Dana White certainly sent shockwaves through the industry, heightening interest in the upstart MMA company.

As a result, the IFL has both the online media and hardcore fans talking, and both seem to be giving it the benefit of the doubt regarding the lawsuit. Ostensibly, that support exists because much of the online media still has an axe to grind with White over late-2005 Zuffa policy changes, and it has always been chic to oppose the 600-pound gorilla in any industry.

The mere fact, therefore, that it filed a lawsuit against Zuffa, the company that owns the UFC brand of MMA, proved to be a great way to generate early interest, among the online community, at least. And in some sense, it was a good way for the IFL to position itself as the white knight in its effort bring about changes in the industry for the benefit both the fighters and the fans, thereby hoping to generate even more fan support.

In some sense, it was a safe move. The overwhelming majority of corporate litigations resolve prior to trial with a confidential settlement. If that happens, it won’t matter whether the IFL was right or wrong because a confidential settlement allows the new promotion to keep building upon the momentum created with the some of the media, fans and fighters by taking on the UFC in the first place.

But what happens if the litigation actually proceeds to trial?

Did the IFL encourage Evans and/or Tornabene to misappropriate Zuffa's proprietary information? Did the IFL founders conspire with current or former Zuffa employees or associates to gain all-access passes to an event? Did White set out to maliciously interfere with existing or potential IFL deals, thus crushing their business prospects?

If the IFL wins a favorable judgment against Zuffa, I’m not sure that such a judgment will disrupt the UFC at all. The TV deals are still in place. Future events are set. Its fighter roster is strong. Zuffa’s founders have deep enough pockets to pay up with a smile. And it is already looked at as the “big, bad establishment” by many. So nothing will change.

If, however, it turns out that the IFL is the one hiding a set of dirty linens under the plush, new Ralph Lauren comforter, then what? What happens to the online support that circled the wagons around the IFL when this whole litigation mess started? What happens to the fighters who want to sign with the IFL because they believe the new promotion is thinking of nothing but creating a better environment for fighters and fans?

Nobody can say for sure. But that is a risk that the IFL certainly doesn’t want to take.

Listing unsigned names is a risky proposition

It is one thing to leak news of a potential fight between two unsigned fighters. Matchmakers do that all the time in order to gauge public interest in a bout before putting their promotion’s money on the line.

It is a completely different ballgame, however, when a promotion sells tickets to an event using unsigned fighters and unsigned matchups as enticement for fans to purchase tickets.

When the IFL released its rosters and the matchups for the April 29 show, at least two fighters listed, Ivan Salaverry and Urijah Faber, were still unsigned. Were there others? I don’t know. I’m not sure that I want to know.

On Tuesday, Salaverry said publicly that he had a contract from the IFL in front of him but was still unsure whether he would sign it. Faber had a King of the Cage contract that basically precluded him from fighting for the IFL on the April 29 card.

Yet, as of Thursday night, both of their names still appeared on the IFL website as signed fighters. And both were still listed as fighting on the April 29 card. That is a no-no because it amounts to selling tickets under false pretences.

Evans, the Vice President of Operations for the IFL, worked for Zuffa for years. He knows the fight game. So I’m surprised he hasn’t issued a press release or amended website/poster to remove the unsigned fighters. Even if a verbal agreement is in place, listing them in connection with ticket sales without some sort of a disclaimer still raises very real issues.

What happens if a bunch of Salaverry or Faber fans ran out on Monday and bought tickets to the April 29 event, just to go see their favorite fighter throw down? Will they get a refund if Salaverry and/or Faber don’t fight? If not, that is a great way to alienate fans.