Paradigm Sports Management

Audie Attar played football at UCLA before an injury redirected his career into sports management. He started working with fighters like Chris Lytle and Michael Bisping in the early days of MMA, but his real breakthrough came when he launched Paradigm in 2009 with an unconventional vision: instead of being a transactional agency, he would build IP, create media opportunities, and develop business ventures for his clients. "I was laughed at when I first had that business plan," Attar recalls. "It's too busy, focus on what you could do." But that vision would prove prescient.

Attar signed Michael Bisping, who became the first British UFC champion. But the real game-changer came when Conor McGregor, then fighting in the European regional promotion Cage Warriors, was introduced to him via Facebook. Rather than pitch the same transactional management deal everyone else was offering, Attar pitched McGregor and his coach John Kavanagh on a broader vision. "I stood out strategically because I had a broader vision," he explains. "I had a broader vision of creating IP, you know, creating content, but also creating business ventures." McGregor was equally bullish on this vision, and they started working together before his first UFC fight against Max Holloway.

The McGregor-Mayweather fight in 2017 exemplified Attar's strategy. Everyone doubted it would happen—even some of Attar's own partners initially. But he and McGregor believed in the vision, and the banter between the fighters created undeniable consumer interest. "Once they started going back and forth and you could actually see the level of engagement and interest from a market perspective, it was hard to deny it," Attar says. The fight generated over 4 million pay-per-view buys.

Even more impressive was Proper 12 Irish whiskey. When sponsors offered McGregor multi-million-dollar annual deals to promote their products, Attar and McGregor chose the harder path: building their own brand. They started the process in 2014, put up "a few hundred thousand" of their own capital, brought in spirits expert Ken Austin as an operating partner, and launched in 2017. While sponsors were offering $7+ million annually, Proper 12 eventually sold for approximately $600 million in 2024—a difference of hundreds of times the sponsorship check.

Paradigm has expanded far beyond McGregor, representing fighters like Izzy Adesanya, Michael Bisping, and others. Attar remains involved in the spirits business and is creating additional ventures like a smart basketball technology company and other platforms designed to advocate for athletes across sports. For Attar personally, the windfall from Proper 12's sale—which occurred during COVID—was surreal. He responded by immediately hiring more people, giving raises and bonuses to existing staff, embodying the principle he practiced for the first seven years of Paradigm when he didn't take a paycheck while building the company.