Conor McGregor invests in MMA gym chain

Conor McGregor has emerged as a shareholder in Alta Global Group, a newly listed company that aims to develop a chain of MMA gyms with an associated online platform.

Alta Global, which has the stock ticker symbol MMA, raised $6.5 million (€6 million) in April in a listing on the NYSE American stock exchange.

This month, the company revealed that one of its investors is McGregor, who has backed his coach John Kavanagh, who is also a co-founder of the business.

To hear chief executive John Langton on a recent investor call, he couldn’t be happier with McGregor’s backing. “Conor offers huge value to us in terms of brand awareness, audience and obviously gym owner growth,” he told investors.

But just how much does McGregor hold? That’s not clear yet, and an investor relations company fielding calls on the matter couldn’t illuminate the matter any further, except to say that the filings on McGregor’s stake would be coming soon.

They did note, however, that the filing in question would be a 13G file, which according to US Securities and Exchanges Commission rules means the size of his stake is likely to be more than 5 per cent.

What about when he acquired the stake? This too was unclear, even with Langton’s helpful explanation that McGregor had been “an early-stage investor”, because it’s not easy to dig into every corner of Alt Global’s share register, since it’s had various pre-IPO entities in Australia, Ireland and the US.

What is clear is that it needs his high-profile help. The financial statements for Alta Global filed before its IPO show the company booked an after-tax loss of A$20.5 million (€12.5 million) in 2023, up from A$11.1 million the year before. This pushed its accumulated losses to A$38.3 million. It warned “there is substantial doubt related to our ability to continue as a going concern”.

That position will have improved post-IPO, thanks not just to the cash it raised but the conversion of nearly $10 million in convertible loan notes into equity.

Nonetheless, the company’s observation in its prospectus that “ongoing operation of the company remains dependent upon raising additional funds” might still be true for a while unless McGregor’s involvement can produce a spike in subscriptions.