The Professional Fighters League will hold its first African competition next year, with Nigeria set to be a key venue in the latest expansion for the Mixed Martial Arts company that’s now valued at about $1 billion, its founder said.

Starting from May, the PFL will stage four events in two regions of the continent in 2025, Donn Davis said in an interview with Bloomberg, without specifying the other area of Africa. Helios Fairfax Partners, an investor in the National Basketball Association’s African league, will also have a stake, he said.

“Within the first three years of PFL Africa you will see events being hosted in at least five regions,” said Davis, who’s also chairman of the company that vies with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the long-dominant MMA organization.

The move into Africa — expected for at least a year — signals no let-up in PFL’s ambitious growth plans. It launched Middle Eastern competitions earlier this year in Saudi Arabia via a joint venture with the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund.

The roughly $1 billion valuation given by Davis would be double a figure of $500 million reported by CNBC in 2022.

The PFL, which made its debut in 2018 and whose leagues are run with a single elimination playoff format, has invested about $250 million to expand over the past five years. In 2023, it renewed a media pact with ESPN and acquired MMA company Bellator from Paramount Global.

Davis said leagues in Australia, Latin America, Japan and India by 2026 are also among the targets.

The PFL is following in the footsteps of the Basketball Africa League, the NBA’s sole professional league outside the US. While that venture — advised by former President Barack Obama — has had some successes, the complexities of running an operation in multiple developing economies across a continent have proved challenging.

PFL’s African expansion is being overseen by Francis Ngannou, a Cameroonian national who joined last year both as fighter and chairman. A former UFC world heavyweight champion, it’s hoped he’ll inspire other MMA enthusiasts on the continent.