Field Notes from Sundown 001
On Saturday night I checked out Sundown, an immersive martial arts and MMA event in a warehouse in DTLA featuring sanctioned amateur MMA fights, Mongolian wrestling, DJs, and curated food. The lighting and tech were produced by my former colleagues at VTProDesign and the show featured curated food from MAMA, a company celebrating diverse, immigrant-run, and underrepresented restaurants, who I’ve become friends with over the last few years. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, but after experiencing it, I think the concept is awesome and I’m excited to see how it grows.
Why it works
I’ve produced a bunch of culture-focused events where the experience centers around art or food and, while those were all cool and fun, having a live sport as the centerpiece of an experience felt much more engaging, on a level I hadn’t fully anticipated.
The sport itself is inherently social, kind of like watching baseball - you can talk and hang out while the action is happening, then lock in when things get intense. MMA fighting has international appeal and Sundown drew a super diverse crowd. The entertainment vibe felt like a mix of WWE, UFC, and the NFL but more accessible, younger, and rooted in street culture rather than corporate sports entertainment (a very good thing). The athletes played up their entrances with music, lights, and crowd work. After the fights wrapped, DJs took over and the whole thing turned into a show.
Sports, music, and food are all things that bring people together across racial, cultural, and political divides in ways few other things can. Combining them in a curated way worked really well.
Smart partnerships
VTProDesign is one of the best in the business at integrating technology into live experiences. Seeing them invest in the Sundown IP makes perfect sense - it’s a format where they can flex their team’s capabilities around live sports and push production quality and experimentation beyond what you’d typically see at an event of this scale.
MAMA highlights local ethnic restaurants that otherwise wouldn’t get much recognition. This event felt like an elevated version of past MAMA events, anchored by something with more universal appeal. The food was part of the fabric of the night, plus the core audience for underground fighting and night market food culture seemed to overlap naturally.
Where this could go
Sundown already feels super dialed in. The format is simple enough to repeat and scale, and specific enough to build a real identity around. They already have the right partners in place so it will be cool to see where they take it. There’s room for them to develop the fighters as characters people follow over time, lean into the underground venues to keep the vibe authentic, and experiment with different art elements and performances and tech. As this grows, brands will come calling - the challenge will be keeping it authentic while scaling.
Special shout out to my friends Xavier Burt and Andrew Luft for connecting me with MAMA ❤️