In Hollywood, there’s a joke about what happens when movie scripts get pitched: They have to be summed up in a few words and compared to an already successful movie in order to keep the studio heads’ or distributor’s attention.
It’s like Lethal Weapon meets Miami Vice! (Bad Boys).
It’s like Pulp Fiction meets Flightplan with snakes! (Snakes on a Plane).
It’s like National Lampoon’s Vacation, but with Robin Williams! (RV).
Such simple ideas sometimes make great premises, sometimes not. Usually, though, those premises make a lot of money.
So, an insurance salesman and a consultant (and former Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter) arrived in Las Vegas in January 2006, found Sean Trotter (then Adam & Eve’s chief technology officer), and pitched him—“it’s like American Idol, but for porn.”
Well, maybe the pitch was a little more in-depth than that, but Trotter liked the idea and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Ultimate Sex Championship was born, although not without a few bumps along the way. The idea, backed by a good deal of capital from its mainstream investors – Jon Vitall, now the company’s chief executive officer, and Josh Aaron, now its principle director – spawned the Ultimate Entertainment Group, which has diversified from the Web to DVD. In March, the company added KSEX Radio to its portfolio, buying out former owners Chris Rick and Allison Wells.
Vitall and Aaron made a smart move in luring Trotter away from Adam & Eve. While their initial websites weren’t launched on schedule, Trotter used his industry connections to help UEG turn a profit by the end of April.
Trotter advanced the basic idea – to solicit sex tapes from couples from around the country, put them on the Web, have members vote on their favorites a la American Idol, and give the winners a nice chunk of change – by moving into the DVD market, developing other sites (UltimateHousewives.com is UEG’s second) and a video line to support it, as well as forming strategic partnerships, all in a little more than three months.
“I’ve been lucky because I have a lot of friends in the industry and a lot of people have really helped us out. We’re testing and trying everything, but we haven’t had as many failures as one may think,” Trotter says.
OK, so how did you do it?
“We’ve had great pre-orders for the DVDs. We’ve had great success with people wanting to partner with us on the sites. That really helped get us the traffic,” Trotter says. “We’re doing things for other companies because we have footage that, really, no one else has—true amateur stuff. We’re able to give that to companies who are really looking for that type of footage. So we have a lot of non-Web things that are going great for us, and then KSEX has been really great for us.”
Indeed.
UEG claims to have booked more advertising in the first month with KSEX than the station booked in the past three years combined—increaseing the number of listeners by 10,000 and doubling the number of viewers.
UEG’s success appears to be growing, but its first casting call was anything but triumphant.
In early February, UEG did a major press push announcing its first open casting call in Van Nuys, Calif. Any couple could show up, have sex, and compete in the Ultimate Sex Championship. (Although we had qualms about posting it, we were assured there was ample security and so the street address was right there on AVN.com for all to see.)
A funny thing happened on the way to greatness…no one showed up.
“We sat there with about 300 sugar-free Red Bulls and about 200 waters and lots of camera equipment and said, I guess we won’t do this again,” Trotter said.
So they dumped the PR firm and began promoting in a more grass-roots fashion.
“We put out a post on CraigsList and MySpace the following week and got 127 tapes. Half of them were FedEx’ed. Most of them are on DV cam. Some are even on DVD,” Trotter said. “It’s funny how much effort some people put into this.”
It’s been a nice start for UEG. So what’s next?
Expect more sites, the continuation of its video lines, and perhaps even some co-productions with its competitors.
“I really believe we’re going to grow through partnerships with other companies,” Trotter says.
Time will tell the fate of UEG, but, in an industry that’s getting tougher for new companies to break into, the company seems to have a solid foundation.
