Craig Jones Kills Promotion, Launches Resort Camp
Craig Jones had a problem: running a jiu-jitsu promotion is hard. It's expensive. You need consistent athlete availability. And nobody makes money. So instead of fixing it, he torched the whole model and replaced it with something different.
B-Team Jiu-Jitsu is opening at Zamaya, a 48-suite fitness resort in Tulum, Mexico in September 2026. Not a satellite location. Not a training partner facility. The actual headquarters. Jones announced his competition retirement in July 2025 and watched his promotion grind to a halt (CJI 2 broke even; CJI 3 got cancelled in May). Now he's hosting six-day training camps at $2,199 to $2,599 per person. Accommodation included. Meals included. Cold plunge and sauna included. Daily instruction from Jones and visiting coaches. So: an all-inclusive jiu-jitsu resort experience.
It's a wild pivot. And it might be the smartest move Jones has made since stepping away from competition.
Here's what happened to CJI. The Craig Jones Invitational was supposed to be a high-production grappling event. Generate buzz. Attract sponsors. Put money in Jones's pocket and into the athletes' hands too. CJI 1 had novelty. CJI 2 broke even. CJI 3 got cancelled before it happened. Breaking even is polite language for 'this doesn't work.' The event format—all the energy, the athlete appearances, the production value, the social media hype—hit the wall that's killed a thousand BJJ promotions. The math doesn't work.
Running a live grappling event requires venue rental, equipment, insurance, staffing, marketing to fill seats or streaming infrastructure to charge viewers, athlete payments or sponsorship to justify appearances, and enough revenue to cover it all plus profit. That's a thin margin. One cancelled sponsor. One low registration turnout. One streaming deal that falls through. You're underwater. Jones learned that. Eddie Cummings learned it trying to launch ADCC before IBJJF backed it. Every regional promotion that tried to go it alone without guaranteed funding learned it too.
Jones didn't double down on the promotion model. He abandoned it and replaced it with what actually generates consistent revenue in combat sports tourism: the destination camp.
Drop-in academy training makes money slowly. Event promotion loses money fast. Destination camps? They work. You're not gambling on turnout or ticket sales. You're selling a package: travel, accommodation, training, experience, access to a known name (Jones in this case). The customer pays everything up front. The resort handles operations, food, amenities. Jones handles coaching, his name, and the draw.
Zamaya's model is straightforward. The resort operates as a fitness destination 360 days a year. Jones rents the BJJ pavilion space for camps and weekly or monthly academy passes. He brings students; the resort handles everything except coaching. No equipment investment. No facility overhead. No event promotion risk. It's the hospitality model applied to jiu-jitsu. Travel camps already work—they're a staple of BJJ life because they solve a real problem for practitioners who can't get the training they want at home.
The September 29–October 4 camp is straightforward: $2,199 to $2,599 gets you six days of training, three meals daily, four nights at a resort with cold plunge, sauna, massage, and gym access. It's not cheap. But it's clear value. You're not paying to watch an event. You're paying for a week of training you can't get at home.
Here's what's interesting: what does a BJJ 'academy' actually become? B-Team, for most of its life, was a physical location with regular classes. That model requires real estate, ongoing operational costs, a teaching staff, and consistent class enrollment. It's the traditional gym model. Margins are thin. When you pivot to a destination training center run from a resort, you shift from being a venue operator to someone who's building an experience. You're not competing on convenience anymore (you can't beat the gym three blocks from someone's apartment). You're competing on exclusivity, access, and what makes the training week different.
For Jones, this is solid business strategy. He stepped away from competition. His value shifted from 'athlete' to 'coach.' He can't sell you a new championship belt. He can sell you a week in Mexico learning his training methodology with other serious practitioners. That works. And it sidesteps the entire problem of running a promotion.
This is part of a bigger trend. Some of the most successful 'academies' in modern BJJ aren't academies anymore. They're lifestyle brands. Straight Blast Gym operates camps and masterclasses as much as a location. Danaher built his whole model on camps, seminars, and selective student access instead of open-door training. Alliance and Atos, traditional powerhouses, both expanded into destination training for revenue. But none completely abandoned their fixed location to run exclusively from a resort until now.
What Jones is doing is the endpoint of that trend. If destination camps work better than a fixed location, why run one? Why compete on real estate when you can partner with a resort and focus on training?
There's a practitioner side to this too. If you travel for camps, this is convenient—the resort handles everything except picking which week to show up. If you're looking for an alternative to your home gym's politics or limited instruction, a week-long immersive block is different. Three sessions daily from top instructors. Cold plunge and sauna between rolling. Shared accommodation with other serious practitioners. You can't replicate that social intensity in a weekly class schedule.
There's a reality check here too. Zamaya opens September 17. Camps start September 29. That's a short runway. The resort model needs consistent bookings to work. One poorly attended camp and the math breaks down as fast as CJI 2 did. Jones has reach and a name in the grappling community. But turning that into sustained camp attendance is different from viral moments.
You want to snark: Craig Jones couldn't run a promotion, so now he's running a resort. The pivot is so abrupt it's kind of genius. But the real story is simpler. Jones looked at what didn't work (event promotion) and what does work (destination camps). He designed a model that kills the financial risk of one and maximizes the revenue of the other. He stopped trying to be Eddie Bravo and became a coach who runs camps.
Whether it pays off is an open question. Will Zamaya book consistent attendance? Can Jones build a sustainable coaching operation 2,000 miles from the United States? Will the all-inclusive model hold at that price point? But it's not a gamble on event promotion anymore. It's a calculated business model pivot. And in a sport where most promotions lose money, calculated looks like a win.
This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.
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