In the world of mixed martial arts the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is king. Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a sport that combines disciplines such as boxing and wrestling and is regulated in almost every state in the United States as well as the rest of the world. Internationally, It is the fastest growing sport. Although MMA has become extremely popular in the past decade, it can be dated as far back as 650 B.C., identified as pankration and featured as an athletic event in the ancient Greek Olympic games. The combat sports industry has had a rocky past and a soiled history. Greedy promoters have spoiled most boxing fan’s interest, muay-thai is thriving daily but only lucrative if you live in Thailand and wrestling to most people means fake fighting in spandex. One concept of these forms of combat sports is universal to every sport and that is the entertainment factor. Today’s combat sports leader is the UFC. They have the best fighters. They have the top corporate sponsorship deals available and the company owned and operated by Zuffa LLC is selling out venues worldwide. If anything, they know how to digitally promote combat sports very well.
How do they do it so well? The UFC combines the wow factor of event entertainment with a competitive twist that exists both inside and out of the cage. UFC executives effectively utilize social media as a tool and they are teaching the rest of their brand representatives to do the same. Today’s leader in MMA offers all 300 of their contracted fighters a social media opportunity to earn additional revenues through interacting with fans on the popular social media platform known as Twitter. According to Britt Johns, a Digital Royalty representative who currently works with the UFC, “The UFC understands the power of social media. The goal for the incentive program is to encourage the athletes to embrace these new communication tools and increase fan engagement. The heightened engagement will strengthen the organization’s network, allowing for quick message delivery, more fighter-to-fan interaction and most importantly it provides exclusive value to new and existing fans.” (Johns, 2011). The incentive program will provide UFC fighters quarterly bonuses based upon how many followers they have attracted, largest percentage growth of followers and the most intuitive twitter campaign. Fighters are placed in one of four different tiers based upon their current twitter following and can expect to earn $5,000 each quarter for winning any one of the above mentioned categories. The Ultimate Fighting Championships will shell out an additional $240,000 annually for this social media strategy. When laid out on the drawing board, the effects of this campaign is overwhelming. UFC’s brand will reach out to well over 2.5 million of the company’s highest paying customers courtesy of Twitter and the number will only continue to increase. Currently, UFC president Dana White (@danawhite) has over 1.5 million followers, the UFC brand (@UFC) is just below 400,000 and the top ten most followed UFC athletes have combined over 760,000 followers they interact with on a daily basis. In the world of social media for mixed martial arts, White is king. “UFC President Dana White oversees the popular mixed martial arts outfit’s Twitter site. The Twitter feed is updated daily – sometimes even hourly – on changes to upcoming PPV event cards and other information of interest to MMA fans.” (Umstead 2011. Vol. 141, Iss. 31; pg. 20).
UFC’s twitter campaign has attracted major attention from their target audience, the media and marketing executives. In an article featured in Maclean’s, Jonathon Gatehouse awkwardly compliments the UFC Twitter champion by writing, “loudmouth public face, Dana White, counts more than 1.4 million followers on Twitter. Anheuser-Busch’s research shows that 76 per cent of 21- to 27-year-old beer drinkers are fans. And a recent U.S. poll of marketing executives ranked the sport number three in terms of reaching the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, ahead of baseball, basketball and hockey.” (Jonathon Gatehouse. Maclean’s. Toronto: May 9, 2011. Vol. 124, Iss. 17; pg. 54, 1 pgs). In reaching out to their target audience, the UFC has not only positioned itself extremely well on Twitter but has established a solid social media footprint as a whole. The Las Vegas based company utilizes their Facebook page for every event they host. By allowing their fans to “like” their Facebook page the end user may then view a number of preliminary card bouts at no charge via a live stream. To date, the UFC Facebook page has acquired 6.4 million “likes” and has over 130,500 people talking about the company on the famous social network. Often they insert articles from their website onto their Facebook page to leave links back to the original featured article. On their Facebook page they incorporate multiple tabs such as, live event chat rooms, product advertisement, an official UFC credit card application, the UFC store, videos, photos and more. They encourage interaction across the internet.
Another social media tool that helps the Ultimate Fighting Championship spread their news to their fans is the popular video website Youtube. UFC’s youtube page is filled with videos and is updated weekly. Fighter highlights and interviews are compiled in a channel that includes future main event teasers and the famous Dana White video blogs posted during big fight weeks. These videos are picked up by several websites across the Internet, embedded for the enjoyment of various fans and continue to propel the Ultimate Fighting Championship above their competitors. UFC’s Youtube channel has compiled jaw-dropping statistics which include over 17.3 million channel views, over 242,000 subscribers to their channel and over 260 billion video upload views. Through implementing several social media tools and strategies the leader in mixed martial arts has successfully caught the attention of major media outlets. “White and the UFC have embraced all aspects of social media to broaden the appeal of mixed martial arts. The connection is a natural fit because the organization relied heavily on the Web to promote itself nearly a decade ago, when hardly any of the mainstream media gave the events much coverage.” (Pat Graham, USA Today. June 6, 2011).
Multiple top sports broadcast providers were bidding for a national television contract that would, in turn, escalate the UFC’s principals into the ultimate tax bracket. Now the promotion has structured a seven year $700 million dollar deal with FOX Sports that will put them on a level playing field with other major sports providers such as the NFL and MLB. The UFC has levied their social media tools to their extreme advantage and one of the leader in sports network programing has jumped on the bandwagon to get a piece of the pie. “The sport has gone from a niche to an international powerhouse,” said Fox Sports Media Group Chairman David Hill. “I’ve never seen anything go from zero to hero in so short a time. The U.F.C. has proved itself to Fox with its pay-per-view success; its live shows; its use of social media; and its performance on Spike.” (SandomirI, 2011). After the deal was official, but before the announcement was made to the public, both Fox and the UFC came together to plan another social media tactic regarding the way in which they spread the news. “Social media has changed the way news breaks around the world. Knowing this, UFC and Fox Sports leveraged real-time conversations when fans were most engaged to increase their social footprint, extend reach of the news and amplify their message around the world. The result: a deeply integrated, syndicated and cross-promotional Social PR win.” (Adams, 2011). All major media outlets ran the news of the pairing between Fox and the UFC. Highlights of the deal were targeted during the sports section of every news broadcast on the day it was announced. Sports talk radio stations were discussing it and more importantly so were all the fans. The Ultimate Fighting Championships website posted over six articles in five days regarding the news including pieces having headlines that read, “Ultimate Fighting Championships gets long-term Fox Sports deal” and “Deal puts UFC on par with mainstream sports”.
Prior to the big announcement, UFC President Dana White sent out a tweet hours before the announcement that were was big news being revealed. The tweet was retweeted nearly 600 times. Minutes before the news was televised, UFC head of communications sent out a press release to thousands of media outlets. During the August 18 announcement, UFC president Dana White gave notice to those of the media and fans watching the live stream that the first UFC on Fox fight card will be held at the Anaheim Honda Center on November 12, 2011. On August 17 a Twitter account was registered under the user-name @UFConFox to represent the coalition between the two companies. The announcement was delivered through the @UFConFox at the same time as it was being televised. The account had received over 2,200 followers in less than 24 hours and the number doubled seven days later. After two months of tweeting, the account has increased to over 13,100 followers and continues to post links to articles featuring fighters on the November 12 fight card. At least once a week a tweet will come out of the account with a link to the highlight video they have featured on their Youtube channel. The UFC on Fox twitter account (@UFConFox) encourages fans to tweet back and forth by asking who the fans want to see fight at the Honda Center on November 12. Mainstream sports organizations have laid down fines to their athletes who have used social media in a fashion the company does not represent. In MMA, the UFC realizes that they need to get their athletes in contact with the fans as much as possible. They will now pay their athletes additional income to use social media. The way in which information travels is changing more now than ever before and the Ultimate Fighting Championships has done an excellent job positioning themselves within social media so that they have the upper hand in their industry of entertainment.
Sources
Adams, Kristin. Digital Royalty. First Social Media Incentive Program for Athletes. August 18, 2011
Gatehouse, Jonathon. Maclean’s. Ultimate Ticket, Toronto: May 9, 2011. Vol. 124, Issue. 17; pg. 54, 1 pg.
Graham, Pat. USA Today. UFC’s Use of Social Media Expands Fan Base. June 6, 2011.
Johns, Britt. Digital Royalty. UFC & Fox Sports Leverage Social Media to Break News, May 14, 2011.
SandomirI, Richard. New York Times. U.F.C. Lands a Seven-Year Deal With Fox Sports. August 18, 2011.
Umstead, Thomas. Broadcasting & Cable. New York: Clutching Onto Social Media, Aug 8, 2011. Vol. 141, Issue. 31; pg. 20, 1 pg.
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