Pick your GAME up in 2012: Lessons from UFC

Opinion
Written By Tom Reidy

 There are two sporting entertainment organisations that many sports organisation can learn from when it comes to social media. The World Wrestling Federation (WWE) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have both pushed the boundaries by integrating Twitter and Facebook deep into their marketing, giving fans an important interactive aspect to their regular broadcast channels.Let's take a look at the UFC first in this series and how they've become a poster child for embracing social.UFC is one of the world’s biggest mixed martial arts (MMA) organisations and it is led by UFC President and social media advocate Dana White. When the UFC first started, it was a barbaric sport with few rules. When it was put up for sale in 2001, White and his business partners [Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta] purchased the defunct group for $2 million and turned it into what is now a worldwide pop culture phenomenon.The UFC is way ahead on the social media curve. Compared to other, more mainstream sports organisations, it utilises tools like Twitter and Facebook better then most out there. It is genuinely impressive how they have got things done. Let's look at the recent fight the UFC put on. Instead of watching the fight, I watched the smooth flow of how Dana White and the UFC team engaged with their audience, especially on Twitter. 

 

 One impressive quality employed by the UFC and which many other sporting brands are starting to do is encouraging the athletes to embrace social media. Dana Whites puts his fighters through a five day workshop to learn how to promote and build their brands. The fighters are incentivised to promote themselves, to gain the most followers and to be creative.I can hear the hearts of communications people within other sports organisations beating faster already because, suddenly, this means the athletes' brands and messages can no longer be controlled by the respective governing sports body.For such a campaign to work and for the sporting brand to be protected from libel or social media blowback, there must be a policy to ensure there is a good practice path for the athletes to follow. The UFC may have a great social media strategy but it learned the hard way the cost of being careless at policing what went out from its fighters and, recently, it had to bite the bullet for not having an adequate social media policy.Another disruptive UFC strategy is to break the stranglehold of television by broadcasting major fights live on Facebook. All it asks in return is a "like" on its FB page. The exclusive live content for a sporting event is the first of it's kind and now it is continuing that model by holding exclusive fight night content that won't air anywhere else, except on its Facebook page.The UFC is proof why there's a need for an organisation to buy in to social media. In a recent interview, White says Twitter allows him to find out what went wrong with a fight event on the same day. Before when social media was not around, he would make that discovery on Monday. Listening to instant live feedback means he can fix miscalculations right there and then. Here's an owner that knows the real time power of Twitter.Another aspect of White's social media presence is to create a vlog series called fight week blog week that allows fans to take a backstage look at the lead up to the fight. This not only generates pre-match hype but it gives information about the event to an audience that is making a decision on whether or not to attend or to buy the fight on pay-pay-view.The UFC's social media presence in sports is second only to the NBA's (9.4 million) fans. The UFC has more than 5.8 million combined Facebook fans and Twitter followers - not to mention White's 1.5 million followers on Twitter.So the question many would ask is whether all this digital social effort successfully puts bums on seats? The answer is almost certainly yes. The UFC knows its niche and how to build a community in that niche market. It also has the ability to disseminate information to a targeted audience and it has identified what communication avenues are the best bang for its buck in terms of its return of investment.But if a sports organisation depended solely on social media, it could become a risky trend. It comes down to what is working and how you prioritise it. It just so happens that social media and the UFC appear to be a perfect match.New Zealand sports codes have yet to truly ultilise the digital space. Sports bodies and teams still see it as uncharted territory. Being a sporting nation, there needs to be a bigger effort come 2012, and when I say effort, I mean much more than checking into foursquare to become the Mayor of Eden Park.[Picture Source]

Tom Reidy https://www.tomreidy.com
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