By now all of us, regardless of what sport we play, know that it is necessary to follow one’s passion and favorites through Social channels.
The Social Network has no deadlines; you post news when you need to, and everyone can do so at any time and day of the year.
There is a relatively new sport of which the promoters have nailed this libertine spirit, Mixed Martial Arts. I have been passionate about the sport for years, and I am pleased to be able to bring you just the UFC as a model for sports Web Marketing to follow. MMA (as it is called in the jargon) is a relatively young sport discipline that pits 2 experienced martial arts and combat sports fighters against each other inside a cage. This sport, which at first glance might seem barbaric and without rules, hides from the layman (still few) a great discipline and sporting preparation of its practitioners combined with a composed and cheering public without any sort of violent exaltation. The Ultimate Fighting Championship(UFC) is the big league of MMA and has succeeded in a very short time in making a virtue out of necessity (the sport has never been well regarded by the mainstream) by making its business highly followed on the web.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- one of the largest Pay Per View events in the world, has far surpassed professional boxing, WWE and many others;
- broadcast in as many as 28 languages (the largest audience reach an athlete can have);
- As many as 5 billion Impressions in a single night! Just 5 billion between Twitter and Facebook on the night of the UFC 168 event last December;
- over 50 billion social media impressions during a single event’s advertising campaign. Enviable number, taking into account that many big brands have not yet managed to achieve such a number of global impressions, let alone during a single advertising campaign;
- Over 1.6 million followers on Twitter;
- over 11.5 million “likes” on Facebook, not taking into account all the related pages such as those of athletes and fans in the field;
- over 457 million views and nearly 1.5 million subscribers on the YouTube channel.
Reading these numbers one would think that UFC would have an army of Social Media Managers as managers of the various channels, and instead in the UFC headquarters there seems to be only 2 people holding the reins of all this “tram-tram.”
Social Strategy: internal “collaborative” organization
The company has created a system where each figure can make his or her material available to the others; since it is, therefore, a“collaboration,” it explains the use of only 2 Social managers to keep everything at bay. Video operators, photographers, journalists, fighters and other employees can upload their material to the system so that the Social Media Managers-and each of them-can tap into the databases and manage their own channel. It’s a great way to get a lot of material and be able to come up with original, quality content. It would seem almost impossible, but the UFC is a company at the forefront of technology and has from the beginning imprinted a winning Media Strategy where athletes are first trained by the organization on the Social world (to make sure they know how to use the tool while keeping out of trouble) and then are left free to manage their own channels and self-promote during the championship and events. It was a bold gamble to put the Social tool in the hands of the fighters, as it was unpredictable what their reaction would be in the face of criticism and comments left by users. The athletes and entourage feeling that they were part of a“niche” sport rolled up their sleeves with the intention of emerging and apparently succeeded. Currently, most of the fighters are very active on Twitter and Facebook, and this has allowed UFC’s fame to grow exponentially in a short time.
The next goal will be to conquer mainstream channels that so far seem to have snubbed the sport (for example, despite everything, so far, the New York Times has never given too much space to the UFC) but this huge Social boom I believe cannot be ignored for much longer.
Learn the art and put it aside
This type of strategy is a great example of perfect Social organization and management with optimization of budget and resources, if you’d like please take it as a food for thought!
