How does the UFC tries to satisfy their fans? (Blog 3)

How does the UFC tries to satisfy their fans? (Blog 3)

 The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a mixed martial art company. The first match of the UFC was in 1993 (UFC, N.D). The UFC do not focus only about the match. The UFC tries to engage more fans with social media marketing and fans’ experience. The UFC equipped hundreds of tablets, QR readers, RFID/NFC devices, streaming cams, touchscreens, DSLR cameras, mobile devices to video cameras to provide a good quality of service on Las Vegas In 2015 (Shea, 2016). Now the UFC has a lot of fans in the world. Demographically, there are 74.6% of male and 25.4% female fans in the UFC and 73.6% of fans are consist of generation Y (18-29 years old) and X (30-44 years old) in 2013 (Sports business daily, 2013). Also, the figure 1 shows that UFC has 6,693,056 followers from Facebook and Twitter (Schoenfeld, 2012). The figure 1 indicates that the UFC has more fans who follow social media (Facebook and Twitter) than NFL has (6,227,221 followers) in 2012 (Schoenfeld, 2012).

Figure 1: Total audience comparison

Source: Schoenfeld (2012)

 The UFC had a good social media marketing as the company has “UFC Live” on Facebook in 2011 (Folk, 2011). For instance, UFC broadcasted the battle between Cody McKenzie and Yves Edwards and the match between DaMarques Johnson and Mike Guymon (UFC, 2011). It offered an exclusive live streaming broadcasting for free to fans all around the world. As major audiences of the UFC is generation Y (18-29 years old) and X (30-44 years old), it can be easily understood that the UFC conducts a proper marketing to the target audiences who are used to using social media. This social media marketing boosts to get more fans. Therefore, the UFC has 20 million followers from all social media. The digital marketing director of the UFC mentions that the UFC keeps on understanding fans' engagement on the social media and trying to finding new media platform to satisfy their fans (Ward, 2016). 

A number of sport organisations try to use smartphone applications to satisfy their fans and this encourage the fans engagement and experience at the arena (Greenhalgh, Dwyer & Biggio, 2014). The UFC also has smartphone applications that has special features for their fans who in the stadium. Fans who attend live match can listen the red and blue corners’ audio during the match with the app. The fans also can get digital autograph from their favourite players from a distance and they can share this e-signature with their friends online. This app offers a detail information about the match such as the number of punch during live match. The UFC tries to give unique fans experience when they come to stadium to watch the game. For instance, fans who sign up a UFC Fan Access Pass could get the QR code to watch the match between Hendricks and Thompson in 2016. With that QR code, fans could get a discount to purchase tickets, entered the weigh-ins and get an opportunity to take a photo with their favorite players who were going to take part in the match.

 Figure 2 indicates that the UFC opened the UFC Fan Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Fans could meet UFC champions, top ranked UFC athletes, UFC Hall of Famers, celebrities and Octagon Girls in 2016. The UFC Fan Expo included amateur martial arts tournaments for fans who like MMA. Also, fans could get some autograph from their favourite players.

Figure 2:UFC Fan Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center

Source: Dibenedetto (2016)

 In addition, the video 1 shows that there was another special thing to increase fan engagement and satisfaction. The UFC put the wearable technology to measure fans’ punch power.  

Video 1: increase fan engagement 

Source: Youtube (2017)

 There made the Village for their fans by offering a “fan band” (figure 3). Fans could access to the Village to experience various kind of activities with the band. Through those experience of fan, the UFC expected to increase fans’ satisfaction before, during and after the match.

Figure 3: Unique experience for fans with "fan band"

Source:Shea (2016)

Justification 

 Sports organisation marketing strategy is highly related to services and sports marketers know that fans are very important part in sports business (Trenberth & Hassan, 2011; Ristevska-Jovanovska, 2016). Also, sports marketers recognise that fan engagement can enhance a sports properties value (Geurin-Eagleman, 2016). Because, sports fans consume their favourite teams' product and services by increasing their teams' profit and spreading positive news about their team (Yoshida, Gordon, Nakazawa & Biscaia, 2014) and loyal fans tend to take part in more live matches and watch more their favourite sport games through media (Brown, Devlin & Billings, 2013). The loyal fans who already have favourite teams and players do not care about watch other teams and players match (Brown, Devlin & Billings, 2013).
 Sport organisations use internet as their global marketing tool with low cost through the internet (Beech, & Chadwick, 2007). This is because the organisations noticed that sports fans share their opinions and information globally (Beech, & Chadwick, 2007). It is very good marketing to the UFC as they have a lot of social media followers on Facebook and Twitter (Schoenfeld, 2012). Many sport organisations try to increase fans engagement and experience through the mobile phone applications at the stadium (Greenhalgh, Dwyer & Biggio, 2014). Aslo, the UFC is one of sport organisation that uses the smartphone application to increase fan satisfaction at stadium (UFC, 2014). Fans who have a UFC Fan App can use unique kind of technology through their mobile phone when they come to the stadium to watch live game (UFC, 2014). The UFC wants to satisfy their fans through the social media. The UFC had Facebook account which is named "UFC Live" that provided live UFC matches all their followers in the world in 2011 (Folk, 2011). This is really great marketing because not only most of their fans are consisted of generation Y (18-29 years old) and X (30-44 years old) but also 44% users of social media are consisted of young generation (Sports business daily, 2013: Statista, 2017).

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