MMA Universe

A recent study published by Scarborough Sports Marketing reveals some additional insight into what we already know about the MMA demographic:

MMA Fans are Avid Technology, Automotive and Retail Consumers
http://www.scarboroughsportsmarketing.com/

 

NEW YORK, Nov. 23 /PRNewswire/ — Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), a sport combining boxing and martial arts, is attracting young, well-established, high-tech consumers, according to sports fan research firm Scarborough Sports Marketing. Scarborough examined the shopping patterns, demographics and lifestyles of Mixed Martial Arts fans* and found that these adults are 51 percent more likely than the average American to be ages 18-24; 25 percent more likely to have a household size of three or more people; and 67 percent more likely to be male.

 

In addition to their youthful demographics, MMA fans have sound financials. They are 15 percent more likely than the average American adult to have a household income of $75k+ and 10 percent more likely to own a second home. They are selective investors and six percent more likely to have stocks or stock options in their household, and 33 percent more likely to invest online.

 

“In recent years, MMA, through UFC and Strikeforce, has moved from being an emerging athletic genre to more of a mainstream, established and competitive sport. In doing so, it has developed a young male fan base,” said Howard Goldberg, senior vice president, Scarborough Sports Marketing. “Sports marketing has proven its value through a difficult economic climate, and MMA can help marketers capitalize on their customers’ engagement with sports.”

 

In addition to being young, male and well-established, MMA fans represent a high-tech audience. They are not only well above the national average for current ownership of high-tech household items such as HDTVs, VOD service, video game systems and broadband Internet connections, but they are more likely to plan to upgrade their household wares. (see chart below for further details)

 

Beyond technology, the MMA fan base could also have appeal to automotive marketers. These fans represent 15 percent of all adults planning to buy a new pickup truck for their household during the next year, and are 85 percent more likely than the average adult to plan such a purchase within the next year. Other new vehicle categories appealing to the MMA fan include:

 

•Full-size Cars: MMA fans account for 18 percent of the market for potential new buyers** of full-size cars, and are more than twice as likely as all adults to plan this household vehicle purchase during the next year
•SUVs: MMA fans account for 10 percent of the market for potential new buyers** of SUVs, and are 19 percent more likely to plan this household vehicle purchase during the next year
•Luxury Vehicles: MMA fans account for 15 percent of the market for potential new buyers** of luxury vehicles, and are 84 percent more likely to plan this household vehicle purchase during the next year

 
Their household and personal shopping and buying patterns are also notable beyond technology and vehicles. The MMA fan is 15 percent more likely to live in a household that shopped at a furniture/mattress store during the past year, and 35 percent more likely to live in a household that shopped at a large appliance store during the past year. In the business-to-business category, MMA fans are 62 percent more likely than the average adult to be a corporate decision maker for overnight delivery services, and 37 percent more likely to make office equipment and supplies purchase decisions for their companies.

 

“From technology to automotive and household appliances to corporate delivery services, the MMA fan clearly represents a solid audience for a great diversity of marketers,” said Mr. Goldberg. “Those who begin leveraging this league’s fan base now will have unique opportunities to begin establishing brand loyalty within their ranks.”

 

Household Technology Profile of the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Fan

 

Mixed Martial Arts Fans
Mixed Martial Arts Fans who PLAN TO BUY
who CURRENTLY OWN (Index, (Index, 100=National
Household Technology 100= National Average) Average)
——————– ————————- ———————–
Computer 108 176
Digital Camera 118 152
DVR 108 229
DVD Player 114 155
Energy Saving
Appliance 129 151
HDTV 115 168
PDA (Blackberry,
etc.) 149 238
MP3 Player (i.e.
iPod) 144 189
Satellite Radio
Subscription 152 289
Satellite TV
Subscription 112 174
Video Game System 156 258
VoIP 161 226
Broadband 113 NA
——— — —

 

* “Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Fans” are defined as those adults who watched Mixed Martial Arts on broadcast or cable television during the past year.

 

** Automotive “potential new buyers” are adults who plan to buy a vehicle within the next year

 

SOURCE: Scarborough Sports Marketing, Scarborough USA+ Study, Release 1 2009 (6 months)

 

About Scarborough Sports Marketing

 

Scarborough Sports Marketing (www.scarboroughsportsmarketing.com, www.scarborough.com, sports@scarborough.com) measures local and national consumer and lifestyle information by interviewing over 221,000 adults (18+) in 81 Top-Tier Markets, including all professional sports markets. Scarborough sports measurements include fan avidity; multi-media measures including sports viewing and listening; corporate sponsorship information including fans’ shopping and product/service usage; and leisure activities. Scarborough delivers twice-yearly updates of its local market reports to a diverse client base, spanning all major media, advertisers and their agencies. Scarborough Sports Marketing is a division of Scarborough Research, which is a joint venture between Arbitron Inc. and The Nielsen Company.

 

SOURCE Scarborough Sports Marketing

Payout Perspective:

The study helps to re-affirm some of the results previously brought to light by other studies, but goes further by suggesting that the MMA demographic, in addition to being quite youthful, is also typically more affluent than average. It follows then, that an interest in high technology and automobiles is also fairly high.

Sports Business Daily adds the following about the study:

Below are select demos for MMA fans. For example, 32% of MMA fans are between the ages of 18-29, while 8% of MMA fans have bought sports logo apparel on the Internet during the past 12 months ( Scarborough Sports Marketing ).

 

DEMOGRAPHIC	MMA FANS
AGE
18-29	32%
30-39	25%
40-49	22%
50-59	13%
60-69	6%
SPORTS EVENT/TEAM TICKETS INTERESTED IN BUYING NEXT 12 MONTHS
Full season tickets	5%
Individual game tickets	48%
Partial season tickets	7%
Not interested	47%
INTERNET USE PAST 30 DAYS
Cable TV network site	9%
Download/play video games	15%
Download/watch movies	13%
Download/watch TV programs	13%
Download/watch/listen to podcasts	5%
Fantasy sports	11%
Sports scores/updates	37%
ITEMS BOUGHT ON INTERNET PAST 12 MONTHS
Sporting event tickets	10%
Sports logo apparel	8%

What does this mean for MMA? The sport may be on the verge of a second wave of high profile sponsors within the next few years - everything from electronics to automotive companies - they ought to be looking at the sport as a way to reach concentrated numbers of young, wealthy individuals.

However, it needs to be said that sponsorship is a two-way street. In order to attract these sponsors, the sport and its promotions need to do more than just offer up a demographic – it’s all about reciprocity. MMA’s various properties will need to work hand-in-hand with these clients to add material value and deliver ROI. Specifically that means the following:

• Reaching out to potential sponsors to see what they need (target demographics, value-added metrics, and ROI)
• Finding creative ways to better link the sponsorship product with the property medium (i.e., improve the linkage between MMA and whatever product that’s actually sponsoring)

The Sports Business Journal released its highly anticipated “High Tech, High Stakes” issue this week, and there were a couple of very interesting pieces that caught the attention of MMAPayout.com.

In one of his articles, Eric Fischer looked at the potential for motion tracking technology to gain further acceptance and prevalence in sports television.

Motion tracking in sports in and of itself is not a new thing. Various forms of motion tracking — which draws its heritage at least in part from missile-tracking technology — have existed for years, and one specific version of it in sports, the Pitch f/x system from Sportvision and MLB Advanced Media, is now in its fourth year of active deployment. But thanks to sharply heightened investment in the space among several media and technology outfits and ever-increasing computing power, the wealth of data derived from digital tracking of player and ball movement is now mushrooming exponentially.

Jon Snow also documented some of the advancements in chroma key or “green screen” technology that allow sports properties to manipulate the playing surface or surrounding environment with advertisements.

“Eventually you’ll be able to get hyper-local,” such as targeting individual demographics within a certain market, said Sam McCleery, senior vice president of sales and marketing for PVI Virtual Media Services.

 

The main barrier to growth of the technology in the United States is gaining acceptance among leagues, teams and fans. McCleery expects virtual advertising will continue to affect the international market more than the domestic market.

 

“It will grow earlier overseas,” he said. “Will it grow bigger? I don’t know. But you will be allowed to do it over there before you will be allowed to do it here.”

Note: The Sports Business Journal is a subscription service. If you’ve got any kind of interest in sports business, it’s definitely worth the money.

Payout Perspective:

The potential for both technologies to add value to MMA broadcasts is quite high.

The motion tracking technology, pending further advancement, could be used to help analyze the velocity and power behind strike attempts. It might also enable an organization to re-create 3D models of certain exchanges between fighters in order to give the audience a glimpse into what truly transpired. Imagine the possibilities for this technology as a teaching tool and means for MMA to better engage the audience.

In fact, FightersOnline.com – a start-up company currently evaluating the potential of an online-based matchmaking and auctioning system – has already obtained a patent for optical measurement technology that would allow it to determine the velocity and power behind strikes.

However, it’s necessary to provide a caution: the technology still has a ways to go before it’s technically and financially feasible for an organization to adopt and implement with any sort of added value to the broadcast.

The chroma key or “green screen” technology is also very intriguing, because it could be used to customize in-ring or in-cage sponsorships ads. It would allow an organization like the UFC to provide greater value for its partners and sponsors by providing targeted advertisements through geographical segmentation. For example, someone watching Paul Daley vs. Mike Swick in the UK would see a different cage mat logo than someone watching the same fight in the US.

That’s a powerful marketing capability.

Furthermore, the idea that an MMA organization can segment its advertising audiences based upon geography could also be leveraged to aid the broadband content business model. It would allow for multiple versions of branded content, in which the UFC or another organization could sell advertising rights to online events on a regional or national basis.

Bill Gorman of TVbytheNumbers talks about the confusion that the NY Times is likely to create with a recent article stating that DVR playback is actually helping (and not hurting) commercial ad viewership.

Everyone is used to program ratings increases from “DVR viewing” being defined as the increase from Live+SD program ratings (which is available the day after a show airs) to Live+7 day program ratings (available about two weeks after a show airs), so people will point to this article by Carter and claim “See that increase from DVR viewing really *does* boost commercial viewing, it must be helping my show!” Sadly, that’s mostly wrong.

 

In fact there is almost no increase in commercial ratings after the Live+SD period.

 

In a recent conversation with a researcher at a broadcast network, I asked him “Given the fact that the public (and us) sees only Live+SD and Live+7 program ratings on a regular basis, how much of the increase between those two numbers could be assumed to benefit C+3 commercial ratings?”

 

His answer? 10%

 

So that 40% increase in program ratings from Live+SD to Live+7 for Dollhouse? It helped advertising revenue by 4%.

 

Not exactly time to break out the champagne.

 

Don’t be confused that additional DVR viewing beyond the Live+SD period is going to be a big help to your show, because it isn’t.

Payout Perspective:

It’s probably best that you run over to TVbytheNumbers and check out the article for yourself (including the Times article) to really get a feeling for how TV ratings are measured.

If you don’t have the time, I’ll try my best to synthesize everything, and then relate it all to why this is relevant to MMA:

• There are two types of ratings in the television world: commercial and program.
• Commercial ratings are used to buy and sell commercial advertising spots, but not often published.
• Commercial ratings are referred to in the C+3 format: live commercial viewership plus 3-day playback
• Program ratings are disclosed to the public in the form of Live + Same Day or Live + 7-day playback
• Live + SD is the live rating of the show plus any DVR playback until 3am of the following morning
• Live + 7  is the live rating plus any DVR playback over the next seven days.
• Generally, Live + SD is used as a proxy to gauge the undisclosed C+3 rating.

The problem - or source of confusion – seems to be that network PR people are touting an increase in the Live + 7 over just the Live ratings (when, in fact, the public hardly ever sees the Live ratings; they see the larger Live + SD). If the networks were to compare the Live + 7 increase over the more standard Live + SD, there’d be less of an increase. Therefore, as Live + SD is a proxy of C+3, it stands to reason that there’s also very little change in commercial ratings after the initial same day period (what amounts to by some estimates as only 10%).

Why is this relevant to MMA? A small increase in commercial ratings as a result of the DVR playback isn’t going to positively influence the price that networks are going to receive for ad spots during television shows like The Ultimate Fighter and CBS’s Strikeforce on Primetime card.

Furthermore, the idea that 46% of those watching DVR playbacks still watch commercials is a bit misleading according Robert Seidman of TVbytheNumbers.com.

The actual hard data I have seen is that around 75 percent of the commercials get skipped. But 100% of the people don’t skip 75% of the commercials 100% of the time, so you can still wind up with PR spin like ~50% of the people watch commercials during playback. That doesn’t mean that 50% watch 100% of the commercials though, and again, the actual hard data I’ve seen (mostly from TiVo) is that regardless of the percentage of viewers who wind up watching SOME commercials, around 75 percent of all commercials still get skipped/fast-forwarded through.

In other words, don’t believe the hype or PR spin.

Loretta Hunt of Sherdog.com is reporting that commercial ad slots have sold out for Fedor vs. Rogers on CBS:

“I’d say this was probably a quicker sellout than the EliteXC shows,” said Kahl, who added that the addition of top-ranked heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko has piqued interest in “premium advertisers” from the auto, movies, and video gaming genres.

 

Aside from ratings, advertising sales are a second way that networks can gauge interest in its programming. Kahl said that other sporting events on CBS usually complete their advertising sales a day or two before air date if that.

 

Among those scheduled around the live broadcast, EA Sports will unveil a preview of its MMA game due out in 2010.

 Payout Perspective:

Hunt’s reports on the status of CBS ad sales have proved quite complementary to MMAPayout.com’s discussion about the role that MMA content can play in helping networks attract desired demographic for their advertising clients.

The household average for the CBS show isn’t likely to be stellar, but as CBS’s Kahl points out in her conversation with Hunt, it’s the M18-34 and M18-49 ratings that are of the utmost importance. The ratings battle will be won not by overall viewership, but by the perceived quality of that viewership.

CBS and Showtime have done well to promote the fight in many capacities – although they’ve left room for improvement – and that should reflect on Saturday night’s results.

Ronald Grover of BusinessWeek.com reports that CBS will bring in more advertising dollars than any of the other big four networks in 2009:

Everywhere you look these days, network TV executives seem to be shredding their playbooks and experimenting with their programming. The prevailing sentiment seems to be: We’ll do whatever it takes to cut costs and keep viewers tuning in. Exhibit A: Jay Leno, who has stepped out from behind his late-night desk to yuck it up on NBC during prime time.

 

Then there’s CBS, where it’s same old, same old. Yes, the Tiffany Network has added a Los Angeles spin-off to its military crime show NCIS, and launched The Good Wife, a ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the lawyer wife of a philandering politician. But mostly CBS is relying on sitcoms and police procedurals–the very definition of Old Media.

 

How is that working out for CBS? Pretty well, it seems. Three weeks into the fall season, it’s on a roll. With 12 shows in Nielsen’s top 20, including the top-rated comedy, Two and a Half Men, and its most popular drama, NCIS, CBS draws an average of 12.4 million prime-time viewers, 2.4 million more than runner-up ABC. Meanwhile, the stock has been handily outperforming those of its peers. “They’ve proven anyone wrong who thought that no matter what a network did, their audiences would continue to erode,” says Andrew Donchin, who works for the media buying agency Carat North America and helps buy ad time on CBS for such companies as Pfizer, Black & Decker, and Papa John’s International.

 

….

 

Fox can still charge advertisers a hefty premium for shows like Family Guy that have built huge followings among young viewers. But CBS’s large audiences have helped it to an additional 10% or more for 30-second ads compared to earlier this year. As a result, estimates industry analyst SNL Kagan, CBS will generate $4.7 billion in advertising revenues this year, allowing it to sneak past NBC (table).

 

For years, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves has called advertisers’ fixation on young viewers simplistic. Now, with 18- to 49-year-old Americans among the hardest-hit casualties of the Great Recession, his theory makes more sense. As Moonves told BusinessWeek in an interview: “Someone needs to show me where an 18-year-old consumer buys more than a 50-year-old.” The question for CBS is whether big audiences of graying Americans will jazz advertisers once the economy recovers.

 

GROSS AD REVENUES

(BILLIONS)*

CBS $4.7

NBC 4.6

ABC 3.8

Fox 2.8

*2009 estimate

Data: SNL Kagan

Payout Perspective:

CBS may be taking some flack for sticking close to home where the scripted television is concerned, but “The Tiffany Network” is currently the only one of the major four to bet on MMA (twice) in primetime.

I did find it strange that CBS CEO Les Moonves was so dismissive of the younger demographic. While, I concede that a 50 year-old is likely to purchase more, in aggregate, than an 18 year-old, this viewpoint fails to consider the difference in expected lifetime value between a newly acquired 18 year-old customer and 50 year-old customer. It also ignores the potential difference in product margins between the average purchase of someone who is 18 and someone that’s 50.

—

It’s been estimated that the upfront advertising market is down nearly 10% this year from last year. However, the figures tell us little about how much each respective network has dropped over that time period.

The most important thing to glean from the news is the size of the overall market and the relative competitive strength that CBS has in relation to the other networks. CBS’s success thus far is particularly interesting, because many thought the network was going to have a very difficult time not only in the ratings department, but financially.

A convenient follow-up to Monday’s thirty second ad spot prices article, Loretta Hunt and Sherdog.com spoke with CBS in regards to the state of their advertising spots for the up-coming November 7th show featuring Fedor Emelianenko:

Kelly Kahl, executive vice president for primetime programming, said the addition of Fedor Emelianenko has certainly sweetened the deal in advertiser interest for Strikeforce “Fedor vs. Rogers” on Nov. 7, the network’s first live MMA event telecast in over a year.

 

“I think (Fedor) made it a lot easier for our sales guys and our sales are going very, very well for this fight,” said Kahl. “To be able walk in with a presentation and show Fedor shows a credibility and it speaks volumes to have a world-class fighter and maybe the best in the world. I think it certainly made it an easier sell than maybe we’ve had in the past.”

 

Kahl said movies studios, automobile purveyors, and video game companies are among those that have bought commercial slots.

 

“EA Sports is unveiling a preview of their MMA game in this fight exclusively,” said Kahl. “In terms of getting mainstream sports reporters interested, Fedor gives us the credibility that maybe we didn’t have before. It alerts a lot of people who maybe didn’t know who Kimbo Slice is, but they certainly know who Fedor is.”

Payout Perspective:

It’s interesting that Kahl seems to believe that Fedor is a bigger name that Kimbo Slice in terms of mainstream awareness. There’s a strong case to be made for the opposite.

Though, regardless of your position on the marketability of Fedor and Kimbo , the hype behind Fedor as the best heavyweight in the world is probably what’s bringing people to the table. Nothing stirs up the fight crowd like a dominant heavyweight; add in the mystery and intrigue surrounding Fedor, and he does have a degree of potential that many companies are likely looking to capitalize on.

Robert Seidman of TVbytheNumbers reports on the latest estimated costs of 30 second commercial for the 2009-2010 network television that were recently published by Ad Age:

Now there are estimates on the rest, but be warned.  It seems these estimates were largely gathered from the upfronts (and other sources) and they don’t appear to have been adjusted based on early results.  They have Two and a Half Men making more than The Big Bang Theory (even though TBBT has outperformed it in terms of adults 18-49 ratings) and my guess is they have not adjusted for the beast that is NCIS.

 

“Ad Age calculated ad prices for each show by using the upfront prices agreed to by as many as seven different media-buying agencies and other sources. According to our survey, TV prices seem to be on the decline. In the 2008-2009 season, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” commanded an average of $434,792 for a 30-second commercial, compared with this season’s average of $339,700. ABC’s “Grey’s” brought in an average of $326,685, compared with this season’s $240,462.”

 

As you can see, from the above a lot of shows took hits this year versus last.  

Payout Perspective:

We’ve been following the upfront commercial market over the last few months, and this is the first solid information we’ve seen regarding the actual prices being paid. Any surprise that Sunday Night Football is raking in the most per 30 second spot?

An ESPN Sports Poll recently divulged that NFL Football is the national leader when it comes to drawing the coveted male 18-34 year-old demographic that so many of these advertisers are looking to target. MMA, however, was second on that poll, and that poses a set of interesting questions:

1.) What might MMA on primetime be able to garner for a network in terms of a 30 second commercial spot?

2.) What is SpikeTV currently getting on a commercial spot for a UFC product such as the TUF series or Ultimate Fight Night?

3.) Lastly, what might CBS be able to get for Fedor vs. Rogers on November 7th?

If executives at the major networks are currently cringing at the decline of commercial ad spot prices, they might want to further consider MMA’s ability to draw in high-revenue advertisers. November 7th could be the type of proper trial run that MMA really needs on major network television – especially now with the way the market is going.

Additionally, the cost effectiveness of live sports like MMA – or reality programming, in general – is another plus for any network looking to pick up the sport.

Ariel Helwani over at MMA Fanhouse is reporting that Showtime will be airing its hour long ‘Fight Camp 360′ program featuring both Fedor and Rogers in the week leading up to their scheduled November 7th tilt at the Sears Centre in Chicago.

Despite the fact that the Brett Rogers vs. Fedor Emelianenko fight will not be airing on Showtime, the premium cable network obviously still has a lot invested in the heavyweight bout, and it is putting it’s promotional muscle behind it.

 

On this week’s edition of The MMA Hour, which will be presented later this week at MMA FanHouse, Rogers mentioned that an episode of Showtime’s new Fight Camp 360 series is being produced about the fight, and it will air around a week before the CBS telecast on Nov. 7. When contacted by FanHouse, Showtime officials would only say that an announcement regarding the show’s air date would be coming soon.

Payout Perspective:

While Showtime hasn’t exactly put all of their eggs into one basket with Fedor – to be fair, in Strikeforce, they’ve diversified far more than they did with EliteXC – they’re still banking on Fedor’s potential to make the Strikeforce partnership a bonafide success.

It makes sense, then, that if there’s anything they can do to help his success, they will.

Note: It’s interesting that after all that chatter we heard between the Rogers and Fedor camps in early September, it all kind of dissipated at the beginning of the month. We hadn’t heard much at all until the CBS promo popped up last week.

Dana White recently sat down with Bloomberg TV to discuss the financial progress of the UFC over the last few years. Some interesting things came out the interview:

• The Fertittas and White (holding 90% and 10% of Zuffa, respecitvely) are open to selling a 10-15% silent stake in the company.

• White estimates that anywhere between 35-45% of the UFC audience.

Payout Perspective:

I’m not sure that this should come as an absolute shock to anybody given the financing decisions that Zuffa has made in the past 18 months. White and the Fertittas have been using loans to issue dividend disbursements in order to realize some of the gains they’ve made in holding the company through its tremendous growth.

Selling a 10-15% silent stake in the company would further allow the ownership to realize their return; and, may I add, at an undisclosed price that they feel represents fair market value.

The real question here is, what do Lorenzo, Frank, and Dana believe Zuffa to be worth? You can bet the answer isn’t founded upon pessimistic projections of future growth and earnings.

Anybody looking to grab a 10% stake in the company is going to have to pay over $100 million at this point.

—-

Perhaps the bigger shock was White’s estimate of the female contingent that attends live UFC events: approximately 35-45%.

If I’m an advertising partner, I want to know the following: what do they do, what do they like, and what will they buy?

The UFC will no doubt be doing a lot of research into this segment of their audience, because the potential to leverage the F18-49 demographic into another consistent advertising revenue stream is there.

Last week CBS began to increase the amount of promotion surrounding its up-coming Strikeforce: Saturday Night Fight event that will feature Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers on primetime television.

In addition to the commercial below, M-1 has been teaming up with social networking website namedrop.com to purchase ad space on various websites including Sherdog.com to advertise a special contest.  

Payout Perspective:

It’ll be interesting to see where and how often CBS chooses to use the clip.

If the network is looking to score on the MMA demographic, they’d be wise to strongly target the NFL Sunday crowd that represents America’s largest television audience for M18-34.

Note: In a recent ESPN Sports Poll, MMA ranked just second to the NFL in terms of M18-34 demographic viewership.

—-

I’d never heard of namedrop before, but it appears to be a social networking site dedicated to following celebrities. It seems to encourage people to sign up for $2.99/month in order to gain access to the latest news, personal photos, and other information related to certain “important” people the globe over.

How associating with namedrop.com is going to help Fedor remains to be seen. The website itself ranks in the high 700k range on Alexa.com.

I suppose M-1 management is making a concerted effort to raise his celebrity profile on a number of different fronts, and this is just one of many pieces to the puzzle.

Earlier in the week MMAPayout.com used the release of the UFC 105 poster as an opportunity to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the UFC’s poster design. The common themes among the posters were: 1.) brand focus, 2.) effective background use, 3.) organized presentation, 4.) critical information visible, and 5.) consistency.

To draw a bit of a comparison, I’ve attached some of the posters for Japanese MMA promotions (including Pride, Dream, and Sengoku):

Payout Perspective:

It’s important to realize that there exist a number of differences between the American/Western and Japanese consumers that impact how these posters are designed. What’s effective in one market may not be as effective in the other (e.g., Dream 11 might not be a template for North American promotions).

The Japanese posters have some great design concepts, and generally exhibit a higher level of creativity. However, they’re not as consistent at delivering a brand message as some of the UFC posters in the earlier piece. 

Certainly, though, the Pride GP 2006 poster is probably right up there with UFC 94 as one of the coolest posters ever.

The UFC has just released their latest event poster for UFC 105 , and it’s inspired MMAPayout.com to delve a little more deeply into the creation of effective marketing tools such as the event poster.

I’ve attached several of them for events from the past few months (credit MMAmania.com):

UFC 91:

UFC 94:

UFC 100:

UFC 101:

UFC 105:

Payout Perspective:

The bad posters that seem to plague lower level MMA shows across North American largely fail to consider the following principles that the UFC almost always adheres to:

1. The UFC logo is very prominent: it’s nearly always in the middle of the poster, and highly visible.

In putting the UFC logo front and center, the UFC is emphasizing its own brand above everything else. Why? It’s important to the company to expand the brand, and their baseline, so that regardless of who’s fighting, they can draw numbers on the PPV.

It’s equally important for small scale promoters to build their brand. The name of your organization and its logo have to be visible on the poster. 

2. Plain backgrounds: almost always a white or a black.

There’s a tendency to use fancy colours on some promotional posters, but white and black are almost always the most effective backgrounds because they don’t take the attention away from the more important aspects of the message.

3. Organization: there might be a lot going on in some of these posters, but it’s always organized in a fashion that’s easily digestible.

They can fit five or six fighters onto one poster because they use space efficiently and in a way that makes sense to the viewer (the 105 poster is a great example).

4. Information: the purpose of a poster is to promote the event, and thus the consumer needs the relevant information of where, when, and how to watch/attend in order to fulfill that purpose. The UFC always tells its viewers where, when, and how in an easy format.

Moreover, the information is always relevant. If there’s too much information or, more accurately, too much miscellaneous information, the message gets lost.

5. Consistency: the UFC always has a consistent feel or look to its posters that aids in the brand building process.

There’s a constant association that never leaves the mind fo the consumer. The fan knows what to expect and can easily recognize a UFC poster because it more often than not contains the same set of ingredients. That’s important to any brand.

The sponsorship of fighters is very crucial for the mixed martial arts industry, because they represent a form of income which can often mean the difference between the fighter working a second job or training full-time. The benefits of which are obvious.

Moreover, this sponsorship is also a larger endorsement of the sport of MMA as a whole. It signals to the sports community – and to some extent the world – that MMA is legitimate in the eyes of the sponsoring company.

Thus, it makes sense to look at ways in which MMA can improve the value that sponsors get for their money – i.e., increase ROI. Not only is it good practice to look out for the best interests of your business partners, but it also stands to reason that the more value MMA can create for its sponsors, the more sponsorship money it will receive in the long run.

While the business world has yet to come up with any solid quantitative measure for sponsorship ROI, general assessments can be made as to whether something is working or not.

The fundamental purpose of sponsorship is to generate consumer recall – the act of remembering a brand’s association with a person, place, or event. Companies need and want to embed their brand within the mind of the consumer, and sponsorship aids in this process.

But there is now a growing body of evidence to suggest that consumer recall is heavily influenced by pre-existing brand (logo) recognition. It may also suggest that the ROI for companies with low amounts of pre-existing brand recognition is, in many cases, quite low.

Now, generally, pre-existing brand recognition isn’t a problem for the blue chip companies that seem to be sprinting towards MMA these days. It is an issue, however, for many up-and-coming MMA-based companies (clothing brands, supplements, etc) looking to build their brand through tiny bit sponsorships on a fighter’s clothing. Unless a brand without pre-existing recognition can afford to be the exclusive sponsor of a fighter – or one of a few sponsors for a very popular fighter – that investment isn’t likely to have the desired effect.

Why is this so? The brain works in such a way as to recognize familiar visuals before all others. It’s why you can almost always pick out the face of a friend in a crowd, or another model of the same car that you’re driving as you make your way to work. It’s simply a shortcut for your brain to help manage and process enormous loads of information.

Paralleling some of these examples into the fast and furious sport of MMA, the consumer is likely to only recognize the brands that he or she is already familiar with:

1. Tyson Griffin at UFC 103. Griffin had no less than 12 different logos on his pre-fight banner. What kind of ROI were any of those sponsors getting? The brain might recognize two very familiar logos, but it doesn’t even bother with the rest unless the consumer is really focusing.

2. Donald Cerrone at WEC 43. Cerrone fought Henderson for the interim lightweight title in what was probably a candidate for fight of the year. He had probably 8-10 different logos on his fight shorts, but was anyone in the audience or watching at home able to recognize and recall more than two?

Where’s the ROI for these sponsors? The answer: it’s not there, not for many of them.

The question now appropriately becomes, what can a company do to help its ROI (pre-existing recognition or otherwise)?

• Eliminate competition and distractions. A cluttered t-shirt or pair of fight shorts isn’t going to help your brand unless you’re the strongest brand within that clutter. Even then the mess of logos is likely to make the brain give up altogether.

• Simple and striking logo design. A logo that is simple and striking will catch the eye of the viewer more easily than something that is incomprehensibly gawdy and colourful. Badboy is a great example of one of the few MMA companies that’s got a catchy logo that bucks the current MMA trend (though even their shirts can become cluttered).

• Don’t be an imitator. The uniqueness of the nike logo is what allows it to stand out. Relatedly within MMA, there are far too many Affliction knock-offs on the market. The entire gothic skulls and bones look is getting played out pretty quickly.

• Sponsor the fighter beyond the cage. It’s very difficult to build a brand, or receive adequate ROI when the consumer is only seeing the association in a single place and for a short period of time. The diversity and frequency of an association should lead to better recall.