Inside the cage: Breaking down the UFC’s online strategy, blow by blow
The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is the world’s biggest and most popular organisation for Mixed Martial Arts. From showmen like the infamous Connor McGregor, to silent assassins like George St-Pierre, the UFC roster has hosted some of the most skilled fighters to ever grace the sport. The UFC often tries to utilise the virality of the contentious figures within its roster to generate attention online through YouTube, Twitter/X, and Instagram… but just how successfully do they achieve this?
To investigate this, I’d first like to look at YouTube, where UFC’s channel has 17.5 million subscribers and new content being uploaded every single day.
Now, you might think that such frequent uploads could cause subscribers feeds to become oversaturated, but I contest this. The regular uploads actually seem to help to maintain interest in the brand. How, you might ask? Well, it just takes one look at the UFC YouTube page to see that the channel achieves this by constantly keeps things fresh, with a variety of different video formats.
‘Free Fights’ reveal recent showdowns, ‘Top Finishes’ include showcase reels of a fighter’s knockouts or submission wins, and the recent ‘UFC embedded’ vlog series reveal behind-the-scenes footage of much-loved fighters. Sure, the account does fall short slightly on its organisation, and the shorter interviews could be combined into compilations to avoid oversaturation, but overall the account sees considerable success. Just scrolling down to the comments reveals scores of engaged fans, hungry for the next upload.
A platform that UFC utilises less effectively is Twitter/X. Here, their account comes across as somewhat stale. The updates are not always frequent, and can become repetitive; posting fight result after fight result without offering anything new. This is a shame, since when used properly, the platform can be great at generating conversation. For instance, the posts on this account that do the most numbers are the ones where the account actually engages with the UFC community by retweeting and replying to the fighters. The account misses the mark by not extending this level of engagement to the fans. After all, the supporters are the life blood of the sport. Why not make them feel like a greater part of the community by also replying to and retweeting their posts?
Finally, it’s worth looking at a platform where the UFC gets this level of interactivity right. Their Instagram page is utilised best when hosting live broadcasts, where the comments of the users can be engaged with as the fights play out. When watching the tide of comments rolling in throughout every Instagram live, it’s impossible for fans to feel alone. The interactivity is also achieved through the polls and Q-and-A’s posted on the ‘stories’ section of the account, where fans can submit questions for the fighters to answer.
Overall, the UFC sees some success in its online platforms, but the vibrant nature of the sport and the passionate community leave it with the untapped potential for much more online engagement and success. The YouTube account offers novel content, although the uploads can come across as slightly disorganised. The X account lacks engagement, but the Instagram account effectively leverages its platform by offering this. It’s all a little hit-or-miss, but we’ll sure be keeping our eye on the UFC to see how their online presence develops!
