UFC president Dana White was featured as a keynote speaker at yesterday’s New Media Expo conference in Las Vegas. White was at the conference to talk about social media and the use of it by the UFC and it’s fighters to reach out to fans. Here is a quote from an article discussing White’s appearance:
Dana White, the UFC President, has blazed a trail to sports industry dominance on the social web in a very short time relative to the other major sports organizations, establishing UFC as the #4 overall sports brand on Facebook, behind only the NBA, Nike and WWE. He’s implemented a revolutionary social media policy, including a bonus compensation structure for UFC athletes engaging fans in conversation on Twitter. Dana himself has more than 2.2 million Twitter followers, regularly carries on frank conversations with fans, athletes and journalists online, and shares a behind-the-scenes view of UFC events by video blogging on YouTube, leading off each episode with his familiar “fight week, blog week!” The UFC YouTube channel has nearly 500,000 subscribers and over 370 million views….
“I’m pretty fascinated seeing how they’ve changed the landscape for sports organizations using social media. Before Dana, there were few if any figureheads at the top of professional sports engaging openly with fans, not to mention encouraging pro athletes to do the same. From the fans’ positive reactions I’ve seen, and the explosive growth of mixed martial arts under the UFC banner, this is one eye-opening example of how smart businesses can spark huge growth in a tough economy through social media.”
The New Media Expo and BusinessNext Social took place over three days in Las Vegas from January 6 – 8.
UFC President Dana White (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images North America)