In a modern world where technology is king, the sport of MMA creates new fans and strengthens its fan-base by making it’s product available at the fingertips of everyone.
Whether it’s the UFC’s YouTube page, the company’s Facebook page or on one of Fox’s cable networks, the UFC puts out daily content for fans, and it’s what helps separate MMA from other sports because it’s one of the few sports that goes year round. It’s easily a strong point for the sport, and I’m willing to say it’s MMA’s greatest strength.
It is for obvious reasons, such as gaining new viewers on the UFC’s media outlets and Fox networks nowadays, but perhaps the biggest reason has to be the company’s goal of making prelims a priority.
They’ve done such a good job of promoting prelims on Facebook and FX that when they don’t show a prelim, I catch myself throwing a fit.
For instance, at UFC 144, the company showed one fight on Facebook and the rest of the prelims on FX leading into the PPV. For one technology problem or another, my Facebook wouldn’t show me the fight, and I grew angry.
After a few seconds of frustrations boiling over, I realized just how upset I was getting over missing one prelim, but that’s the world that we live in today.
We live in a world that is dominated by the Internet, and such shows as The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil can be kept up with and watched online, which is in itself another example of MMA easily being accessible.
Perhaps the biggest reason why I grew so angry about missing the prelims is that the UFC has created so many new stars that I feared I would miss the birth of a new one.
An example of that would be when Michael McDonald had his first fight with Edwin Figueroa on Facebook a year ago. Because of his performance, I instantly knew this guy was going to be great, and I couldn’t wait to watch him fight again.
Now, he’s fixing to fight on his first main card at UFC 145, and I’ve already been able to see three of his UFC fights going into it. That’s called creating new stars, which is something that the sport of boxing has seemed to forget how to do, and the UFC is steadily creating these new stars because of the outlets they’re using to promote their young guys.
While the biggest fights are on PPV, the UFC does a great job of giving fans great free fights on Fox and FX, and ultimately, it’s the star-building that leads fans to want to pay to see these up-and-coming stars.
Since then, future stars like Stephen Thompson and Eric Silva have starred on prelims, and they’re quickly becoming crowd favorites.
All of this is due to of the accessibility of MMA, and it’s what will help the sport take it to the next level and is undoubtedly the sport’s greatest strength.
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