Effective June 1, fighters in both the UFC and Strikeforce became eligible to strive for extra money for Twitter use in categories such as “most followers”, “highest percentage of growth of followers”, and “most creative”.
While the intention of offering such a bonus is to encourage more interaction with fans, it has ultimately caused more harm than it has done good.
Most fans cringed when they first saw the Twitter logo during walkouts with the Twitter handle of the fighter below his win/loss record. Every fighter now has a Twitter handle, from the participants in the main event all the way down to the first fight of the undercard.
Dana White has been tweeting for quite some time, and now he has shoved this social media format down the throats of not only the fans, but the fighters as well.
Before I continue on, I must make it known that I believe Twitter on its own is a useful tool. I use it regularly, and I am not condemning the use of it at all. It is effective when it can be used without any sort of statistics or bonuses attached.
What the UFC has done in creating a bonus scale is alienate many of the lesser known fighters and put at risk the image of the promotion with more fighters saying questionable things just to try and earn recognition on Twitter.
A couple of the examples of fighters tweeting something for shock value are pretty well known. On November 8, Forrest Griffin celebrated his Twitter bonus (for creativity) by tweeting, “Rape is the new missionary”.
On December 7, Miguel Torres followed up that gem by tweeting, “If a rape van was called a surprise van more people wouldn’t mind going for rides in them. Everyone likes surprises.”
Perhaps Torres was making a run at the “most creative” Twitter bonus, or maybe he was trying to go for shock value in order to gain more followers and earn money for next quarters “highest percentage of growth of followers” bonus.
Now that the fighters are expected to participate on Twitter and have bonuses to grab, we will continue to see more fighters saying the wrong things on a very public forum just to gain notoriety on the platform.
Early Twitter use by UFC fighters (before the bonus structure) was great. If you followed Chuck Liddell, then you would read tweets about his training, his family as well as the conversations he would have with fans.
This was pretty consistent with what you would see from most of the fighters who used Twitter. Their purpose was to have interactions with fans, and give a behind the scenes look of what they do between fights.
The current “bonus era” of Twitter is being bogged down by fighters who continuously retweet without any interaction just to build up the number of tweets they have sent.
It is also becoming more and more common for the fighters to hire somebody to tweet for them, even if it is just retweets of news about other things in the MMA world.
Throughout the history of the UFC, there has always been a very fine line between success and the fear of becoming over-commercialized. The core foundation of fans want the UFC to be very successful while holding on to the integrity of the sport.
Some things are absolutely necessary for the sport to grow, such as the deal with Fox. Sure, fans may complain about having the Fox logo and theme music on the broadcasts, but they are rewarded with free fights. There is not a reward for fans with the UFC giving bonuses to the fighters for Twitter use.
These bonuses are putting extra money into the already well known fighters’ pockets, while alienating the lesser known fighters who see extra money being funnelled away from them.
With many fighters earning less than $20,000 per fight, surely Dana White and the UFC can utilize another avenue to spread the wealth amongst everyone.
As we continue along the Twitter bonus world of the UFC, we can expect to see more controversy caused by fighters tweeting just to increase their number of followers, less fighters personally managing their Twitter accounts and less personal interaction between fans and the fighters.
These are all things we’ve seen after just six months of the bonuses being in force. Dana White will soon realize there is a reason why most major professional sports organizations have strict rules in place to police the Twitter use of their athletes.
Dana has been correct more often than not with what works for the UFC, but giving UFC fighters a bonus for Twitter use is causing and will continue to cause more harm than good.
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