John Morgan of MMAJunkie.com has written an interesting piece that features Dana White discussing the rationale for removing the WEC from this weekend’s event title and fight promos:
But is White at all concerned that the missing logo – and the UFC-esque feel of “Aldo vs. Faber” – will make it difficult to use the landmark event to grow the popularity and brand identification of the WEC?
“No,” White said flatly. “You leave that up to me. I’ll fix that; trust me. I like to think that I know what I’m doing, and we’ll see how this thing goes on Saturday.
Payout Perspective:
In removing the WEC logo from the event title, Zuffa is shifting attention from the brand to the fighters and relying upon its stars to sell the fight – that’s an interesting approach for a company that has traditionally been very brand-oriented in its marketing. Zuffa has been reluctant to shift its focus in the past, because it doesn’t want to lose negotiating leverage (i.e., help build a fighter’s unquestionable popularity and then have to submit to his contract demands).
However, the power of a brand can only take an organization so far. While it can provide a platform to generate awareness and recruit a base following, it’s the stars that attract an audience. This is generally true of all professional sports: the brands like the NFL or the Minnesota Vikings provide the platform for the stars to shine and sell to the masses (e.g., it’s not the Vikings that necessarily sell a MNF game as much as it is Brett Favre or AD).
Although, that doesn’t mean that the brand is less important, because that platform is what you use to sell collective television rights and merchandising licenses; the value of selling the brand that contains all the stars is greater than selling individual rights to this fight here or these fighters there.
I’m not a mind reader – only Dana and the boys and girls at Zuffa know what’s up – but I suspect they’ll try to use guys like Faber, Aldo, Cerrone, and Henderson as the main selling points of the PPV and then leverage them into generating interest in the regular WEC on Versus cards.
Its important to realize that the NFL IS bigger than its players. There is no player in the NFL who can retire and cause the NFL to lose ratings. Baseball is the same way. NBA is a little different. When Jordan retired in the mid 90’s ratings were down for years. IMO the NBA fans care more about their favorite players than the sport itself. But there is still team loyalty to keep interest in all these sports. Combat sports dont have this luxury. Also Players in these other sports cant go off on their own and start their own league. No player is bigger than the league and the NFL commissioner just made that clear to Ben Rothliesburger. No matter how popular they are they powerless against the league. They cant get mad and leave because there is no where else to go.
If fighters get to popular they can self promote like boxers. This is why 5 boxers are finding success right now while the sport is going to pot. Its important for the sport to keep the promotion the main focus. How else would someone like Edgar get million of people watching him before he ever got a title shot? Because they tuned in to the UFC name brand which is good for 300K PPV buys. People know almost all the contenders in the UFC on first name basis. This is not the case in boxing. If you looked at the top 10 boxers in each class. You probably never heard of most of them and only seen a couple of them fight. Thats cant be said for Cain Vasquez, Dos Santos, Jon Jones, etc they have all been seen by millions.
Would the UFC 100 card have had the same success without the UFC Banner? Brock vs Mir or WEC 100 wouldnt have done any Buys at all.
Im not saying you dont create stars. But you have to build your brand and create stars which is what the UFC does. So both fighter and promotion working together draws more interest and preserves the integrity of the sport.
As for the WEC event. Maybe the UFC is using the UFC brand to get people to take that first step and buy the WEC. ONce they event airs it will be bombarded with the WEC banner. But once you get the people to pay and they see the quality(simpular to the UFC) they will realize the WEC is a worthy PPV product so they will buy next time. As is, the WEC has a stigma of being cheap and poor quality and people dont expect to pay for that. I have the same feeling even though i know the event will be good and a good purchase. I probabley wont buy it. BUt i bet whoever buys it will come away with the same feeling after buying a UFC. It was worth it. Using the UFC gets people to get that first experience. I would be very suprised if WEC want shown every 3 seconds during the event.
Great article Kelsey. I agree with many of your points but the basic premise is flawed. Look no further to brand loyalty than last nights NFL Draft and Tuesdat nights announcement of the 2010 NFL Schedule. Moreover, I do follow players, but, I follow my team moreso. If Peyton Manning were traded tommorrow I wouldnt stop being a Colts fan. Yes, I would still follow PM and wish him the best. But, I Bleed Blue. In regards to all the other pro leagues, NBA< MLB and NHL. I follow the same loyalty to the team and league. The same can be said with college football and Basketball. I am a Notre Dame Football fan and Indiana Hoosier basketball fan. So, I loved Jimmy Clausen and Isiah Thomas, But, the loyalty is too the brand. If I were to fully buy into your pemise, I would only buy merchandise with my favorite players name/ number on it. I buy more Colts based Merchandise then PM merchandise. Back to my original point, I see this as the final nail in the coffin for the WEC brand. Otherwise, Zuffa would leverage the brand harder. Zuffa are trying to make this look like a UFC PPV because they know it sells.
Brain, I was very critical of Zuffa’s choice to leave the WEC brand out of the promotional materials for this event, but I didn’t think of it in the terms you presented. What you described may be the idea behind this strategy: to entice people to buy the event by associating it with the UFC brand and the well known name of Faber, and then to bombard the consumer with the WEC brand once they are already watching. I’m still skeptical of how effective this strategy would be as I would assume anyone buying the WEC PPV (especially at the price point) would already be familiar with the brand and wouldn’t necessarily care about the particular brand it was associated with in promotional material.
This brings the argument back to the price point. I believe that the price point is a big gamble by Zuffa. If it proves successful, they will have “gotten away with it” and will know that they can achieve success with future WEC PPVs at this price. However, I think that the price point will likely turn a lot of possible new fans (non hardcore fans who might be curious enough to pay, let’s say $20-25 to try out a WEC PPV) off to the event.
I also am incredibly tired of Dana White’s justification for the price point. All he keeps saying is that “these guys deserve this price point.” That’s all well and good, and as athletes they certainly do deserve to be paid the same as the fighters in the UFC, but that is not what setting a price point is about.
For $44.95:
-The fighters in the WEC featherweight and bantamweight divisions are on the same level as UFC fighters in their respective weight classes.
-The WEC has consistently provided incredibly exciting cards, I’d argue more consistently than the UFC
-If successful, it would allow them to charge this price for future WEC PPVs (if another WEC PPV is even feasible)
Against $44.95:
-The WEC has no track record on PPV. I can’t think of any other promotion that has DEBUTED on PPV at this price point
-Urijah Faber has no track record as a PPV draw (say what you want about his TV ratings, Fedor was not a big PPV draw but suddenly was on CBS)
-Glut of MMA programming this month, with lots of negative backlash
-Lighter weight fighters IN MMA do not tend to draw as well as bigger fighters, despite how exciting they may be
-They are dangerously close to making people think this is a UFC card; the price point and promotional material supports this notion. People may feel betrayed that they paid $45 for a non-UFC event that was promoted almost like a UFC event (some people may not get it, and after seeing all the promotional material I wouldn’t blame them)
Etc.:Gamburyan is not exciting to watch at 145 (just thought I’d throw it out there, I wasn’t at all impressed with him live
It will be very interesting to see how this card performs on PPV. I am very thankful that I live in Sacramento and will be there live. For the record I’ll admit that I would’ve bought it anyway (Those Zuffa bastards and their $44.95! This is a hardcore MMA fan’s WEC dream card), I’m just skeptical as to how many others are a lock.
Bill,
I tend to view the brand vs. product debate as being two different sides of the same coin; and, you can’t have one without the other.
Without the brand, there’s a perceived lack of consistency and continuity that turns most fans away; it’s what allows fans to remain loyal, as you say, to an entity long after star individuals have come and gone.
However, without the star players (fighters) the brand (the property) lacks the individual points of interest around which it is able to tell stories and evoke emotion – the types of things that cultivate a deeper relationship with fans.
Successful sports properties must have both.
This attempt at removing WEC from the event title is sort of an experiment; it shifts the focus onto the fighters and looks to tell their story in the hopes that once people are engaged, they’ll look back to the league these guys fight in and become more interested.
Some very good points from Brain and Machiel as well. Dare I say we have the most intelligent (not to mention well-spoken) community on web! No matter its size. 🙂
Actually Fedor was not much of a draw on CBS. He did better than Strikeforce itself, but the numbers were hardly impressive.
I understand the price tag, even if my wallet does not like it. Setting a lower price suggests it is an lesser product. If what I have read is true, this card needs to do a fairly low number (under 100k) to be considered a success. I don’t know that dropping the price 5-10 would entitce that many more viewers and it would then require more buys.
There are not many WEC bouts I would pay $45 for, but Aldo/Faber certainly is one. This is the biggest, best FW match-up in the history of the division.
Zuffa has partners in their PPVs, that being the different satellite and cable companies, they may have had a say in the price point as well… I don’t know, I am going to go to a local MMA show, so I won’t be watching, if I wasn’t, I probably would have caved and got a group together and watched it. With that said, as I’ve stated on here before, I think this is going to be a colossal failure for Zuffa, but one they can absorb and point to the fighters in the future who are looking for a ton of money and bitching about not being on PPV. I think then they will have “Special WEC Attractions” on the UFC PPVs for the bigger fights.
I feel it would be unwise to go into the WEC PPV any other way than Dana is doing it. Now im not sure they will plaster WEC all over the event once the event begins. But as is everyone knows noone wants to buy a WEC event. At this point in MMA the brand is whats is selling. There is a reason why Fedor kills every promotions he touches. Thats because he costs so much and draws so little. But in the UFC he would draw PPV buys. Its the brand. So even if Brock lesnar was on the WEC event it wouldnt do great numbers without the UFC feel Zuffa is putting on it. We all know the UFC can draw 300K PPV buys with any PPV. There are that many people who buy their events without even caring who is fighting. So why not leverage that? By using the same commercial announce as they do with UFC PPVs, same production, Dana, and Rogan, etc and advertising on Spike where most of this 300K PPVs buys reside they will in a way trick/mislead/convience many of this group to buy the PPV thinking it is the UFC or “Ultimate Fighting”. Once they see the event lots will be hooked on the name brand and remember it. More so if the event was great. Putting a WEC PPV on based on the WEC name brand alone would do 20K buys. About the same as Bodog, Pride, WFA. Using the perception that it is a UFC event you get closer to the bottom of UFC PPV events which is the 300K PPV buys.
To build the WEC name brand you need eye balls on the product. This is the best way to do that. This is based on speculation that they will use the WEC brand during the event. Which i think is the way to go. But like the article above says this could be a move to run the event on the power of the fighters alone in hopes it translates tot he brand later or the UFC if they dissolve the WEC. But this approach gets less PPV buys and less eyes on the product. But at the same time doesnt blur the lines between what is UFC and what isnt. Whoch is a good thing too.
Wow, i was really surprised the WEC logo wasnt used during the event. Makes me really question the long term commitment zuffa has to the brand. This may have been set up to boost the winners of tonights event to boost their stock when they bring them over to the UFC. I really dont see the logic of not using a logo be it UFC or WEC. The way the fights went, one fo the best events and fights of the year IMO, the WEC could have got a real shot in the arm. Jun vs Garcia on like free tv was fight of the year so far and could have had WEC written all over it. Missed opportunity.
Kelsey, I understand where you are coming from. You are right on the money, UFC/NFL need both stars and brand recognition. I concede that point to you. However, in regard to the lack of the WEC logo. I believe Zuffa really have no desire to grow the WEC brand, if it will be at the expense of the UFC brand. If WEC were to draw 2 million PPV buys, Zuffa would be in a bad spot. The bell cow of Zuffa is UFC, obviously, but, the WEC no matter how Dana and Zuffa try to sell it, are a vehicle to further the UFC brand. After watching last night, it was apparent. UFC intend to absorb these fighters at some point. I see no other reason to leave out the WEC logo. I am interested in having all these fighters on the same roster. Then it wont hurt as bad to pay 45 bucks for biweekly PPV cards.
I would not be surprised if they rebranded WEC into a UFC subbrand. They are spending a large number of resources to build a world-wide brand. It is pointless to repeat this feat with the WEC brand to promote the lighter weight classes. Better to leverage the existing UFC brand to promote these fights.