The UFC announced its bonuses for fighter tweets (via MMA Junkie). This past summer, it announced it would hand out quarterly bonuses for UFC-Strikeforce fighters for maintaining a twitter account.
Anderson Silva, Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera and Demian Maia each won $10,000 for being multiple winners in different categories. Silva, Big Nog and Maia won in “most followers” and “biggest percentage of growth in followers.”
Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos won $5,000 in the most followers category and Paulo Thiago won $5,000 for the biggest percentage of growth in followers.
In the “Most Creative” category, Joe Lauzon, Ben Henderson, Forrest Griffin and Joseph Benavidez earned $5,000 each.
Via MMA Junkie:
For the purpose of the UFC’s Twitter bonuses, all UFC and Strikeforce fighters are divided into four separate categories based on the number of followers they have at the beginning of the scoring period. The tiered system allows fighters such as Santos (13,000-plus followers) and Maia (94,000-plus followers) to compete along side superstars such as Silva (839,000-plus followers) and Nogueira (281,000-plus followers).
Payout Perspective:
As most can probably deduce, the Brazilians earned their bonuses based on UFC 134 Rio. Santos has not fought since June but is defending her title in December. It would be interesting to know what readers think of the most creative twitter winners. Did the UFC get it right?
Are the bonuses less than it would have to pay a PR/Marketing agency? It certainly is a unique way to promote the UFC and Strikeforce. It also allows each fighter to create their own brand under the Zuffa umbrella. Zuffa has embraced social media and to have its fighters essentially serve as marketers for the company is very creative. It would be difficult to quantify and measure the value of Zuffa fighters tweeting but it definitely something to monitor next quarter.
And as others have done reporting on these twitter bonuses, you can find us at: Jason Cruz (@dilletaunt), @MMASupremacy and @MMAMetrics
“Santos has not fought since June but is defending her title in December.” June of last year, that is.
The promotion’s motivation behind twitter incentives is that they believe (Dana White and Lorenzo have openly spoken of their belief in the power of Twitter) that the more fans fighters can connect with, there are more likely to develop a special interest in that fighter, and will thus be more likely to buy a PPV featuring said fighter. The particular fighter may not necessarily make/break their purchase decision, but it could sweeten the pot just enough…
@MV
Thanks for the clarification. I think Santos winning the bonus is impressive due to the fact that she has been inactive for some time.