In order to attract a broad audience, the UFC has enlisted King of the Hill’s Hank Hillto promote UFC 200. Adweek reports that it’s the UFC’ first Adult Swim buy.
In addition to UFC 200, there will be three other UFC-related animated spots later this year.
King of the Hill was a mainstay on Fox for many years.
The idea of buying ad space for the UFC on Adult Swim was the result of Dana White’s late night TV habits. He noticed a lot of major movie studios advertising on the network.
Via Adweek:
Intrigued, White began researching the demo—Adult Swim has been No. 1 among 18- to 34-year-olds for the past decade, and White said a large portion of that male audience is African-American—and realized it was an ideal fit for UFC.
The spots took more than a year to create due to the legal work to clear the rights to use Hank Hill.
Payout Perspective:
While it is not highlighted in this article, one of the reasons why the UFC is making this ad buy is to attract the young African American demo. With Jones and Cormier in the main event of UFC 200, it made sense to target these ads for UFC 200. While not just limited to the African American demo, we can see more of an outreach to the younger demo with its other ads later this year.
The UFC has turned into a commercial.
But then again, the UFC has always been a commercial. No wonder they make sure fights don’t last too long nowadays. They need time to advertise their BS.
black Americans are not a demographic that really goes for the UFC or mma which is really a white suburban sport. The sport of the inner city both blacks and latinos and even ethnic irish, italian, and polish communities in the northeast and midwest are a boxing watching crowd. But kudos to the UFC for trying. Im not seeing any interest in this up and coming card even in white friends, and zero in black friends. This is about the best UFC ppv card possibly ever and it just doesnt seem much buzz for it outside of the die hards.
Respect to Cruz for bring up the race issue, very politically incorrect, and therefore, very correct about the differences in demographics of who watches (and competes in) what sports.
@Wil Thanks Wil. Clearly, its a touchy subject that no one wants to bring up in MMA. Recall that they wanted to build up Cain to attract more of the Latino demographic. It’s interesting to note that you can build more of a international fan base (i.e., Conor, Joanna, Anderson, even Bisping) but hard to do so in the US.
Ive said it before, alot of it has to do with demographics and economics. Ive boxed as an amateur and was on an mma team for a good 2 years after a career of “Modern Army Combatives” training in the Army. MMA training on the outside costs anywhere between 2-300 bucks a month. Boxing training at an inner city gym for a kid goes from free on up to 60 bucks on average. Folks in the inner city cannot pay what it takes to get into mma, and there are no good boxing gyms in the burbs. Each sport appeals to a totally different demographic here in the USA. When I hear people say “boxing is dead” it is generally coming from one demographic and not the other…to which the other shakes their head in disbelief. When in reality, the demographic that says that is right in their world, most of the people in the burbs probably dont watch boxing. But go into inner city St. Louis, Houston, New Orleans, Detroit, NYC, Philly, LA, El Paso, San Antonio, Miami etc etc and its a different story.
As for this card, any predictions for PPV sales?
You bring up some good points Wil.
Also, boy did that attempt to build up Cain blow up in their face, LOL.
I think any attempt to build a franchise move off of any heavyweight is a poor investment, that division just isnt that good and really never has been
Ufc 200 overshadowed by nba free agency news….lots and lots of money lol…..makes the ufc super small promotion…did ufc spend tons of money on brock or wwe thats why less media mileage? or new owners dont like to spend?
Touchy subject indeed….this should be discussed more often….will it be the ufc’s demo as it continues? Dw as promoter and matchmaker chose specific fighters to suit his demo? And in the long term loses credibility
Rampage-Rashad drew a million and many of them were supposed to be black, same with them advertising Jones-Rashad on NBA on TNT, it was the biggest buyate he had done at that time.
Even Bob Arum is saying that the Black audience have only really came out for Mayweather and if he was any good Broner could have taken over but it’s been older and Hispanic audience that have been buying PPVs for the last 10 years.
Maybe because people are sick and tired of PPV…..why shell out 70 dollars for a fight card when you can watch other sports for free? Black and Latino America arnt exactly wealthy in comparison to white America.
This notion that selling PPVs is something to be proud of is oh so 90s. I actually like what boxing is doing, getting away from PPV and putting boxing on free tv, where it belongs. Football, basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis, hockey, figure skating, olympics, etc etc etc can all be found on free tv or basic cable….as it should be. The only fans who actually sing the praises of ppv sales are the “the sport Im a fan of is better than yours…na na ne boo boo!”
Boxing isn’t getting away from that, with the money Al Haymon is spending it feels like more of a long con rather than a viable business, no TV company will give a promoter X millions to produce 20 shows or whatever, because they know they will just get crap in return.
It will just return to X per card off HBO & Showtime and they are both subscription channels, so not free.
I have said this before, they will play nice with CBS because they own Showtime and ESPN because they control the current sports landscape.
Does dw recruit/sign more white fighters to ufc contracts? After all he controls everything..is it why he keeps.scheduling and rescheduling romero vs jacare to fight each other a while back? Instead of each of them fighting weidman…
Once again, the only fans who care about ppv numbers are the “the sport Im a fan of is better than the sport youre a fan of” crowd. I have no use for that noise. I don’t get paid either way. If I can watch anything for free, Ill tune in. Im not shelling out 70 bucks for bs anymore
Thurman-Porter on CBS was the most watched fight on TV since Thurman-Guerrero last year, and thats out of all combat sports.
Thurman-Porter peaked at 3.94m viewers, and Thurman said he has no interest in ppvs, so I think thats good for fans who dont feel like having to shell out big money anytime they want to see a big time fighter.
Thurman-Garcia has potential to do over 5m viewers.
Absolutely right Greatest. If they play their cards right at PBC, and do research for a weekend not competing with major sports, UFC, HBO Boxing, and actually advertise and promote the fight, that will break the 5m viewership rating…..one wonders where that fight would take place…NY, NJ, Florida, Philly? A lot of options with that one
Crawford -Postol had to become a PPV because HBO won’t pay more than a certain amount, that’s why even Bob Arum is saying 50,000 buys is breaking even because he knows it won’t do big numbers but he has to get the fighters paid to get the fight on.
Porter can say whatever he wants but if Canelo offered him a fight on PPV he would take it, he will probably be on Showtime again, within a year and that’s not basic cable.
In terms of PPV buys, boxing isn’t doing bad. Overall, last year boxing did great in terms of PPV buys. But I would NEVER give 100 bucks to watch a fight. I don’t care who’s fighting. That money is going to end up in the pockets of the promoters/corporations/people in suits. The fighters will only get the leftovers.
As far as I’m concerned, the current UFC fans don’t care about MMA, they only care about the UFC. McGregor and Saint Pierre made the UFC popular in Canada and Ireland for a while, but only for national reasons. McGregor’s fans couldn’t care less about MMA, they only follow McGregor because he’s Irish. If he starts to box, his fans will automatically dump MMA and switch to boxing.
I can’t wait for the UFC to be finally sold. It has one of the most annoying fanclubs I have ever come to know. UFC fans give a whole new meaning to the word “fanboy”. Who else would spend 100 bucks just to watch a lame fight where the center of attention is the commercials and ads displayed in the octagon, and not the fight itself?
D, I mean Cutch, arum wants Crawford to be a ppv fighter, simple as that, add in the greed of arum and we have what we have.
Ask Jason if im D or anybody else.
I was replying to the Greatest & Wil who were both saying they were trying to get away from PPV, my point was big fights wont happen without PPV.
Crawford-Pistol is not exactly a huge blockbuster fight but to pay the fighters they have to go the PPV route because the money HBO are offering isn’t enough.
If Crawford wants to be a PPV star, he should be trying to fight Manny Pacquiao and hope A) he wins and B) He looks good doing it.
I hope it bombs, so that fights stick to premium cable, basic cable, or network.