MMA Junkie reports on the latest Turnkey sports poll which indicates that sports industry executives believe that the UFC is the best positioned sports property heading into 2011.
It also led the poll under the question: Which sports properties are you paying more attention to now than you did at the start of the year?
The poll is based on the votes of approximately 1,100 senior-level sports executives.
Via MMA Junkie:
The UFC dominated orgs such as the IZOD IndyCar Series, the X Games, Professional Bull Riders (PBR), the United Football League (UFL) and the WNBA. Voters, who come from the pro and college ranks, could choose from essentially every professional sports organization outside of veteran leagues such as MLB, NBA, NFL, NASCAR, MLS and the PGA. The UFC was the only mixed-martial-arts promotion available as a voting option.
Payout Perspective:
Polls such as these lend credibility that the UFC, and mixed martial arts as a whole, is a viable sport that demands mainstream attention. A few weeks ago, the Sports Business Journal conducted a similar poll that gave us contrary results. In the SBJ poll, industry executives believed that the UFC property had peaked, but was second in voting under the category of which sports property had the most growth potential.
I would argue that you could rely on the Turnkey poll more than the SBJ poll since Turnkey is comprised of senior-level sports execs and, more importantly, the questions are much more direct than SBJ’s. I do think that there is value to these type of polls as the UFC seeks to expand and hope to garner a shot at network television. It gives a snapshot of the perception of the sport and what others in the industry think of MMA as a sports property.
This poll made me chuckle. Talk about stating the obvious. The UFC better be the best positioned amongst that group…or it’s in trouble! 😉
Kelsey,
Couldn’t have said it any better.
=)
Once again my post has been deleted. Once again I cannot understand why.
I had said the following in that post- Being compared with the likes of Professional Bull Riders and WNBA is a negative for UFC rather than a positive.
I believe UFC deserves to be in the company of sport leagues like NHL, NBA OR NFL.
My point was that sports executives still do not consider UFC in the big leagues if they are comparing it with the likes of WNBA and Bull Riding.
They still do not believe in the survey figures this site gave a few weeks back which showed that UFC’s popularity in the 18-35 category is comparable to NBA and NFL.
I think instead of “Speak Your Mind”, this should be headed “Speak the Website’s Mind” so that everyone writes viewpoints that are in agreement with the website’s view rather than criticisms.
Donjasit,
Nobody is deleting your posts. I think if you take a look at our other articles, you’ll find the comment sections filled with differing opinions. These are encouraged. Why would yours be any different?
In the future, please make sure you use the same e-mail address when posting, only hit the submit comment button once, and wait for the page to load before exiting.
Cheers,
Kelsey
Don,
There is probably some technical issue with the site or with your account. There is always a diversity of opinion in the posts and a lot of back and forth and I’ve never heard anyone complain that their comments were being deleted. Save your comments to a word document and if your post doesn’t appear, cut and paste and try posting again.
Jason,
Thanks for the info, I’ll take it with a grain of salt. It seems like the UFC is the “best of the rest”. Got a long ways to go to be bigger than the NFL. Like from here to eternity.
What Kelsey said.