Fightmetric, the UFC’s official statistics provider, recently developed a new fantasy MMA game. The game, MMA Salary Cap Challenge, is similar to fantasy football and baseball as it uses statistics to determine winners.
Via its press release:
The game works just like other salary cap style fantasy games. Players are given a budget for each MMA event to spend on the fighters competing on the televised portion.
Scoring is based upon round as well as knockdowns, significant strikes, takedowns, submission attempts and passes.
Payout Perspective:
It’s an interesting take on Fantasy MMA. Looking at the scoring system, maybe MMA judges could use the information. For Fightmetric, it’s a nice way for it take advantage of the statistics it already compiles and package it in a fantasy game for public consumption. It would be interesting to know how many MMA fans out there participate in Fantasy MMA and if something like this would catch on. Fantasy Football is such a growth industry, will a Fantasy MMA game catch on with fans?
I’ve played MMA Playground for four years and MMA Tycoon (sim not fantasy) for two. I don’t believe either have been able to make a huge impact. Tycoon fluctuates between 8 and 10k members, where not all of them pay. Playground boasts 54k members, but includes inactive accounts in their number.
Neither is similar to Fight Metric’s, so it will be interesting to see if they can finally take ahold of that area of interest.
I don’t have any numbers for the official UFC fantasy game.