The Washington Post featured UFC president Dana White in lead up to this Saturday’s PPV. The piece focuses on White’s past and how he’s got to where he is today.
The article follows White during UFC 172. The feature does a good job in painting the picture of White’s personality. In addition, it gave the background of how the UFC came to be the organization that it is now. It also provided the demos from Fox Sports which shows why the UFC is important to Fox.
According to research by Fox Sports, the major rights holder in the United States, more than three out of four men ages 18-34 say they’re fans of UFC. The sport’s Fox Sports 1 audiences have a median age of 39 and are spread pretty evenly across the country. Seven in 10 viewers are men, and the UFC enjoys the youngest median age and the highest concentration of Hispanics among all major sports. Now the UFC can be seen in 147 countries, in 23 languages.
The article pointed out the downturn in PPV buys but put a positive spin on the issue:
With some top stars out with injuries, recent pay-per-view numbers have been down, but even if 350,000 fans pluck down $50 for a pay-per-view, that’s a $17.5 million payday. Gate revenues typically add another few million and sponsorships much more. The UFC will have more than three dozen televised events this year, including 11 pay-per-view shows.
Payout Perspective:
WaPo is the latest to provide the UFC with some mainstream placement prior to its next big event. The article is nothing new to those that follow the UFC. However, the underlying strategy of article placement with outlets with high readership is noteworthy. The New York Times has written several articles about the UFC (at least two on Jon Jones) leading up to its PPVs. It’s not a bad strategy. For UFC 173, the focus was on White rather than any of the fighters on the card.
Hahaha spin job
Didn’t take long.
Horrible way to ruin your reputation as a legitimate media outlet covering drooling Dana
Dw and fertita doing media rounds on the offensive telling everybody theyre getting bigger….hahaha….they know the media would start asking about the decline…hahaha….in one video dw was hitting the pads and before that talking about tito ortiz boxing match….that was ten years ago…haha
Still talking about theyre boxing match with ortiz….old gimmick….wait…still using boxing hahaha
Smell E
Hey dw…mentioned mayweather and rousey again…boxing again…his fight promotion is a hard sell hahaha
I wonder how much the UFC pays in advertising to the group that owns the Washington post. the company owns Post-Newsweek Stations, television stations in six major cities; and Cable ONE, a cable television and Internet service provider with subscribers in midwestern, western, and southern states. No wonder they did an article of White/ UFC the UFC is a client, follow the money.