How Can The UFC Grow It’s British Audience?

How Can The UFC Grow It’s British Audience?

By Kieran Cobley

In its 25 year history, the UFC’s popularity in Britain has grown exponentially, mainly due to gather promotion featuring more and more British fighters, and holding more events in the country.

But are the UFC making the most of this portion of its fan base?

The answer: no, but here are the ways they could.

1. More events in Britain

This is probably the easiest option the UFC has of growing its fan base, and it has to be said, it makes the most sense giving the promotions current use of taking the countries biggest up and coming fighters. This year the promotion has held fight nights in London and Liverpool, with both going down an absolute treat with fans, even if not many local fighters featured on the card, especially the Liverpool card. Putting these new signings on these cards could mean more ticket buys and more events in the UK selling out, and we all know the UFC would love to make more money from its British audience. Also more shows on at a reasonable UK time, instead of three or four o’clock in the morning will mean better viewing figures.

2. Get out of the Eleven Sports deal

At the end of the year, the UFC will end its current broadcast deal with BT Sports to start being broadcasted on the new streaming service, Eleven Sports, with bigger fights (presumably fights featuring big names like Brock Lesnar and Conor McGregor) being shown on Sky Sports box office. This is a massive issue for UFC fans who will not be locked into contracts with BT, after taking advantage of BT’s package deal of BT TV and broadband with BT Sport added in. This means a lot of fans are now locked in to 12-36 month contracts with the company and will have to pay to get out of that contract. This means many fans wont be able to afford this new streaming service on top of their TV bill, and with other streaming services like Netflix and UFC fight pass, many might not think the new streaming service is worth paying that bit extra for. This means many fans will be priced out of the sport, and perhaps only the best way of correcting this is scrapping the Eleven sports deal and sticking with BT.

3. Make a big deal of UK signings and UK promotions

This just seems like common sense. Currently, the UFC tastes a lot of its British talent from Cage Warriors, a promotion featured on fight pass and BT sport. If the UFC gave these promotions some extra exposure, through whatever means they can, they will increase the audience for these up and coming fighters, and fans will get invested in these fighters, having fighters they absolutely love and will tune in to see every time they fight to cheer them onto victory, or hate fighters, and tune in to watch these fighters lose. This means that the UFC can tap into this audience, and hopefully keep this audience when they bring new fighters to UFC. This will help increase viewing figures and give fighters better exposure to the public, helping the 3m grow their fan base and get used to fighting in front of bigger tv audiences.

So there you have it, three ways that the UFC could increase its UK fan base and get the most out of it.

What do you think about these proposals, tell me on Twitter @Cobleyreporting.