Tweets for cash: UFC’s new incentive

ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP president Dana White is actively encouraging his athletes to embrace social media by providing financial incentives for meeting Twitter objectives. Offering $240,000 annually in bonuses to those who make the most impact with their personal Twitter accounts, White is bucking the trend of other sports which impose limitations on their athletes and their usage of social media. The allotted money will be distributed as quarterly bonuses to fighters (split into four different groups dependant on their number of followers) who will each receive $5,000 as winners of three different categories: most followers gained, highest percentage of followers gained and most creative campaign. White recently staged a five-day seminar in Las Vegas to educate over 300 mixed martial arts athletes on the effective use of social media. “It’s an education process for some of these guys, like it was for me,” White says.”It’s not only good for all of us, but when the fighters retire they have this built-in fan base. "When they move on to that next chapter in their life and they continue to do other things, they’re still connected with all these fans.” The new incentive programme for fighters is the latest social media ploy by White and his team at the UFC in their goal to provide increased access to existing fans and to introduce the sport to a broader audience with greater value for sponsors. From White’s fight week video blogs, which attract hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, to streaming undercard bouts on Facebook, the UFC is leading the charge in maximising the potential that social media platforms can bring. “Everything is for tomorrow,” White explains. “Our Facebook page has grown unbelievably since we started showing fights on it. And what happens is you end up turning more fans onto it, you continue to grow your fan base and build your brand. You educate people about the sport and get more people talking about it, which is vital.” White undoubtedly leads from the front when it comes to UFC’s bold social media presence. A cursory glance at his Twitter feed reveals that the pioneer of the popular Championship has almost 1.5 million followers and regularly uses the platform to interact with fans. Similarly, boasting more than 5.75 million Facebook ‘likes’ and over 275,000 Twitter followers, the UFC organisation is second only to the NBA in terms of total social media users of the major US sports, and has more Facebook popularity than the NFL, MLB and the NHL combined. “The Internet has always been our culture,” says the UFC president. “When we first bought this thing it was so dead, nobody would cover it. If our fans wanted to know what was going on, they all went to the Internet. So as technology grew, we loved it and went after it. “Social media is a home run for us. It has been amazing for us the last couple of years and we see it as a driving force in growing the UFC. We’re working on big things right now for the next five years, and most of them revolve around social media, it’s going to be monumental.”