The Ultimate Fighting Championship has renewed its partnership with Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia.
As part of the deal, Air Asia will continue for one more year as the UFC’s Official Airline Partner.
As in the previous cycle, Air Asia will get branding rights in the UFC Octagon, and rights to produce original co-branded content featuring UFC fighters.
AirAsia will also continue its role as the Founding Partner of the UFC Scholarship Programme in Asia-Pacific.
Since the scholarship launched in February 2018, UFC and AirAsia has already uncovered MMA talents such as Linda Darrow, from Surakarta, Indonesia, who is now thought to be the number two pound-for-pound female fighter in Southeast Asia.
Read this: AirAsia deal adds to UFC’s presence in Asia-Pacific
The UFC inked its original one-year deal with Air Asia in November 2017, making it the organisation’s first ever Official Airline Partner.
In the partnership’s first year, the AirAsia brand has featured prominently in some of UFC’s biggest pay-per-view events, including UFC 229: Khabib vs. McGregor in October 2018.
In one of its highlight activations last year, AirAsia produced the world’s first ever UFC-branded passenger aircraft, adapted from the AirAsia Airbus A330-300.
Rudy Khaw, head of branding at AirAsia Group, said the UFC airbus has now carried almost 150,000 passengers to over 20 destinations in the carrier’s long-haul network.
This year, AirAsia will also expand into co-branded UFC merchandise available to buy in-flight, starting with model airplanes of the UFC airbus.