Ch. 18 - Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Many fight fans feel it's just a UFC money grab, relying on Sonnen's gift of gab to sell seats and boost FX ratings, while others feel it's an intriguing match up between the sport's most dynamic talent against an experienced and capable veteran.

However, if fighters do not get paid and UFC does not get the publicity it needs in order to keep the events coming with the quality of fighters they have currently then they have to do everything and anything in order to get the job done, even if it means that the title challanger would not be as deserving as many have been sayin. That is the nature of the business. Even though ufc is a fighting promotion, it is still a business, and money and profits are number one goal.

Ch. 17 - Advertising and Public Relations

Advertising is probably one of the most important keys to UFC's success. Without their intense advertising Mixed martial Arts would of stayed an underground sport that it has been for decades until UFC arrived. Their posters are all over Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and now when sport fans are watching football on FOX they see UFC commercials which started this year after UFC signed a major deal with FOX. Most of UFC's advertising are Pioneering one since each fight is a new product and that new product is the life line of the company. Sure they still make revenue from replaying old classic fights, but they constantly, on average twive a month have to promote a new fight/product.

As far as public relations, well Dominic Cruz was a pace car driver at NASCAR last year and Jon Bones Jones is the Pace Car driver this year. Nothing to do with UFC, but both champion show their faces in front of million viewer curiuos about what's happening. Brian Stan, a middle weight contender is a silver star U.S. army officer veteran, who promotes UFC as a sport and United States armed services. Also a lot of americans who a patriotic would love to see brian stan knock people out, and he delivers it pretty good.

Ch. 15 - Retailing -- UFC

Retailing is a major source of income to millions of businesses, however for UFC retailing isn't a priority, the company uses the retailing side of the business to market their main product. For example UFC's clothing line helps the public be notified of the sport and the company. When someone walks by wearing a UFC t-shirt the bystanders that watched a fight or two before will be reminded to check the upcoming events. I know I caught myself doing that before. Besides the clothing line, UFC also has a deal made with EA sports who created the UFC Undisputed series of games of the company. Even if the game sales do not bring large profits, the kids and young adults who play the game will be the ones who end up paying for the pay-per-views and tuning in to FOX to watch the free fights and commercials. 
 
Instead of just offering fighting events to their fans, UFC offers clothing, video games, classic fight collections, sports equipment and much more. Most of the UFC products can be bought online, making their business an online-retailing one. 

When I went to Walmart earlier this week I saw a clothing line MMA-Elite, checked out the shirt and saw that each shirt had a sticker "Official Sponsor of UFC" on them. Even though MMA Elite company isn't made by UFC but each individual who buy it will see the sticker and will keep UFC in mind when picking which fighting event to watch. Its a great example of public relations. It helps UFC to be mentioned again, and helps MMA Elite to look more official.  

Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

Consumer Decision making is one of the most unpredictable behaviors in the business. Consumers are always changing their interests, based on different fashion, different hobbies, life situations (marriage, divorce). Therefore, each company has to work on predicting the decisions its customers will make and what they will want out of the product. The consumer decision making process includes 5 steps:

First step: NEED RECOGNITION

After watching a few commercials about your favorite fighters, a fight fan or maybe a regular sports fan recognizes the need to watch the outcome of the build-up of the fight. They want to see who will win, and how it will happen. We are humans, and fighting is in our DNA, so theoretically most of us will be tempted to see the fight.

Second step: Information Search

People who saw UFC before they know how intense and interesting the fights could be and therefor, they information about the product is already there. As far as consumers who haven't watch UFC yet will start YOUTUBEing past fights of the fighters to see if they are good, exciting, bad, or even worth watching.

Third Step: Evaluation of Alternatives

There are alternative promotion companies that feature fighting events, such as Bellator fighting championship, World Cage Fighting, Bamma. Most of them actually show their fights on free tv. However most of their fighters are unknown and are amateurs compared to UFC fighters. In the past the champions of other fight promotions joined UFC and most of them weren't as good due to higher competition. So consumer will either watch UFC on FOX or Payperview for championship fights to get the best quality fights.
Forth Step: Purchase

Payperview runs about $44.99 to $59.99 per event which has 9-11 fights. Is it worth it? It depends on one's budget. Most of the time a group of friends get together and chip in a few bucks each and enjoy the show on high definition TV. They can go to a sport bar and watch it for free (however sportbar has to pay 900 for payperview), or they can purchase a ticket and watch it in arena full of energy of psychotic UFC fans.

Post Purchase Behavior:

If the fights were as good as a consumer expected then they are more likely to watch those fighters again next time. If the fight were boring then its bad business for UFC. that is why UFC give out bonuses to fighters for exciting fights that do not make it to the end, there for someone get KNOCKED out.

CH 5 Developing a Global Vision -- UFC

When a promotion company such as UFC, which promotes a rapidly growing world-wide sport, has conquered the number one spot in its home country of U.S. then the next step is to take over the competition worldwide. In order to compete and provide great shows and have sold out sports arenas UFC has to have its global marketing department working at full speed. Just two days ago on Sept 29th UFC held its 7th Event in England called UFC on FUEL 5. The event took place in Nottingham England which featured 8 of the British fighters including Dan the Outlaw Hardy and Brat One Punch Pickett. It is very important to have a good international fighter roster in order to interest fans overseas to pay over 300 dollars per ticket to watch the fights. Every even that UFC holds overseas the promotion makes sure to have one of the home town fighters on the card, and if he is not top 10 guy, then they'll match him up with an easy opponent to raise the morale and money of course.

Dan Hardy (the dude on the left) didn't disappoint his fans and made sure he won the fight and made his opponent look bloody, which is what every fan went to see. However the main card featured and American vs. Dutch fighters who are well known all over the world and prove that Global Marketing Standardization exists in the sport of MMA.

What UFC also created was a reality show back in 2006 called the Ultimate Fighter. They recruited 32 young fighter from all over the country and had them live together and compete for 13 weeks straight. The fighters are divided into two teams with two coaches (current top level fighters) and only one winner comes out the house as the Ultimate Fighter. The coaches also step inside the octagon to fight on the last night of the show. This show did very good and is on its 16th season as we speak. However, now for the first time UFC created the Ultimate Fighter Brasil. Same type of show with two of the top Brazilian fighters as coaches and a team of 32 insane in the membrane Brazilian amateur fighters. The results were amazing, which helped Brasil to become the number one emerging MMA market.