Issue 029

September 2007

By Richard Smith

Fighters aren’t just employees, they’re products. Why? Well, we (the fans) are buying Pay-Per-Views, with fighters in it; so in essence, we are also buying the fighter’s services for three hours. With fighters being a metaphorical product, they need the same treatment as every other product, from Xyience to toilet paper. They need marketing! 

Marketing Your Fighters

Contrary to popular belief just letting him fight is not the best way to market your fighter. However, there isn’t a best way to market a fighter, because they all have different personalities, fighting styles, level of prestige and so on. There isn’t really a cookie-cutter way of marketing your fighters, as they are all very different. 

So, how would we go about things? We could use the acronym A.I.D.A:

Step 1: Attention: Every organisation needs to bring attention to their fighter

Step 2: Interest: Get the audience to take interest in the fighter. 

Step 3: Desire: Make people actually want to watch the fighters compete. 

Should the following three steps be achieved, the fourth step will require no work. 

Step 4: Action: The audience will actively seek out the fighter to watch him fight. 

Now, you have done your job and gotten people watching your newest fighter. There is a final step that is partially up to the fighter, and could be up to the marketer should things go awry.

Step 5: Satisfaction: The new prospect has won his match, but with one slight problem, he spent the fight against the fence with his opponent, doing next to nothing and bored the audience. 

From there, you can do one of two things. The first is Damage Control – you use all the business double-speak that you can imagine, you say such things as “His last match was a tactical affair!” This is a great way to cover up a boring match, as it shows that your new fighter was fighting a smart battle and he won, and all folks love a winner, right? 

“He always comes to the ring with a smart game plan…” This is also a pre-emptive strike against another potentially boring match. It shows that your fighter is a smart fighter, who has winning on his mind first. 

“This guy wants to win!” Another pre-emptive strike against a potentially boring performance. “He’s been working on his striking, but…” Make the audience think that the fighter actually wants to stand and bang, or that standing and banging is in the fighter’s future, but not just yet. 

Then there’s the other method, which is to stick him in the prelims until his contract runs out, then cut him loose. I know it sounds harsh, but entertainment is a big proponent of the MMA game. 

Which brings me to my next point, who is a Promoter’s Dream? Fedor Emelianenko? Randy Couture? Wrong and wrong! In terms of marketing fights and fighters, guys like Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Tito Ortiz and Tank Abbott can produce hype. They know that their talking can build up more hype than any poster or highlight reel can. They can generate certain emotions from the audience – people will call Tank a disgrace to the sport, but whenever he talks, people listen, and whenever he fights, people want to watch. 

Until recently, Tito Ortiz was the perfect example of self-marketing in the UFC. He talked trash, and acted as if he didn’t care about what the fans thought of him. He knows how to hype a fight, and an audience like it when there is a little bit of animosity between fighters. When fighters say things like “I think he’s a great fighter and I respect him a lot,” the audience don’t really have a reason to engage with the fight. The key is to have the audience pay attention, if a fighter gets the fans attention, he will get more fights. More fights means more money, for the fighter and the promotion.

Unfortunately not all fighters have the gift of the gab. But there are ways of getting around this, namely by introducing a strategy to market the fighter, but that’s an article in itself.