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    Categories: UFC

UFC’s Many Controversies Are Welcomed Marketing Tools To Sell Fight Show Product

Dana White at the UFC Apex building next to the promotion's HQ in Las Vegas.

By Cassandra Cousineau of LVSportsBiz.com

Controversy sells and there’s no sport organization generating more of it than Las Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship.

It’s undeniable. Beefs, banter, and race-baiting politics outside of the cage have resulted in multiple high-performing Pay-Per-Views in 2020.

Even as the promotion’s decisions made to stay open for business in the face of a novel coronavirus pandemic this year have garnered significant criticism, the marketing of fights have not suffered in the slightest.

UFC President Dana White doesn’t shy away from touching the rails of offensive speech and behavior.

“One of the things that we’ve never done here at UFC is stop people from expressing how they feel about certain things, inside and outside of the Octagon, even if it’s me or about me. Who’s more about free speech than we are?”

UFC is in the fight selling business. However, does that mean such free speech extend to Colby Covington’s incendiary act going unchecked? Especially after Covington spouted off to Kamaru Usman (the current welterweight champion who broke Covington’s jaw last year) who was on the post fight broadcast “Did you get a call from your little tribe that used some smoke signals to you?” Usman is of Nigerian decent.
On its May 30 ESPN9 live broadcast UFC ran a memorial to George Floyd who is that sparked up protests throughout the country. White said “What happened was horrible and it’s something that’s really affecting this country right now in the world. There are riots going on everywhere across the world right now. It was the right thing to do.”
Addressing Covington’s act, which is less an act than it is an actual persona, is also the right thing to do. At a certain point, UFC has to come to terms with its athletes mocking people of color who seek social justice and racial equality. The promotion’s neutrality is a co-sign to the behavior and there’s just no other way to interpret it.

In the era of “Shut up and dribble,” White and UFC seem impervious to any politically incorrect words and often cross political lines drawn in the sand.

The promotion’s historic embrace of racially-charged rhetoric going back to the Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor spectacle fight event, and religious insults hurled by McGregor during the promotion of his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov run opposite of the approach of ESPN, UFC’s broadcast partner.

Most recently, UFC’s athletes have been invited to the White House and attend rallies with the current president. White himself has been a featured speaker at multiple rallies for Donald Trump, most recently at the Republican National Convention. Only a month ago, White visited the White House to see Trump.  

Saturday night’s grudge match between former welterweight champion, Tyron Woodley, and number one contender Colby Covington was no different.

Throughout the lead-up to the fight. the two were on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Woodley, a native of Ferguson, Missouri, answered every question asked of him during Friday’s press conference saying nothing more than “Black Lives Matter” in some form.

Conversely, Covington, is a firmly entrenched supporter of Trump, and wore a red “Keep America Great Again” trucker hat.

After his fourth-round submission of Woodley, the soon to be 33-year-old received a congratulatory call from Trump.

”The president is my biggest fan. As much as I support him he supports me.” Covington said. After calling Woodley a communist multiple times during his post-fight press conference, he let it slip out, “Tyron gets to decide what’s next for him. He was a great champion.”

White’s support of Trump is more genuine. By now, it’s not a secret he’s a close personal friend of the president. Their well-chronicled friendship dates back to the early days when he was trying to get his promotion off the ground, and Trump agreed to give him a big break by hosting events at his casino property in Atlantic City.  White’s alignment with Trump isn’t an act. It’s built upon a business opportunity turned into a friendship over the course of decades. 

Looking at two of the most recent main events, UFC 251, held on July 12, and UFC 252 Aug. 15, UFC has pulled in nearly 2,000,000 Pay-Per-View buys. UFC 251 , headlined by welterweight champion  Kamaru Usman and his fight against Jorge Masvidal, christened Fight Island on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi and is currently the highest selling Pay-Per-View in 2020.

Bright and early Sunday morning UFC staff will head back to Abu Dhabi for six weeks of international fights.


Alan Snel: Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.
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