This past week, the UFC made two surprising announcements. The first, a major milestone for any sport, was a plan to offer an out-of-competition insurance policy for roughly 350 fighters under the Zuffa banner. The plan would cover each fighter with $50,000 a year in coverage for freak accidents or in-training injuries that may force them out of a fight. The policy is the first for a mixed martial arts promotion, but in the bigger picture alongside other professional sports -- it's simply a step up the ladder to legitimacy. The second major announcement is a step into new territory for any major sport. The UFC announced that it would reward fighters quarterly for increasing their social media footprint, focusing on Twitter as a platform for fighters to interact with fans and market their own brand and the UFC. All Zuffa-employed fighters will be thrown into four categories based on current followers, and three will be awarded $5,000 per quarter in each category. Creativity, highest percentage of new followers, and most new followers since the beginning of the quarter will determine the winners.
As BloodyElbow.com's Mike Fagan pointed out on Thursday, this is a shift away from the older generation "keep your mouth shut" policy that professional sports uses right now:
Let's get this out of the way: this is a great policy. The four big sports leagues have reacted to Twitter like the out-of-touch, white-haired men that they are. The UFC has done a great job leveraging social media, even if it occasionally backfires. Putting more money in the pockets of fighters while expanding the reach of the sport? Great.
I agree with the overall reaction from fans. This is a great policy, not only for the fighters, but for the fans. One of the reasons why the UFC has been so successful with social media is the instant access that fans have to their favorite fighters. Dana White may not be replying to ever single critic or fan on Twitter, but he is directly accessible. What figurehead of other professional sports is that accessible to the fanbase?
The UFC also does a great job in utilizing their social media reach to get fans involved. Ticket giveaways are a means for Dana White to not only give fans what they crave, but meet the very fans who are consuming his product. Fighters have done the same, reaching out to fans, giving away gloves, equipment, t-shirts, and autographs through the use of Twitter.
With a policy that has the incentive of monetary gain, the Twitterverse is going to explode with more and more tweets from your favorite fighters. There is the concern that we'll have 350 bad comedians giving us headaches, but there is the added risk of having some of those fighters convey opinions that may be socially unacceptable or racist. As we found out last night, UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo may be the first to get a stern talking to by the brass at the UFC, even if Aldo himself didn't tweet it or mean anything by it.
Why haven't other sports embraced the policy if it has major upside in terms of marketing and outreach to fans? The generation gap between older executives in other major sports and a younger fanbase is likely a problem. But I'd also point toward the dynamics of how other sports operate versus that of mixed martial arts. Team sports may have some larger hurdles to jump. It wouldn't be ideal for a team manager to publicly say one of his players "sucks" via Twitter. It would cause a divide, and it would more than likely cause team owners and fans alike to call for a moratorium on social media along with the firing of said manager. One 140 character message could cause a rift in a matter of hours.
Mixed martial arts fighters could have similar problems, but since the sport, in the end, relies on individuals, it doesn't have such far reaching implications. The Jon Jones/Rashad Evans situation may be the extreme case where words do cross team boundaries and cause problems. A sport like the NFL is under way more scrutiny due to its popularity, thus at this point in history -- there won't be droves of media criticizing the UFC for allowing the risky talk to stream out to the masses. Case in point is Dana White's own Twitter timeline, where he sometimes berates fans for their opinions with vulgarity, yet never receives a ton of criticism for such actions. That may be due to the lower popularity of MMA in comparison to a sport like the NFL.
There is also the idea that this is fighting. Fighting is a violent struggle involving a physical exchange by definition. It's somewhat ignorant to believe that a verbal exchange won't exist between fighters. Twitter has already served as a means to creating some of the match-ups we've already seen take place inside the Octagon, and it has served as a way in which fighters can hype up a fight, even if they are faking the anger. The MMA fanbase does expect a certain level of idiotic commentary from fighters, bashing of opponents, in other words -- hype for a fight. In other sports, it may not fly, but in a sport in which it is inevitable that they'll be physically punching each other in the face in a month or two -- fans eat it up.
The reward far outweighs the risk for the UFC. They now have 350 fighters who can personally market the UFC as the greatest promotion in the world. Fans can access their favorite fighters, speak to them personally through 140 character messages, and get more than enough news about those fighters. There will be problems, but the UFC will be quick to reprimand the idiots in the group. The progressive use of social media by the UFC should be more of a standard than a black sheep to other professional sports.