UFC and boxing pay-per-view (PPV) events can have a major impact on profits…if you can promote them properly.
Fail to do so and you face the ever-present risk of paying for a PPV fight and losing your money when not enough guests show up to watch at your bar.
To make sure your next fight promotion sells out, follow the 5 tips below.
1. Keep a conversation going about the sport.
MMA and boxing are modern-day soap operas (much like their professional wrestling counterparts, which also offer PPV events). To keep your guests engaged, you need to maintain a conversation with them about the happenings of the sport.
Stay up to date about the events in MMA. Every time fight announcements are made, or Joe Rogan interviews a world champion, talk to your guests about it in person and through social media. Doing so will earn you a reputation for being a reliable source of fighter knowledge, and your guests will continue to communicate with you because they know you are up to date.
2. Making your position known.
Genuine fans cheer for their favorite fighters despite differing opinions from others. To keep your bar a great place to watch fights, make your positions known. Engage in spirited but friendly banter with guests and staff members who hold opinions of fighters that differ from your own. Rivalries make things more exciting.
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If it’s all fun and games, people will visit your bar and stay for the fight. Whether they stay to cheer on a fighter you also love or for your fighter’s opponent, you win. And when your guests know who you are cheering for, everybody wins.
3. Pick your battles.
With the sheer amount of UFC and boxing events happening on a weekly basis, you cannot broadcast all of them and expect your bar to be sold out for every event. Before you make the investment to buy a PPV or subscription, look at fight cards and who is fighting on each one. Cards with popular fighters will draw a crowd, but if the event only has one or two people who a regular fan would know, don’t put a ton of resources behind it.
To ensure you make the most efficient use of your time and marketing dollars, research each fight card and only choose those that are likely to draw a crowd.
4. Spending time with a small percentage of fanatics.
Combat sports in general do not have as much mass appeal as other big sports like basketball, hockey and football. Instead, fans of fighting tend to be smaller in numbers, but the amount of time they invest in watching fighting is higher than a casual fan of another sport. You can always spot one of these people by casually mentioning some of the happenings of the sport. If they are up to date and know fighters who are not as popular, they could very well be a fanatic.
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Such people will form the backbone of your business when you are broadcasting fights. When these people come into your bar, even a few sentences from you about the day-to-day news in the world of fighting will keep them attracted to you and your bar like a magnet. Hardcore fans of fighting love to talk about combat sports with other people who are knowledgeable. You must identify these people when you promote live events.
5. Utilize direct media.
While communicating face to face is best, you must have a way to contact large amounts of people at the same time. There’s a plethora of tools to choose from, including but not limited to: social media, email, direct mail, phone, and text.
Each method will require a certain degree of list building. Once that list is built, you must continually communicate with the people on it by sharing content relevant to their interests.
It’s also worth mentioning that intelligent marketers use all methods of marketing to ensure their messages are heard; it’s a mistake to rely solely on one method of contacting people. To make sure your marketing messages reach their intended targets, utilize multiple methods of direct marketing simultaneously.