Dana White, President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), has helped bring Mixed Martial Arts out from the underground and into mainstream America, while building the biggest brand in sport. Prior to purchasing the company from Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) along with fellow partners, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, the UFC was on the brink of bankruptcy. Forming the parent company, Zuffa, LLC, Dana, Frank and Lorenzo secured appropriate sanctioning in Nevada from the State Athletic Commission and tried to re-introduce Mixed Martial Arts to the masses.

Seven years later, UFC has overtaken boxing as the premiere combat sport, appealing primarily to males 18-34, while soaring past WWE in 2006 in pay-per view sales in the process. WWE and its chairman Vince McMahon have controlled the pay-per view market since their entrance in 1985, with Wrestlemania, but with a 200 million pay per view buy year in 2006, UFC finished the year ahead of WWE in sales.  So how did Dana White do it?  How did he create one of the strongest brands in the pay per view market in under 10 years?  

Maybe he is a marketing genius. Maybe he knew exactly what males 18-49 would want to see because he’s one of them. Maybe he only helped purchase the UFC because he managed fighters, Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell and ended up getting lucky.  One can’t argue the similarities in the strategies Dana White has used to upstart the UFC and what Vince McMahon has already used in the WWE.  What if one day, while Vince and Dana both worked with Spike TV, they crossed paths in the hallway and Vince McMahon dropped his playbook unknowingly. Maybe Dana picked it up and that’s the reason UFC is sitting on top of the mountain?  What would such a playbook contain?  Here are a few ideas:

#23: Build the Brand to be Bigger than the Sport Itself

The WWE is the biggest brand name in professional wrestling and is synonymous with Sports Entertainment. WWF became the most recognizable brand in Wrestling once Vince began expanding the company nationally in the early 80’s. Despite competition from the likes of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), WWF remained the brand mainstream American identified with when referring to professional wrestling.

Dana White has gone about promoting Ultimate Fighting Championship, the same way. UFC has become such a powerful brand that it is often confused with the actual sport, “Mixed Martial Arts.”  Mainstream American still has a difficult time differentiating UFC from competitors such as Elite XC and Cage Rage Championships.  National news coverage, along with a SPIKE television deal has allowed Dana White and his cohorts to position UFC atop of the sport, leaving competitors no other recourse but to mention UFC in their own broadcasts, as Elite XC did in their initial broadcast. (Elite XC was subsequently sued by UFC, in part due to likelihood of confusion in the marketplace)

Dana still has away to go to catch Vince in this category though. In 2000, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) sued the World Wrestling Federation and resulted in Vince having to change the acronym to WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). Led by an ingenious marketing plan (“Get the F out of here”), Vince recreated his brand dominance by 2002, and has had the most recognizable brand in professional wrestling on two separate occasions.