Yahoo Sports Could Twitter Become a UFC Live Fight Destination?
The UFC has an opportunity to head down a new road to expand the promotion’s reach to its audience.
As technology advances and viewing options for sports fans continue to expand, social media is becoming a stronger player in the game. Twitter, for example, last year became a destination for the NFL’s Thursday Night Football games. With Amazon holding the rights to those broadcasts next season, Twitter has its eyes on another league — the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“We have a really big audience when there’s a pay-per-view UFC match,” Twitter COO and CFO Anthony Noto told BuzzFeed News in a recent interview. “Should we provide that content to the audience on Twitter that’s not watching it, but might like to after seeing tweets about it? That’s something we’d consider.”
The loss of the NFL to Amazon ended up being a good thing for Twitter because the deal opened the door to other companies interested in streaming content on the popular social media platform.
The UFC, if the company is willing, could fill the void left by the Thursday NFL games. This can translate to either more UFC fight cards in a given week, or shifting cards from the typical Saturday to the new Thursday slot.
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Streaming isn’t new to the UFC. Their digital subscription property, UFC Fight Pass, has streamed fight cards in the past, albeit seldomly.
UFC officials had not commented yet on Noto’s comments at the time of publication.
