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Like every other 30-something American male, lately I’ve been getting into UFC. What can I say? I’m contractually obligated to watch it—they told me so at the latest Council of the Bros.
I kid, I kid. There is no secret council that tells youngish American men—or really, given the sport’s astronomical growth, people of all ages and nationalities and genders—that they have to like UFC now. But it sure does feel that way sometimes, because the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and mixed martial arts more broadly, is having a cultural moment. Whether it’s in the world of sports as a whole, pop culture at large, the political sphere, or even big tech, everywhere you look, the UFC is more present than ever.
I lack the qualifications to tell you what our collective passion for grappling and sparring and pummelling says about society. What I can tell you is how the UFC has leveraged social media to achieve this impressive growth, and how creator marketing has played a key role in the sports league’s march toward ubiquity.
If that sounds like your idea of an interesting time, then put on your finest Peruvian Necktie, Question-Mark Kick back, and read on.
To be clear, we’re looking just at the Ultimate Fighting Championship, rather than the many leagues and smaller institutions that comprise the broader MMA ecosystem. The UFC, with its Fight Nights, cast of colorful characters, and clout in the wide world of sports, is the nerve center of contemporary ‘people hitting each other’ conversations.
Don’t just take it from a guy who writes a newsletter—take it from the data that said guy uses in his newsletter. Across social media, more people are talking about the UFC than ever before:
With 12.6k posts in 2018 and 12.9k posts in 2019, then 118.5k posts from January to November 2024, the UFC achieved a rare feat: almost 10x-ing its content volume in just five years. So it’s not just your imagination—you’re seeing more of the league, and more of the sport at large, than ever before.
In comparison, the UFC’s creator population jumped from 1.4k in 2018 to 6.4k in 2024: a comparatively modest, though still quite impressive, 4x surge.
So it’s not solely a matter of an exploding creator community, though that does help. Instead, creators, athletes, and content aggregators are hyping up the UFC with greater intensity. And given their line of work, some of these creators are pretty intense.
The UFC’s explosion in mentions resulted in even more exponential progress across the league’s impressions and engagement, both of which increased roughly 14x from 2019 and 2018, respectively:
UFC Impressions 2018 - 2024
Not too shabby…
Not too shabby…
Okay, so more people are seeing and engaging with UFC content than ever before. This we know. But what exactly does this content look like?
Much of it, as you might expect, is typical of how sports gets marketed on social these days: in the form of highlights, short clips, and a general array of short moments that lend themselves to viral hype. For those keeping score at home, the most buzzed-about fight moment in 2024 was surely Max Holloway’s dramatic knockout of Justin Gaethje at UFC 300 in April: a TKO with one second left in the final round tends to do big numbers. We saw similar spikes around Jon Jones’ return to the ring in November, Suga Sean O’Malley’s slugfest with Chito Vera, and the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson matchup. While the latter event wasn’t technically UFC (nor was it technically boxing, but I digress), such is the UFC’s dominance across all combat sports that even clips from outside the Octagon are tagged or branded with #UFC and other such shorthand.
One thing that stands out to me about UFC content is its balance across different social platforms. As seen from this EMV cross-section of January-November UFC content, while the overall picture skews toward Instagram and TikTok, there’s plenty of room for YouTube, plus a key role for our old friends at Facebook:
(Note, as always, that these figures will not add up to exactly 100%, since there are other channels in the mix as well.)
However, once you break things down in greater detail, and in other metrics, you’ll find that not all channels are created equal:
UFC Impressions by %
When it comes to impressions—all the potential followers who have a chance to see branded content—Facebook falls back a little, while TikTok pulls closer to Instagram.
This dynamic becomes even starker when we look at engagements: on what platforms are social media users interacting with UFC content?
Instagram is more clearly the platform of choice here, with TikTok and YouTube falling off somewhat.
The big takeaway, though, is that UFC has a product perfectly suited to meeting social media users on their platform of choice: clippable, fun, and driven by outsized personalities.
It’s that last bit that distinguishes UFC somewhat from other professional sports leagues. Still in its nascency relative to the other big players out there, the UFC’s social media presence is dominated by content aggregators dedicated to mixed martial arts, rather than individual creators. What’s more, there’s not much of a defined genre for ‘UFC-themed content creator’ as of yet, with most of the narratives around the sport being amplified directly by the UFC fighters themselves, which is part of the league’s appeal. Think of the UFC as next-generation pro wrestling: all the drama and storylines, with the added appeal of unpredictability and genuine athletic competition.
If you think that the UFC hasn’t taken note of its own ascendancy, then you don’t know Dana White. As recently speculated by Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, the UFC will be angling for big new media deals in 2025. Deitsch theorizes that the UFC will follow the WWE model and land with both ESPN and Netflix, further cementing Netflix’s bid for live sports following a foray into NFL games on Christmas 2024.
Regardless of how these media deals play out, we can clearly quantify and explain the growth that’s put the UFC in this position thus far. And it doesn’t seem like too bold of a prediction to state that the league’s momentum will continue into 2025.
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