How Storytelling Saved the UFC
And why sports storytelling will change the game for streaming
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Streaming platforms are getting serious about sports. NFL Sunday Ticket’s move to YouTube TV, Apple’s partnership with MLS, and WWE: Raw’s new home at Netflix represent an up-leveling of commitment (and investment) in sports programming. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. In Hub’s new sports study, the majority of fans said they would sign up for a new streaming subscription if they needed it to watch their favorite sport - a potential kill shot for struggling cable bundles. But along with this potential disruption, there’s an opportunity for TV providers: the potential to tell stories that attract new fans and turn minor sports into major ones.
How Storytelling Saved the UFC
Today, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) generates more profits than all other fighting sports combined. But in 2004 it was struggling. The brand was still associated with its bloody “underground” beginnings, and MMA fighting itself was brand new, unfamiliar, and hard to follow. The UFC’s owners needed to create programming that would make the average viewer care enough to tune in to a new sport they didn’t understand.
In a last-ditch effort, the UFC partnered with Survivor producers to create a reality show: The Ultimate Fighter. The show followed 16 fighters living and training together as they competed for a UFC contract. The hope was that a broader audience would show up for the Real World-esque drama and in the process, learn enough to become fans of the sport (and pay-per-view customers).
The Ultimate Fighter aired on Spike TV and was an immediate success. The weekly fights were exciting, but the fighters themselves were the draw. For one thing, they weren’t bloodthirsty thugs. One was a small-town cop. One was a carpenter. Many were college-educated. They made friends (and enemies), they missed their girlfriends, and they played pranks (never leave your pillow unattended). In short, they were surprisingly similar to the young men the UFC hoped would tune in. And tune-in they did. Ratings grew throughout the season, and 2.6M people tuned in for the live finale featuring a fight between contestants Stephen Bonnar and Forrest Griffin (a match that many still consider the best UFC fight of all time.)
But as successful as the show was, the impact on the sport of MMA and the UFC’s business was even bigger. Before The Ultimate Fighter, the UFC averaged 158K pay-per-view buys per event. In the year after the show aired, the average PPV buy rose to 557K - an increase of more than 300%!
Today, The Ultimate Fighter has aired 31 seasons. The UFC, sold for $2M in 2001, is now worth $12B. This incredible success can be attributed to one thing: great storytelling that made people care passionately about a sport they’d never seen before.
The Ultimate Fighter achieved these results at a time when widespread streaming was but a gleam in Netflix’s eye. In 2024, the potential for sports storytelling is an order of magnitude greater. For example, Formula 1.
Despite massive global popularity, Formula 1 had trouble catching on in the U.S. Like MMA, it can be inscrutable to a first-time viewer. The cars are funny looking, they rarely pass each other, and they run on a track where you can only see one turn at a time.
Enter the Storytelling
In 2018, Netflix commissioned a 10-episode documentary called Drive to Survive that chronicles F1 racing, but also behind-the-scenes stories and struggles of drivers, managers, and even owners. The narrative attracted a growing audience of Netflix subs. But like the UFC, it also attracted a bigger and broader audience to F1 itself.
Drive to Survive did what previous efforts were unable to do: make F1 something that newcomers could understand and care about.
A 2022 Morning Consult poll found that fandom of F1 had risen one-third since 2020 and that more than 50% of US F1 fans said that Drive to Survive was a reason for their interest in the sport.
In 2022, Nielsen found that 360K F1 viewers who watched F1 on TV for the first time, did so specifically because of the show.
Drive to Survive also broadened F1’s audience. For instance, fans who came from the show were twice as likely to be Hispanic, twice as likely to come from households with kids, and three times more likely to be younger.
Today, there are more self-identified F1 fans in the U.S. than ever before. TV ratings are near record highs. Before Drive to Survive, there was only one F1 race in Texas. Now there are three, with huge audiences turning out to watch in Miami and Las Vegas.
Niche Content is Streaming’s Superpower
The rights for major sports are out of reach for all but the biggest and richest distributors. But these examples show the opportunity to take minor sports and make them into big ones by leveraging the characters and stories of participants.
Could the American Cornhole League or the Professional Pickleball Association become the next UFC or F1? Before you answer, remember that 34M people watched a show about feuding dysfunctional zookeepers. Never underestimate the ability of good storytelling to take niche content and make it mainstream.
ICYMI: 3 Key Takeaways from TVOT
Last week, we attended the TV of Tomorrow Show in San Francisco. Hundreds of attendees and speakers arrived from around the world (Europe, Asia, and North America) to participate in over 36 sessions, which sparked a lot of discussion/debate.
Hub’s
presented data and research as part of a session called Sports in a World of Streaming – the next battleground in the streaming wars. Here are 3 key takeaways:Andy Reif, SVP at Tennis Channel International, talked about how direct-to-consumer streaming and FAST channels represent an opportunity for sports leagues to engage directly with fans and better monetize their content.
Sabine Bravo at Synamedia outlined the capabilities of new technology to link all the ways fans interact with sports content — from television, to streaming, to social media, to the live experience in-stadium.
Peter Scott of Play Anywhere talked about interactive rights – a brand-new ecosystem that will enable stakeholders to generate revenue from emerging forms of interactive content.
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About Hub Entertainment Research
Hub Entertainment Research, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2023, tracks how technology is changing the way people find, choose, and consume entertainment content: from TV and movies to gaming, music, podcasts, and social video. Hub’s studies have covered the most important trends in providers, devices, and technologies since 2013. We work with the largest TV networks, pay TV operators, streaming providers, technology companies, and studios to assess the present and forecast the future.
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