Sponsorship - Promoting The Passion for MMA Fashion

For UFC 104, the real battle on the marketing side started after the last fight had ended.  That was when event sponsors and suppliers of MMA-related products continued to compete with each other for sales of whatever products and services they have to offer.

Unlike in the past, there’s no longer the need to wait for stores to open in the morning to see what the demand will be.  Because buyers can click online shopping sites 24/7, vendors are able to quickly gauge the success of their promotional efforts   Being forever curious, I decided to find out what the potential benefits event sponsors could anticipate reaping from online sales.

To make sure I wouldn’t be making any ignorant assumptions, I turned on my computer and used my trusty Google sidekick to help me find the answer.  I started by keying in UFC which gave me 26,000,000 results to choose from.

The when I searched for MMA, the number was slightly higher at 28,700,000.

So from that, it became pretty clear that there should be more than enough interest out there for most types of products.  So it seemed pretty clear that the only thing needed to be done by somebody is to carve out a niche market and then offer the right product or service at the right price to supply the demand.  And then, watch he money roll in.

If you’ve ever read any of my other articles, you’ll know that one of my main interests is MMA fashion. I also googled this term today and I had the choice of 7,640,000 results MMA fashion to select from.  To ensure that I would only write an article and not a book, for this piece I’ll only be referring to the first three sites found in the search results for the term MMA fashion and then focus on hats.

The first one, MMAfashion, seems to sell anything and everything related to mixed martial arts and more.  It offers so much that I realized after going through multiple pages, it was like walking through the world’s largest online department store.  If a manufacturer was willing to pay MMAfashion to empty their warehouse, these people would be more than happy to oblige. These folks had a lot of stuff there, too much for me to take the time right now to navigate through.  So I moved on.

RDFC – Dragon Gear was next in the search results.  After opening up the main page and seeing the amount of stuff offered there, I also knew I had to focus on one specific product type.  As I indicated before, I selected my own fashion passion - hats.  As I looked through this site, I noticed navigation buttons to the exact same pages being repeated on the page. Was that their attempt to make it appear they had a larger variety of product available?

Nonetheless, I was able to find hats of varying qualities and designs from eight of the vendors featured there.  And from those, Affliction hats were priced highest at $59.99, followed by Xtreme Couture at $44.99, and all others being somewhere in the range of $24.99 to $27.99.  From the pictures the different pages presented, I could see why the higher priced hats could cost more.  Unfortunately, the detailed descriptions left something to be desired.  Onto the next site.

FighterXFashion came in at number 3 on the list of search results for the keyword term MMA fashion.  I liked this site simply because it’s structured in blog format with specialty-shop appeal.  Sharing information and opinions seemed to be more important to them than moving merchandise.

Although they appeared to have appealing content, I wasn’t 100% convinced that they really were about MMA fashion.  For me,  the only MMA fashion item I find appealing are hats.  So, I continued scrolling down the main page.

Then I finally found what I had been looking for.  When Eric Schafer and his crew walked out through the crowd towards the octagon for UFC 104, they were all wearing hats that really looked good on them.  I wanted one.  But I couldn't see the brand.  Not Tapout, not Affliction, not anything I recognized.  At the end of his match, Schafer had the hat again but the only thing I could read was the word WAR.  How do I find out where to get one fo me?  And now there it was, right in front of me on my screen, the answer I was looking for.

After reading the introductory blurb posted along with the pictures, I saw these hats came from WARHEAD Wear which was listed as the official MMA lifestyle headwear company.  So I clicked on the link to their site.  I wanted to order my hat.

But then disappointment set in.  After this site's main page opened, I didn't see anywhere to place an order.  What gives? So I continued going through the site, and after I clicked on the NEWS link, I got my answer.

UFC 104 was being used to launch the Spring 2010 collection of this product.  And that's when they'll become available.  What nerve!  How could they do that?  I was mad enough to take on Brock Lesnar.

Then finally after I had a chance to calm down and thought about what had happened, I realized something.  Those marketing people had gotten the best of me.  They used a strategy to create a need for their product.   Then they told me the product would only be available at a later date.  This increased my need to satisfy that demand.  And finally, they made me wait to order it.  Although it left me with mixed feelings, it worked.

So in conclusion, what did we cover today.

• First of all we learned that both mixed martial arts (MMA) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) organization are very popular keyword search terms in Google.  And as an extension to that, so is MMA fashion.
• Furthermore, we saw MMA merchandise can be purchased online very easily.  There are infinite number of online stores waiting to satisfy your demand.  We examined the first three Google search results for MMA fashion and saw the different techniques used to get you to buy products from them.
• We discovered that ponsors for major sporting events use different strategies to sell their products and services.  This article was written to illustrate my personal experience showing that sponsors for major sporting events can create demand by simply having an athlete wear their logo on a peice of clothing during the event.
• And last but not least, online shopping is a very popular activity.

My experience from just trying to find one product, hats, I saw the different marketing strategies being used.  How effective will they turn out to be for each of these sponsors.  well in my case, the answer is simple.  Fighters come in wearing hats and leave the octagon wearing hats.  And that's what I spend my money on.  So I guess that certainly lends credibility to the saying "You've got to use your head to make money!"

Marketing and sponsorship is much like the relationship that existing between stock analysis and stock market metadata.  Both are different but when combined with each other, the results can be amazing.