A-B sees opportunity in competitive fighting sponsorship
Jay Gladden was in a Columbus, Ohio, bar last year after a football game when a group of young adults started yelling and cheering. They weren’t watching football — they were glued to a mixed martial arts bout on pay-per-view.
"I thought, they’re watching that?" recalled Gladden, associate professor of sport management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Yes, they are, by the thousands — "they" being 21- to 34-year-olds, and "that" being fighting events put on by outfits such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch Cos. has taken notice, inking a 3 1/2-year sponsorship deal with the UFC, the biggest player in the burgeoning mixed martial arts industry.
For the country’s biggest brewer and its best-selling Bud Light brand, the deal is a bid for the attention of young-adult men who make up much of UFC’s passionate fan base and are also the core of A-B’s domestic beer business.
For the UFC, it’s another rung climbed on the ladder of cultural acceptance. The group is shedding a reputation, forged in the previous decade, for violent, no-holds-barred blood matches.
It now has weight limits, referees, rules and, since January, two new blue-chip sponsors in Harley-Davidson and Anheuser-Busch. According to research firm SNL Kagan, UFC also had $220 million in pay-per-view revenue in 2006, up from $40 million the year before.
"I still don’t think we’re mainstream, but this is huge — every year we’ve taken it to another level," said Dana White, UFC president. "Bud is perfect for our (demographic), man."
Discussions started about a year ago, with A-B scoping out UFC’s reputation among wholesalers, employees and their friends instant payday loan. The conclusion: This could be big.
"We’re always looking for new opportunities and trying to see where the new growth trends are," said Tony Ponturo, vice president of global media and sports marketing at Anheuser-Busch’s U.S. beer subsidiary.
Recent research showed a "pretty amazing" phenomenon, said Ponturo: mixed martial arts — combining styles such as kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing and wrestling — ranked second in terms of avid fan interest among beer drinkers ages 21 to 27. Only the NFL ranked higher.
"That sport has carved out a following," said Gladden, associate dean at the Isenberg School of Management. "My initial gut reaction is that it hits that core consumer of A-B perfectly."
Anheuser-Busch is putting more promotional firepower behind Bud Light this year as it prods its top brand to grow faster in the U.S. Budweiser is on a two-decade slide, so boosting Bud Light is a top priority.
Anheuser-Busch and the UFC declined to disclose the sponsorship’s dollar value. But it will give A-B latitude to launch UFC promotions in bars and stores and paint the Bud Light logo in the center of the UFC "octagon." Commercials may follow, although details are not set. Bud Light replaces Mickey’s, a Miller Brewing Co. malt liquor, as UFC’s beer sponsor.
Anheuser-Busch is "the No. 1 sports marketing company in the world," said White.
jmcwilliams@post-dispatch.com
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Filed under: technology by Specialist