MMA has been depending on the same sponsors for decades now. The sport is extremely entertaining and attracts millions of spectators worldwide, but for some reason, it fails to understand that “worldwide” part.
Sure there are quite a lot of fans from the United States and the United Kingdom, but there are other countries out there too. The sponsors fail to understand that more than half of the spectators come from way outside of their target markets, so every year they dedicate less and less to their sponsorships.
Because of this, organizers have started thinking a little outside of the box and considering who could possibly be a good sponsor for their tournaments. I’ll list 2 of them below, but there are quite a lot of options to consider here.
Tech companies
Everything we do today includes tech. There are very few fields that we can name that would not require some kind of technology to be done the way they are being done today. As a result, tech companies have managed to become the biggest and wealthiest corporations in the history of mankind. So why not bring them on board to MMA?
Sure some may not be too keen on doing it because of how “violent” the sport is, but there is one specific part of the tech industry that would absolutely love sponsorships.
I mean the blockchain industry. This small sector has grown into the hundreds of billions in just a decade and its customer base is just as easily hyped as the MMA fanbase. Merging these two would most definitely be a “relevant” decision.
Plus, most of the companies working in this sector try to target the global market rather than just the US or the UK. So, it’s a win-win in the end. In fact, there was already a “test sponsorship” from Litecoin, while other companies like Bitcoin Revolution are in the process of forming up a plan.
Source: https://cryptoevent.io/review/bitcoin-revolution/
Soft Drink companies
Soft drinks are next. Almost all of these companies try to target global markets. Because of this, they would be able to afford large scale sponsorships for the MMA scene. Maybe not for whole tournaments, but bringing fighters under their name would be something they could easily achieve.
Since we’ve already seen that MMA may not be the best source of income for most fighters, having these small or large soft drink companies back underdogs would completely change the sport. New faces would start popping up everywhere.
I think that energy drink companies would be the best fit as sponsors, considering how fast and heavy the fighting gets sometimes. I can already hear the slogan, “move like an MMA fighter”.
Source: https://sponsorship.sportbusiness.com/sponsor-industry/drinks-soft-drinks/
Many many others
You can think of almost every single company that targets the global market and they would fit right in the sponsorship deals with MMA fighters.
All it takes is to shine a light on this opportunity to start seeing newer and younger faces in the tournaments.