The Big Interview: UFC

James Elliott, the new vice president and general manager of EMEA for UFC, talks to sportindustry.biz about the importance of relationships with brands and broadcasters such as Reebok and BT Sport, as well as plans to move the sport onto “bigger and better things”.

Congratulations on the appointment, what made you the right candidate for the role?

I’ve got a broad understanding of the way the sport industry works, having been in the business for a number of years on the brand and agency side. In terms of the UFC, I’ve been with them since December 2013 as part of the executive teams within EMEA. I really have an understanding how UFC works and how to best use the practices I’ve learnt elsewhere. I want to drive UFC onto bigger and better things.

How do you plan to do that?

We’ve had a strategy that’s been in place since the likes of Michael Zelaznik, Gary Cook and David Allen about expanding into Europe and middle-eastern Africa, expanding the sport globally. We are a global sport and my remit is to drive the growth within EMEA.

We will be trying to do that by maintaining what we are doing at the moment. We’ve done a series of local events in prime time, which have really begun to focus the minds of people within the region. We are using that to leverage our broadcast and commercial partnerships, grow the fan base and drive the sport.

You’ve sold out events in Sweden, Scotland and Dublin this year, what’s next?

Yes we’ve got an event in Dublin at the end of October that sold out in 60 seconds! We then roll straight out of that, from a European perspective, to an event at the O2 in London with tickets on sale from 1st December. London is always a big fixture in our calendar and was somewhere we were disappointed not to go back to this year, but we managed to get it into the schedule for 2016. We are delighted as it’s always a big event for us, we’ll put on a great show.

UFC is huge in Dublin, largely thanks to Conor McGregor’s success in recent years, how much do you wish there was an equivalent Englishman at that level ahead of the London event?

Everybody needs heroes, there’s a star power around Conor, there’s no question about that. What he’s done and what the UFC have done for him and what he’s done within the UFC has been extraordinary. If we could replicate that in every market all over the world, not just in the UK or England, then I think we’d be very happy. We do have fantastic fighters from markets globally. Our job is to build them up the best we can and hope we can drive them onto success.

In your previous role – senior director of content – you were heavily involved in leveraging the BT Sport partnership, how essential is the right broadcaster for the sport?

It’s crucial for us, one of the things that attracts me to the role and the business itself is the fact we can operate in a way that’s different to other rights-holders I’ve either worked for or represented. We have an ability to react to how the way the industry is changing, you see what we’ve done with Fight Pass and on a social basis, pushing people to our social channels into our broadcasters and vice versa.

The broadcast relationship is the cornerstone of the interaction with our fans as it’s the way the majority consume our product, because only a certain amount can get into the arena. It’s absolutely crucial and BT Sport has been a big part of what has happened across the UK and Ireland since the start of that contract, and we are delighted with our partnership with them.

What’s going to be the biggest challenge for you in your new role?

I’m focused on delivering the London event for now, once we’ve got that done we can look to roll out the rest of the year. Really it’s about building on the opportunity we have, to grow a sport and business such as the UFC in a region like this one. It doesn’t come around very often and everyone in the office in EMEA and Las Vegas at head office is absolutely focused on maximizing the opportunity we have. The head room in mixed martial arts and the UFC is enormous; the sky is the limit for us.

We’re nearly a year on from the mega deal with Reebok being announced, how much of a difference has it made to UFC as a brand?

It’s a good indication of where we are and how we are developing as a brand and organisation that a brand like Reebok has chosen a partner with us in the way that they have. It lifts us onto a different level and helped clean up the way the sport looks from an aesthetic perspective. It also really solidifies the fact the UFC is a pinnacle of the sport and it now looks like that. That for us is crucial for us as we begin to develop and clean up the way the brand is presented. All these partners coming on board, BT Sport, Reebok, Fox in the USA, they’re integral for us driving forward.

Finally, what does UFC do at a grassroots community level?

We have an audit going on at the minute, in terms of what we are doing from a CSR perspective. We have a lot of different programmes that we run, but we are looking to consolidate those and roll something out soon, which is quite exciting.

On a federation level, International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF) is working with all the local federations to ensure that we are operating at a grassroots level and we are building up the sport, the regulation, the expertise that sits at the foundation level of the sport. With a combination of what we are hoping to put together and what’s already been done by IMAF and their affiliated federations we are in pretty good hands, but there’s an awful lot we can continue to do and it’s something we are absolutely focused on.