UFC: Dont waste your time with pirates
Dana White wants to lay down the law on people illegally streaming UFC events online.
So does everyone else.
The music industry attempted to take on music pirates and looked like idiots doing it.
The movie industry attempted to take on pirates and are utterly unsuccessful in doing so.
Game developers try their hardest to thwart pirating, but they are really only trying to buy a few months time around their launch date.
The UFC needs to learn that their audience dictates how they want their content.
The music industry finally got the picture, after years and years of trying to fight digital distribution of media, projects like iTunes and Amazon Music store thrive.
On demand video content is big business that will only get bigger with faster internet speeds showing up everywhere.
Piracy, like drug dealing, is a product of demand. If you prosecute and incarcerate every current drug dealer in the St Louis area, is the drug problem cured? No. Because the demand still exists, therefore a supplier will appear.
A hard concept to grasp is not every person who pirates your content would have actually paid for it without the means of pirating it.
If there is an issue, you need to re-evaluate your business model, not call the FBI.
Asking people to spend $45-55 12 to 14 times per year is significant. Sure, they put some great fights on Spike TV for free. And yes, 4-5 guys throwing in $10 on a UFC is a fair price, especially with the card delivers like UFC 108.
I personally struggle dropping $55 for the HD version of a show that I am going to miss because of a previous obligation or something, only to watch DVR’d at a later date. If it’s not a live event, the hype is no longer there. Even though I’ve gone out of the way not to be spoiled on the outcomes of the fights, I hear about them in blog post titles, facebook statuses, tweets, espn news ticker and random conversations. Now, I would expect to pay similarly to the price of movie rental, like $5-10.
Here’s a random idea, have a UFC membership that means something.
$25/month per person
- PPV credits for 6 UFC pay-per-views a year (put two together or share the cost of a PPV with another member)
- Reduced cost DVD/Bluray copy of the PPVs they have ordered
- Free on-demand fights for every show 3 months or older
- Discounted UFC tickets and/or accommodations
- Some special features/characters integration with UFC ’09/’10 video game
- Promotions directly to UFC sponsor websites
I buy 4-5 UFC PPV’s a year when I can organize a group of people to watch it. I frequently hit up Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the fights as well. But, my total contribution to PPV buys and the UFC is probably in the $250-300/annual range.
Ironically, thats exactly what my direct contribution would be with a subscription plus I would be opening up a channel to market directly to me all year long, which is a gold mine for sponsors.
Things like:
- Knowing who my favorite fighters are
- Do I train mma or wrestling/bjj/boxing/muay thai
- Do I have an Xbox live account
- Twitter integration
- Facebook integration
- Geographic info
- Demographic info
I think its a smarter investment to develop your brand and give your customers value, then to spend that effort defending against an inevitable threat of theft. Sure, it sucks that your valuable product isn’t paid for by all, but attacking justin.tv isn’t even scratching the surface of effectively ending this problem.
The best solution is to keep adding value that only subscribers reap the rewards of. Not alienating the fans that are buying the PPV’s, but promoting this as a valuable deal to keep the fighters paid and the cards stacked.
Xbox Live is a good example to follow.