Marketing - buyer behaviour

snowboard microculture. Yet for every lululemon and West 49, there are a number of trends and companies that have not made the jump from micro to mainstream culture. As the UFC continues to expand, many observ- ers have been left to wonder how much further cage fighting can grow. Sources: Associated Press (2009), "Ultimate Fighting Circuit Reaches a Milestone," The New York Times (July 11), http://www.nytimes.com/ 2009/07/12/sports/12ufc.html, accessed May 31, 2012. Deibert, Dave (2012), "UFC 149 Confirmed for Calgary," Postmedia News (March 21), the Vancouver Sun http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/confirmed +Calgary+2012+Canadian+stops+announced+Vancouver/6337552/ story.html, accessed May 31, 2012. http://www.ufc.com/discover/ufc, accessed May 31, 2012.CASE STUDY Case The Ultimate Fighting Championship Sports provide many different microcultures, ranging from Hockey Night in Canada to American tailgate par- ties prior to football games to soccer fanatics in Europe. In recent years, however, the fastest-growing sport has not been hockey, football, baseball, soccer, or basketball. It has been mixed martial arts (MMA) cage fighting. Once described by U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate John Mccain as "human cock- UFC fighting," the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) UFC has become a popular spectator sport. The UFC began UFC in 1993 as a fighting competition designed to determine which fighting style was the best-it included fighters from boxing, sumo, karate, wrestling, jujitsu, and a number of other backgrounds. There were no weight classes, no rounds, no judges, and few rules. To win, you TCLUB.COM had to either knock your opponent out or force him or her to quit. The competition had a small group of hard- core fans, but it was not making money, and a decade after it began the company that ran the UFC was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was saved in 2004 when Jim Kemper/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Spike TV aired a reality television program-The Ulti- mate Fighter-that was built around fighters compet- ing for a contract in the UFC. That show introduced a much larger audience to cage fighting and initiated a growth phase for the business that led to regular broad- Canadian mixed martial artist Georges St-Pierre casts on the Fox network and millions of subscribers to its pay-per-view broadcasts.Fans of the UFC are an interesting consumer microculture that not only watches the cage fighting events but also buys UFC and MMA merchandise, DVDs, video games, and apparel. Nevertheless, MMA is a difficult business. A long list of companies operat- ing MMA events in competition with the UFC have failed financially and either disappeared or been merged with the UFC. The challenges for the UFC going for- ward are very similar to those faced by many other con- sumer marketers who hope to take a successful business built within a microculture and expand it to the general population. lululemon was able to successfully leverage the yoga microculture into a thriving mainstream busi- ness. West 49 has done well with the skateboard and NFIgrowth phase for die casts on the Fox network and millions of subscribers to its pay-per-view broadcasts. Globally, UFC programming is now broadcast in more than 149 countries and territories, reach- ing a half-billion homes worldwide, in 20 different languages. It is also popular in Canada, where it has hosted events at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, the Bell Centre in Montreal, Rogers Arena in Vancouver, and the Calgary Saddledome. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, Rogers SportsNet named Canadian UFC fighter and welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre the Canadian Athlete of the Year, ahead of sports stars such as hockey players Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews, figure skater Patrick Chan, baseball's national league MVP Joey Votto, tennis star Daniel Nestor, and many other worthy contenders. 184 PART THREE: External Influences