The Future of the WEC Brand
The reaction to this past Saturday's ‘Aldo Vs Faber' event has been unanimously positive across the board with the company taking a solid position as the # 2 promotion in North America.
Amidst the praise and adulation the show has received there has been a tremendous amount of head scratching over the branding of the event with the letters ‘WEC' all but expunged from Saturday night's offering.
To the loyal fans of the promotion that have been following their cards long before the December 2006 purchase by Zuffa it is a blow to their loyalty but it becomes an example of penny wise and pound foolish to live in this bubble that believes the WEC brand is going to resonate on a worldwide level and confusing the central cause of the industries explosion in the last five years.
Now is the time that Zuffa needs to take a hard stance and realize that the UFC brand is the strongest in the sport and are the letters that will pull in a new audience that is going to take this promotion to the next level.
Strikeforce has proven that stars cannot be created on a platform such as Showtime where audiences range in the 300,000 neighborhood nor can WEC create a sound business model on the Versus network alone.
In my opinion it's time to wash out the WEC letters altogether and brand this entire entity ‘UFC' and encompass all of the weight classes thus melding together and adding two new weight divisions to the larger audience (145, 135) with a potential third weight division in the proposed 125 pound class.
The selling feature of the promotion is a near guarantee of exciting fights on a consistent basis. However, it is not about producing great fights that are going to elevate this promotion into a pay per view juggernaut - it's the ability to create stars and expose these personalities to the largest audience possible, who will be invested enough to plop down $45 on a semi regular basis.
The UFC has done such a tremendous job in marketing that fans are typically going to be sold on the fact that ‘the UFC has a show on Saturday' as opposed to who is fighting, the company has delivered on a continual level that the brand overshadows the talent with the exception of the top draws in the company that make a sizeable difference.
I, more than anyone want to see the stars of the WEC finally bank in on their skills and to see Urijah Faber, Mike Thomas Brown, Manny Gamburyan, Jamie Varner etc start to see the pay days that are consistent with the level of output they have showcased for years on a smaller scale.
The dyed in the wool WEC fans fail to see the forrest from the trees and a complete re-branding of the promotion is not a slap in the face nor a snubbing of the past accomplishments of the organization it is merely the best step forward in evolving this promotion and creating a new avenue for fight fans to drop their money.
They key now is in establishing a platform to create an interest to a follow up pay per view. The biggest draw from a casual fan's point of view is still Urijah Faber who finds himself out of the featherweight title picture and a potential drop down to bantamweight to remain in featured fights, the next biggest draw one could argue is Jens Pulver who still has an unbelievable connection with his audience but is a fighter you can no longer put anywhere near the top of a card based on his last five outings.
Jose Aldo, Benson Henderson, Dominic Cruz, Joseph Benavidez, Jamie Varner, Donald Cerrone and a whole host of other fighters in the organization have the potential to be taken to the next level but they need to be exploited much in the same way the UFC took talented fighters and exposed them to the masses via ‘Ultimate Fighter' and we understood who these performers were.
The average fan knows that the above listed performers are all tremendous fighters but that is all they know about them. The countdown specials, reality shows and general mass exposure are key ingredients in establishing their personalities and breaking down the wall of ‘talented fighter you will watch for free on TV' and turn them into a widespread personality that you are willing to pay money to see.
We now await the results of the first pay per view offering to see how big the interest level was for this show because the momentum coming out of this show is such that growth is the only logical next step.
A UFC branded ‘WEC' is the best for all parties concerned and creates a further ownership of the MMA pie by Zuffa, which competing organizations will be forced to live off of the crums left over by the big monster.
