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he UFC has recorded another year of high levels of growth across its social media platforms, with the mixed martial arts (MMA) competition revealing its UFC 2020 A Year In Review with Grabyo.

The report showed the UFC recorded follower increases in 2020 of 75% for Facebook to 53.1 million, 31.2% for Instagram to 24.2 million, 25.5% for YouTube to 10.7 million, and 7.7% for Twitter to eight million.

Remarkably, the UFC recorded 7.1 billion video views on Facebook, 2.6 billion on Instagram, 1.4 billion on YouTube, and 377.9 million on Twitter in 2020, with UFC senior vice president of international and content, David Shaw, saying the UFC remained committed to high quality digital content despite the disruptions of events throughout the year.

“UFC makes it a priority to produce high quality content across all our digital media platforms,” Shaw said.

“It is one of the primary ways UFC stays connected to a global fanbase of more than 300 million.

“Grabyo plays a key part by helping us maintain an efficient workflow and content delivery system.

“With the tools provided by Grabyo, our digital team is more agile and flexible than ever, ready to deliver the best content to our fans, 24/7,” he said.

In the report, the UFC said: “Personalisation has been the focus of content teams in the sports media industry for some time.”

“Audiences will respond to content that is tailored to them, whether it’s delivering native language commentary, formatting for specific devices and digital channels, or featuring international athletes that have local appeal…

“UFC has consistently been on the forefront of innovation in content formats.

“When social distancing measures were put in place across the world, UFC needed to adapt quickly to deliver the raw, unfiltered content fans had come to expect.

“UFC launched a new live Facebook show, Quick Hits, to give fans access to fighters in short interview segments, broadcast live during headline events.

“UFC has broadcast 20 Quick Hits shows to date, achieving 72.5 million video views, and within that, 26.7 million minutes of video has been watched.

“Quick Hits posts have hit over 121 million impressions,” the UFC and Grabyo report said.

Speaking on the success of UFC on social media in 2020, Grabyo president of Americas, Mike Kelley, said: “Grabyo was proud to play our part in enabling UFC to succeed in 2020.”

“The organisation has adapted and thrived to produce some exceptional content, while keeping the fan experience at the centre of everything they do.

“UFC has been a leader in technology innovation, leveraging social media and digital platforms to drive fan engagement and revenue.

“The Grabyo team, with the help of our leading cloud video platform, is excited to continue the partnership and achieve even greater success in 2021,” Kelley said.

Meanwhile, UFC president, Dana White, said the upcoming UFC 257 pay-per-view on Saturday at Fight Island in Abu Dhabi, which is headlined by a rematch between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier, is expected to over perform.

Discussing pre-fight metrics at a UFC 257 press conference, White said: “This thing is trending great.”

“Yeah, it’s good, it’s going to be good.

“When was there a bad one since the pandemic started?

“There hasn’t been a bad pay-per-view, they’ve all be over-performing, so you can only imagine what this is going to do,” he said.