IBM and UFC announced an innovative partnership on Thursday that will change the way millions of fans around the world view fight night.
The UFC Insights Engine, which will be built with IBM watsonx, will combine the rich data feeds from the mixed martial arts organization with IBM’s data and AI technologies, which includes its Granite large language models.
This will allow the global audience that UFC fuels each fight night with timely, in-depth information that will give a new perspective on each bout, whether its fighter tendencies, possible match outcomes and much more.
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IBM Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications Jonathan Adashek spoke to FOX Business about how this partnership just made sense for the organization that has changed the way the Masters Tournament and U.S. Open, among others, are viewed by fans around the world.
"IBM and the UFC, we’re partnering to really enhance the fan engagement and scale the UFC’s digital capabilities. We’re the first global AI partner, and it’s going to allow us to really bring together IBM technology, like watsonx and our Granite models, with that great, rich data library that the UFC has. Really, it’s going to change the viewing experience for fans, make it so much more engaging and just a richer experience.
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"It’s also going to help them, the UFC, the commentators and everybody that’s working on the broadcast and fights with their digital workflow. Enabling them to provide content in a really unique way, and the access that people will get, it’s building on that expertise we have developed in this space."
The mission is to drive fan engagement, which Head of Global Partnerships at TKO Grant Norris-Jones said is the primary goal of every collaboration.
"For our Global Partnerships business, which is accelerating rapidly under TKO, this deal with IBM is a transformative milestone that underscores how premium brands are increasingly embracing UFC," Norris-Jones told FOX Business Digital.
"UFC, and similarly its sister brand WWE, offer marketers a path to reach a young, diverse, engaged global audience 52 weeks a year with live original content that can’t be found anywhere else in today’s media environment. The demand to partner with UFC has never been stronger."
While this is in a developmental phase, Adashek says that working with UFC’s Research and Development team has been nothing short of amazing, as they create the best experience for fans, commentators and whoever consumes its content.
Additionally, that content could be pre-event programming, pay-per-view broadcast, UFC social media channels and even in-venue video boards throughout the fight cards.
Close to 1 billion UFC fans across 170 countries receive UFC’s broadcasts and follow UFC on its social platforms, making this a fun initiative for both parties to get creative with how this timely data can be displayed for fans.
"The global nature was very interesting for sure, of course," Adashek said. "But fundamentally, the way we look at these things, we don’t like to just go do a sponsorship. We like to be with an organization who we can really partner with, and that we can make a big difference the way fans engage with it, the way people perform in the sport, athletes perform in the sport, and the way the organization runs.
"That scope was very appealing. But what was even more appealing was genuinely the way we were able to collaborate and come to the table as we were trying to figure out a solution that was beneficial and really going to make a difference for the UFC, their fans and their athletes."
The UFC Insights Engine is expected to debut in early 2025.
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