Remember back when the UFC announced that Bud Light was coming on board as a primary sponsor? About that time there were a number of articles in the ad industry press with comments from Coca-Cola representatives suggesting that while they were impressed with MMA’s demographics they had no plans to get involved with the sport.

Real Gold

That may be changing as a Coca Cola energy drink brand sold in Japan is sponsoring Hiroyuki Owatari, who is an ad agency executive and K-1 kickboxer. SukiMMA gives us the following translation of a Nikkei Sports article:

Hiroyuki Owatari, who works for DENTSU which is a major ad agency in Japan, fights in K-1 World Max 2008 on July 7. He belongs to Seido Kaikan and passed a test of K-1 tryout in March. He told about being sponsored by Coca-Cola and showed his trunks with a logo of “Real Gold” which is an energy drink sold by Coca-Cola in Japan.

Coca-cola had never sponsored any sports including violent activities and gambling. When he talked about his K-1 debut to his client, Coca-Cola, they were interested. They contacted to their headquarters in Atlanta and got a permission to sponsor him. This will be a test case.

Owatari said, “Since my client supports me, I cannot lose now.”

It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any change in policy relative to MMA here in the US. In the highly competitive beverage industry where every percentage point of market share represents hundreds of millions of dollars it would seem that the gift wrapped 18 to 35 male demographic that MMA delivers would be too good to pass up. This is especially true for the high margin energy drink segment, which shares precisely the same demographic as MMA.

Coca Cola may start to sponsor MMA fighters @ SukiMMA