Sunday morning Google trends UFC 103 Mayweather Marquez
By Jim Murphy September 20th, 2009Here’s the Sunday morning Google trends and–surprise, surprise–we learn that boxing and MMA can co-exist. If we have to pick a winner judging from the top ten its a decision for Mayweather/Marquez. The return of ‘Money’ Mayweather to the ring gets the top spot–specifically the term ‘Mayweather vs Marquez play by play’. The UFC shows up in 7th place with ‘Rich Franklin vs Vitor Belfort fight video’, but boxing gets another term in the top ten with ‘Shane Mosley’. Mosley challenged Mayweather in the ring after his dominating unanimous decision victory.
Here’s the breakdown of UFC 103 and Mayweather/Marquez terms in the top 100 Google trends as of 7:00 AM Pacific Time
1) Mayweather vs Marquez play by play
10) Shane Mosley
14) Shane Mosley calls out Mayweather
38) Who won the Mayweather Marquez fight
51) Floyd Mayweather
54) Floyd Mayweather vs Juan Manuel Marquez video
60) Mayweather vs. Marquez live stream free
69) Manny Pacquiao
71) Miguel Cotto
84) Mayweather Pacquiao
92) Max Kellerman
94) Mayweather wins
96) boxing
97) Boxing fight tonight
99) Pelea de Marquez vs. Mayweather gratis
7) Rich Franklin vs. Vitor Belfort Fight video
25) UFC 103 results
46) UFC 103 live stream free
62) Cro Cop vs Dos Santos video
73) UFC 103 fight videos
80) UFC resluts from last night
83) Tomasz Drwal
Pretty impressive showing for Mayweather/Marquez in terms of online ‘buzz’ and a rather muted showing for UFC 103. Making the Mayweather/Marquez results more impressive is that there were more ‘big names’ on the UFC 103 undercard but, oddly, Tomasz Drwal is the only one that shows up in the Google Trends. In addition to a number of permutations on Mayweather/Marquez (including a search term for free streams in Spanish) the results include ‘boxing’, ‘boxing tonight’ as well as an announcer (Max Kellerman) a couple of guys who didn’t even fight last night (Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto) and even a few terms related to Shane Mosley.
It’ll be interesting to see some PPV buyrate projections, but there was significantly more interest in the Mayweather fight among ‘casual sports fans’. Whether or not this will translate into PPV buys remains to be seen. My hunch is both events will do decent numbers, indicating that there’s good support for boxing and MMA. Best case scenario, however, is for MMA to try and get boxing fans interested in their sport and vice versa.
As far as we’re concerned, we had our best round by round turnout ever though this was likely a function of some improved SEO efforts than a huge groundswell of interest in UFC 103. In any case, we’re definitely happy about it and want to thank everyone who joined us for the round by round. I read an interesting figure somewhere last week–it may have been the Wall Street Journal–that reported that a recent Nielsen survey indicated that nearly 50% of TV viewers access the Internet on their laptop simultaneously. We used to say jokingly that the best way to enjoy the UFC was to turn down the volume and follow our round by round, but apparently that’s not a far fetched vision. More likely, people use the Internet to suppliment what they get from the TV audio and we’re happy to provide a running commentary on MMA events along with the broadcast team.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:10 am
There is a red flag! The reason for people to search the mayweather marquez is because they didn’t purchase the fight and want to see it.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I might buy that rationale except in the past the UFC events that had particularly high buyrates–UFC 100 and 101–also had a bunch of Google Trend terms before and after the event. In fact, they had many more related specifically to free video streams. Here’s a similar post we did about UFC 100:
UFC 100 dominates Google search trends
and one we did for UFC 101:
UFC 101 still big on Google Trends
While I don’t think you can necessarily equate a lot of trending search terms with a high PPV buyrate, based on what we’ve observed you can’t infer the opposite either. It still looks to be a case where the UFC will get their core audience, but for whatever reason this card didn’t resonate with the sports mainstream and more casual MMA fans.
Regardless of the boxing trends performance, if I’m the UFC I’d be concerned about the lack of online buzz surrounding the UFC 103 card which as you can see from the links above is significantly less than UFC 100 or 101. Unfortunately, we didn’t check the trends after 102 and that might have been a better event to compare to 103.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Marquez Mayweather was #1 Google trend but on the h Google just means people didn’t want to buy it but were intrigued about who the winner would be. purchasing the fight was not worth the money.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:32 am
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September 20th, 2009 at 11:36 am
See the comment above–based on what we’ve observed in the past there’s not really an easy relationship between buyrates and Google trends. The UFC has trended very strong on 100 and 101 and both did huge buyrates. A lot of the Google searches for those events were things like ‘UFC 100 live stream’ and other searches that suggested people were trying to find a free way to watch the fights. I *wish* I had tracked the trends for 102 since that was perceived to be a ‘weaker’ card and would be a better comparison to UFC 103.
In any case, compared to the UFC’s domination of the Google Trends after recent events they have to be disappointed at the lack of ‘buzz’ for this event. I don’t think that the Mayweather fight necessarily took away much of the UFC’s audience, but I do think that for whatever reason there was more interest among mainstream sports fans and casual fight fans than there was for UFC 103. Now does that mean the UFC’s buyrates will suffer? Maybe, maybe not–but in any rate if the UFC’s buyrate is below par I don’t think the Mayweather fight can be considered the reason. Dana was stupid to make it a pissing match between the two sports–at some point the various powers that be in boxing and MMA will get it through their thick heads that with a little effort there’s a lot of new fans to be won from the ‘other’ fight sport.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I agree with Jonathan…People are googleing the marquez/mayweather fight because they didnt watch the fight on pay-per-view!
September 20th, 2009 at 11:58 am
So how does that explain the lack of the same relationship between the UFC 100 and 101 buyrates and *their* Google trends? If there was an inverse relationship between a lot of Google search activity and PPV buyrate neither of those events would have exceeded 1 million buys like they did. My take is that for whatever reason the mainstream sports public wasn’t interested in last night’s UFC card–really, the UFC 103 card had very little interest outside of hardcore MMA geeks like me. It takes big names like Brock Lesnar and Anderson Silva to bring in the more casual MMA fans–the UFC has a dependable core PPV audience of somewhere between 500k and 750k fans, but anything over that they have to have a card that has more mainstream appeal.
And you could make the same case about UFC 103–no one watched the PPV and they’re Googling ‘UFC results’ to find out who won and then trying to track down the video of the Belfort fight to see the nasty knockout. All you can really gather from things like Google Trends and Twitter Trends is the amount of ‘buzz’ online–whether that means more people are pulling the trigger on a PPV buy, or more people are searching because they didn’t buy the PPV is hard to say. If anything, based on the Google results of UFC 100 and 101 it sure looks like there’s a positive relationship between a lot of online buzz and PPV buyrates. I guess until we get an idea of the PPV buyrates for UFC 103 and the boxing its all speculation…
September 20th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
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September 20th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
People were searching for Marquez Mayweather because the fight was pure artistry by Mayweather and they wanted to see it again. The buy rates from the mayweather fight will likely double that of the UFC — as UFC fans can’t seem to grasp at the idea of boxing beating them in Popularity. You have to understand, boxing hasn’t had a good PPV fight since Pacquiao/Hatton — which was in May… they were long over due. Nobody was worthy of the PPV buy in the UFC 103 — no disrespect meant, but it wasn’t like BJ Penn, Silva or GSP were on the card — so UFC fans likely crossed over to because Mayweather is star — whether you love to hate him or you love him. Besides, UFC PPV buy rates have never been accurate — as there is no way to really determine the accuracy of the money collected as Boxing does. I like the UFC too — it’s great fun, but I’ll take Mayweather vs Pacquiao any day over a Silva vs GSP UFC dream match.
September 20th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
I was one of those who googled Mayweather vs. Marquez and I did so because I did not purchase the fight. I just want to know if my prediction came true. Suffice it to say, I’m the new Nostradamus! Unanimous decision for Mayweather for 12 super boring rounds.
September 20th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I have to agree with the greater mainstreaml impact of the Mayweather return–I’m fortunate to be able to see one of the best boxers ever fight again. I’ve already got the Mayweather fight on my iPod. Belfort and Franklin are both solid fighters and class competitors, but were it not my primary job to cover MMA watching the Mayweather/Marquez fight was a no-brainer. To the suggestion that the UFC start more education shows you’re 100% correct, but they have to change their mindset toward their own history. UFC history is more revisionist than Cold War USSR–its more like the WWE than anything else. Yesterday’s ‘champions’ are today’s ‘chumps’ when it fits their promotional efforts. While I understand that fight promoters by definition *promote*, Dana White’s lack of respect for any fighter not currently under contract to Zuffa is embarrassing to watch and an insult to all professional prizefighters.
In all fairness, boxing hasn’t done a great job bringing in MMA fans either–too many MMA fans buy into the mainstream sports hack ‘take’ that MMA is killing boxing. A little historical perspective would inform them that sports hacks have been writing the death knell of boxing for over 100 years now. In my lifetime alone I’ve heard ‘Ali’s retirement will kill boxing’, ‘Leonard’s retirement will kill boxing’, ‘Tyson’s retirement will kill boxing, so on and so forth. Still, boxing has acted like they’re ‘above’ introducing new fans to the sport.
As someone who loves both sports, I think the ‘rivaly’ or ‘feud’ between boxing and MMA is stupid and counterproductive. Dana White and Bob Arum are utimately doing themselves a disservice by playing into it.
I’ve talked to a lot of people who share the view–as do I–that the UFC is in danger of over saturating the marketplace. At this point, it sure looks like they’re running too many cards and seriously diluting the quality of the product and most problematically creating the impression among the casual fan that no fight is a ’super fight’. From a financial standpoint it makes sense given the current nature of their fanbase–it doesn’t take an MBA to figure out that running two shows with 600,000 buyrates is better for cash flow than 1 show with 1 million buys. Still, there are a lot of ancillary risks associated with product oversaturation. Dana shoots himself in the foot with a lot of his strategic decisions–case in point, nixing a deal with HBO because the UFC wasn’t completely in control of production. He would have had his product on the marquee fight sport network in the hands of the best production team certainly in the fight game and this alone would have gone a long way to legitimizing the sport in the eyes of casual fans. There’s other issues afoot–Dana likes to condemn guys like Rampage and to a lesser extent Roger Huerta for leaving the fight game for a shot at a movie career. ‘Rampage’ in particular could do very well taking action film roles alone–just look at how things worked out for Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. It’s very much within the realm of possibility that Rampage could do 3 or 4 movies a year, make more money and not get hit. A guy like Huerta isn’t making anything close to what Rampage is, and it wouldn’t take many low budget action films to make it a more lucrative career than fighting. Plus the guy is bi-lingual–effectively doubling his potential market. Making more money to do Spanish language soap operas on Univision and not having to get hit in the process is a pretty good career move.
Anyway, there’s so much to cover and address here that its well beyond the scope of a comment on the blog. We’ll definitely be doing some articles touching on a lot of these subjects. As a fan, I’d hate to see MMA go the way of indoor soccer or arena football–both ‘new’ sports that were branded as the ’sport of the future’ in the past twenty years and that are both back to niche status due to a number of strategic blunders by the ‘powers that be’. I also appreciate the overall intelligence and civil tone of the comments on both sides–I’ve only had to delete one as obscenity laden gibberish and that’s actually a sign of progress in itself. I’m not so much trying to say ’see, I told you so’ with these evaluations of the online ‘buzz’. In the past we’ve done them to show the dominance of the UFC in the online arena–my expectation was to see a strong showing by the UFC in the Google trends, a smaller but solid showing by the Mayweather fight and comparable PPV buyrates with a small edge to the boxing. I was actually shocked to see so *little* online buzz about the UFC and definitely didn’t predict it
Maybe the biggest irony of all is that the best UFC event of the year top to bottom was last week’s ‘Ultimate Fight Night’ card on SPIKE TV. In terms of action per fight that was worth twice what any UFC PPV this year has cost me.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
the only reason people googled all that crap about mayweather marquaz is because they were watching the UFC so they were just trying to get boxing results .. MMA FTW!!!
September 21st, 2009 at 5:00 pm
So by that logic, people weren’t watching NFL football yesterday–they were watching the English Premier League and just Googling about the NFL? Typically, the trending topics equate to what people are watching–yesterday, the NFL, the Emmy Awards and ‘Entourage’ trended. That scenario where people were all watching a lackluster UFC card on PPV and Googling the Mayweather fight the next day doesn’t pass the ’smell test’ outside of Dana White’s dubious sphere of logic.
Another interesting fact–the graphs I posted somewhere on this blog only went through 9/17 (Thursday). The Mayweather/Marquez fight was already a much ‘hotter’ Google search topic.
September 26th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
oops! Jim you shouldn’t display linear thinking in a non-linear world (two major fight cards in the same night).