UFC evolution, on the web

It wasn't long ago that the Ultimate Fighting Championship's website was fairly worthless. It really didn't provide anything other than fight cards and schedules. In fact, they didn’t even own www.ufc.com, instead they had to settle for second best, www.ufc.tv. Hard to have a lot of legitimacy with the .tv top-level domain name. I haven’t really paid too much attention to the evolution of the UFC website until I visited the official UFC 66 website yesterday. The site is superior in many ways. The design is strong, the content is deep, and the usability is slick. It really feels like the UFC has made a quantum leap in the last year with its website. For a company that sells “fighting” it is kind of odd that their website is so cutting edge. They obviously are making some good cash these days as sites like theirs are not cheap to produce. With a background in web production, I’d say that most web agencies would charge $200k or more for the UFC 66 site. Now think of how many events they have a year. At this rate, we’re looking at two million dollars a year spent on UFC website. Think about it, the UFC is spending more on their event websites than they are for their top fighters! More props to the UFC for breaking ground a developing websites at this level. They really add to the image of mixed martial art as being the “real deal” and the sport of a newer generation. Video, animation, fight analysis, interviews, I love it! Go to the UFC Liddell vs. Ortiz 2 website and take a minute to reflect on how much the sport has evolved, offline and online. Now let’s see if the PrideFC website steps up.