Over the last few years, consumers have made a drastic shift from watching television to streaming their content on digital media platforms. In keeping up with the trends, the UFC launched Fight Pass in 2013.
The digital subscription service is a fight fan’s version of Netflix. It features a library of archived content from the UFC and other various fight promotions as well as monthly live content that can be streamed.
In July 2015, the UFC made a major investment when they hired former Yahoo! executive and head of Rivals.com Eric Winter. Winter took the reins as senior vice president and general manager of Fight Pass. The father of two not only has a great understanding of the consumer market, but has years of experience in combat sports media.
“I’ve had a long and fruitful history with the Ultimate Fighting Championship,” Winter told Sportsnet. “I started out my career at Direct TV — I was there for almost nine years — and I ended up running the Pay-Per-View events division. That when I got my first taste of combat sports. Learning how to sell PPV’s for MMA, wrestling, boxing, comedy, and adult entertainment, everything you can image from a cable and satellite perspective. That’s where I first ran into Dana White.
“Ultimately I got recruited to go to Yahoo! [in 2006] because they were re-launching their sports division. The first phone call I made when I got to Yahoo! Sports was to Dana White. The first deal I secured in early 2007 was the global streaming rights to UFC Pay-Per-Views. I’ve done work with the great team over at Pride FC back in the early 2000s. I’ve worked with [current Bellator president] Scott Coker, both when he was at K1 and ultimately when he was at Strikeforce. So I really have a deep and narrow experience in the MMA world.”
In 2007, when Yahoo! acquired Rivals.com, a company specializing in college and pro sports coverage, Winter was appointed CEO of the company. That’s where he ran into UFC chairman Lorenzo Fertitta, whose sons earned football scholarships and were seen playing on the college circuit. Not only had Winter established a relationship with White, he was now on the radar of Fertitta as well. Close to two years after Fight Pass launched, the UFC sought out Winter to make him the face of the service.
“My experience on the UFC side and running a company separate from Yahoo! earned the right for Dana and Lorenzo to give me a call,” Winter said. “[They] asked me if I wanted to come on over and help them be a part of something from the ground up.”
Because of his experience and knowledge of combat sports, the transition to running Fight Pass was seamless. Like most people who start with a new company there can be growing pains, but Winter’s biggest challenges were actually outside the office.
“Professionally, there have been no hurdles I’ve had to overcome,” Winter explained. “For me the most challenging time is more personal because I commute here to Las Vegas. I’m on a flight at 6 a.m. from my home in Los Angeles. I go home on Friday evenings, sometimes Thursday if we don’t have a fight that weekend. I’ve got a wife and two kids. They’re very supportive of the importance of the UFC to me. They understand it’s great for everyone. But it’s challenging not to be home every day.”
Ask most subscribers and they’ll tell you Fight Pass has made improvements in since the time of Winter’s arrival. Winter believes the team around him is what really helped take Fight Pass to the next level.
“Fight Pass was conceived from the executive level, but there were 30-50 people that were worked on the first floor to really stand up this product and manage it day in and day out,” Winter said. “I go to sleep every night saying to myself, ‘Eric could you have conceived this business?’ and the answer is no. I’m the fortunate one that got to be the face of UFC Fight Pass. A lot of amazing work has gone on the last 2 1/2 years. My job is to make everyone better at their job. Whatever you’re on, whether it’s the live streaming component, uploading library or digital execution. I’m just literally with a Phillips head screwdriver in my hand, tweaking the business and make it that much better.”
One of the improvements with Fight Pass has been customer feedback. Winter makes himself accessible to fight fans on social media and constantly responds customer complaints. As he explains, this was a major priority for him.
“I learned a long time ago that this is the customer-first business. Not just UFC and UFC Fight Pass. I was employee 500 at Direct TV when ultimately we maybe had a million customers when I first joined. When I left it was 5,000 employees and 15 million customers. If you didn’t treat the customer right, they were going to cancel their subscription to Direct TV. It was our obligation to make sure that customer was happy. I brought that [attitude] through with me. For me it’s seamless to be normal and not combative on social media. Sometimes you so badly want to tell someone they’re a knucklehead but I leave that to other people who feel more comfortable being combative on social media. I choose to take high road 99 per cent of the time.”
Fight Pass has also recently put an emphasis on their “Feature Fight” or “Fight Pass Main Event” during live UFC events. Winter says that idea came to fruition because of the situation involving Joseph Duffy withdrawing from a headlining fight against Dustin Poirier on an exclusive Fight Pass card last October. The match was rescheduled for UFC 195 and Winter recalls a matchmakers meeting where he proposed this new initiative.
“I saw where [Duffy and Poirier] were slotted, I’m not going to say where it was, but it certainly wasn’t on Fight Pass.” Winter explained. “I looked at Lorenzo and Dana in the eyes and said it strongly: ‘I believe the Fight Pass audience deserves to have Duffy vs. Poirier on the Fight Pass early prelims.’ There was silence in the room and I gave my rationale. Actually, I walked out of the room pitching that it should have been the first fight of the Fight Pass card, not the main event. I felt it because we owed it to our Fight Pass customers. I also felt it was a smart move because these are fans of an Irish fighter (Duffy) and we’re talking an eight-hour time difference. If they were on the PPV card, that meant Irish fans are watching Joseph Duffy at 3 a.m. The next morning, Dana and Lorenzo looked at me and agreed. Those two are Fight Pass first executives and they ultimately made the main event of Fight Pass and made a brand of it. A week later we started calling it the featured bout on the Fight Pass prelims and we were off running. I also have to give credit Joseph Duffy and Dustin Poirier who supported this initiative as well.”
Fight Pass fans are always asking what the future will look like. Winter revealed that along with streaming more events and accumulating more archived content, the team there is also looking to improve the experience from a technical perspective.
“The live streaming is the easy part. Right now, UFC Fight Pass will live stream approximately 124 live fighting events in 2016. Is that good enough? No. I want 365. We’re going to get to the point where we have live fights every single day. We’re going to fight and scratch our way until we get there. We have probably 10,000 video assets in our library. By the end of the year it should be 20,000. That’s based on the libraries that we’ve already acquired, not what’s on our wish list. We are going to be relaunching our UFC Fight Pass and UFC.tv technology very soon. We acknowledge we have some drawbacks on our technology. Our technology will be 100 times better, starting with search. I couldn’t be more proud of the world our technology team has done.”
There are three UFC events in April and Fight Pass will be streaming a handful exclusive preliminary bouts from each of those cards.
