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UFC and corporate sponsorship
By Zach Arnold | December 1, 2007
There’s good news and there’s bad news.
The good news is that, according to an article in Broadcasting & Cable, Spike TV is helping UFC attract some corporate sponsors.
The network has found a gentlemanly solution. A subset of its sales force is now devoted to making the league more palatable to those advertisers. A three-man sales group wines and dines the clients, shuttles them to live events in Las Vegas and Florida and holds special sessions with UFC athletes at gyms and training centers, all in the name of quelling their skittishness.
Now, the bad news. UFC’s main sponsor, Xyience, has reportedly fired its sales staff.
But this week the company notified much of its approximately 70-member sales force that it would be firing them due to financial setbacks, and this has led to speculation it would soon file for bankruptcy.
For as much effort as Spike is apparently making in helping UFC obtain corporate sponsorship, the fact that UFC could possibly have two of their biggest corporate sponsors (Amp’d Mobile and Xyience) file for bankruptcy within a calendar year is likely not positive news in the eyes of Corporate America. (Especially since there is already a media report with allegations that Zuffa was helping Xyience raise funds to help support the company.)
Topics: MMA, Media, UFC, Zach Arnold | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
No real surprise, the suppliment industry has never been a stable one. Xyience priced their stuff too high for many in the first place.
The UFC needs to focus on picking up sponsorships of a more stable nature.
wasn’t the amp mobile sponsorship already replaced with vitamine water?
Yeah, D-Dubya needs to reconsider that sponsorship business. He thought he was sittin pretty. I am sure he has backup plans. The guy is practically a freakin mob boss, I am sure he will be fine
so they are shutting down but the senior management still gets that 12 million dollar investment from the fertitta brothers? how many other front companies do those guys have?
Vitamin Water, huh?
You know who owns Vitamin Water? Coke. Guess they came to Dana. Viewer demographics trump everything.
Bankruptcy comes in two basic flavors: Liquidation and Reorganization
There is almost always a reorganization phase where a company throws itself on the mercy of a court of law which protects that company from it’s creditors for a limited period of time. This is intended to give the company the opportunity to work with it’s major creditors to renegotiate the terms of their debts.
If the process is unsuccessful, then the company is liquidated. The court oversees the sale of it’s assets, and the proceeds are distributed to the creditors, and if anything is left, to the owners. Needless to say, there is very rarely anything left if things have gotten to this point.
If Xyience goes into bankruptcy, this would probably give the company a shot at replacing management, which may well be what they need at this point.