Opinion: Smarter Ideas for the UFC's Intellectual Property Plans
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Therein lies the rub and all that jazz. Benson Henderson’s move to Bellator MMA was the biggest story of the week. However, as it was all-but-expected -- at least if you’re faithful “Cheap Seats” listeners -- by the time he beat Brandon Thatch a year ago, let alone Jorge Masvidal, it was hardly a shock. One story that did pique my interest, however, was fantastic grappling breakdown YouTuber BJJ Scout posting that the UFC had snuffed out a whole score of his videos on the big YT.
Say can anyone put me in touch with someone in the UFC?Or maybe contribute to an indiegogo campaign to appeal this? pic.twitter.com/TnixXFFeqn
— BJJ Scout (@bjjscout) February 2, 2016
Now, this is not an essay about whether or not Zuffa has the authority to do this, whether or not it’s in the philosophical “right” or anything like that. In fact, MMAJunkie’s Ben Fowlkes already put together a fantastic piece earlier this week detailing both the legal realities of these intellectual property cases, as well as the necessary conditions for “fair use,” under which BJJ Scout believes their videos fall. In fact, while Fowlkes article points out that U.S. courts have started to frown upon companies making aggressive and spurious copyright claims, I’d say it’s a stretch to call BJJ Scout’s videos “fair use,” as it is defined.
Where the law is concerned, Zuffa has every right to scrub damn near every BJJ Scout video and any one like it straight off of YouTube or any other video streaming site. Where common sense and fight promotion is concerned, the company is positively foolish to bother.
If a case like this ever came to a point where a UFC lawyer had to argue in its favor, he or she would have a clear case between both the large appropriation of fight video, which you could argue in large part broadcasts a fight for free, as well as the fact that even if they’re not “highlights” so to speak, videos breaking down technique with UFC footage are still offering a competitive good to the market. Whether prefight and post-fight analysis and whether or not they’re done well, technical breakdowns are clear, observable pieces of the UFC’s video product within a fight broadcast itself, or the studio show around it, or the shoulder programming to promote it. However, even if Zuffa has the ability to put the kibosh on content like this, it doesn’t mean the company should.
MMA and other combat sports have a unique profile. Not only are they in a constant battle for mainstream attention with more culturally-in-play stick-and-ball sports, but they also don’t have a schedule or a season. There are no natural peaks and valleys from a draft, training camp and season kickoff to the midseason drama, playoffs and the championship. Unlike your favorite teams, fighters don’t go out and “play” every night, every other night or every week. Outside of proper muay Thai in which Thai stars are going to work in in the stadiums every few weeks, combat athletes appear seasonally at best, perhaps for brief moments in competition. These sports just roll along month after month, and promoters are left trying to make as much money as they can in between the moments they can utilize their biggest drawing cards.
As you can tell, none of these sports, MMA or otherwise, are cropping up on “SportsCenter” day-in and day-out. MMA has long been a sport that has lived online, where fans shared and reinforced their passion by sharing highlights, technical breakdowns and the like. That is not a chance occurrence, and in fact, I’d argue that it’s largely by design. Back when there were only five or six UFC events a year, you needed that kind of video fodder to keep the fire of your fandom stoked during a drought. Now, we’re awash with MMA content, but it becomes harder and harder to care about a single relevant fight on a Saturday night, like a Hendricks-Thompson. I’d argue that the easier it is for fans -- wherever they fall on the spectrum of hardcore fandom -- to find provocative MMA video content with a simple search query, the better it is for the UFC.
I suppose you could argue that technical breakdowns are achievable in text, since homies Connor Ruebusch and Patrick Wyman are turning them out weekly. With that said, a breakdown of fighting technique without visual accompaniment simply falls short; it’s like having someone tell you all the sheet music for an album while gushing over the composition, instead of just letting you hear the songs. While it might be passable, would we want Jack Slack’s breakdowns without the .gifs? BJJ Scout’s 37,000-plus YouTube subscribers may pale in comparison to the official UFC channel’s 2.5 million and beyond, but the beauty and importance of technical breakdowns -- and I would argue especially grappling breakdowns -- is that they appeal to a niche audience and serve to magnetize them to MMA in a way the UFC’s native content simply will not.
There was a time when the MMA and grappling communities were almost identical, overlapping circles of interest with extreme commingling. Ten to 15 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to find an MMA fan that didn’t train, but it was rare; and if you did train, the gym is where you were most likely to find an outlet talking about mixed martial arts. I’m long out of shape and past the thrills of getting mat burn, but in my personal, anecdotal research, this has changed greatly. The explosion in post-“Ultimate Fighter” popularity means there is a whole world of MMA fans who love the game and want to be able to understand its Xs and Os but don’t feel inspired to put on a gi. However, it’s also meant that there are droves of folks who train some sort of grappling art and are fully aware of and appreciate MMA. Their interest waxes and wanes similarly to a casual fan that might crop up for a few pay-per-view cards per year. It’s hard to believe there are people, albeit a minority, that get pumped for Demian Maia and Ronaldo Souza fights the same way they get stoked for Jon Jones and Conor McGregor, but they exist. They’re also exactly the kind of people likely to be sucked into a BJJ Scout video or perhaps dabble outside their realm with a video breakdown of Dominick Cruz-T.J. Dillashaw.
Now, I don’t expect the UFC to announce a monthly fan contest to create highlight videos out of its library like One Championship. Maybe, for whatever reason, you’re not swayed by arguing about fan engagement. That’s fine, since it’s not just fans relying on this kind of content to deepen their engagement in the sport. You go talk to coaches and fighters in this sport. Many are fully aware of what Jack Slack thinks about their striking technique or what the Gracie Breakdown says about the last time they got tapped out. In a sport where it can be exceedingly difficult to take a look in the mirror, scour and find your faults as a fighter, tons of athletes have found insight in exactly these sorts of pieces. On the topic of BJJ Scout specifically, former Olympic silver medalist and UFC title challenger Sara McMann has spoken candidly about using this very same YouTube channel to try to shore up some of her grappling deficiencies.
It’s not just fighters, either. Brian Stann has transitioned from fighter to color commentator seamlessly, becoming the best live fight analyst in the sport. Why? Clearly, Stann is a smart cookie and has an aptitude for instantaneous analysis, but if you follow the man’s social media footprint or talk to anyone close to him, it’s a product of research. As someone working in the MMA media, you can listen to Stann on a UFC broadcast and always expect a rock-solid distillation of the topic, stories and articles that have led up to an event. This is a man who isn’t just going hard on UFC Fight Pass; he’s investigating as much as possible, third-party technical breakdowns included. In turn, he almost always has a well-reasoned, thoughtful opinion about fights and their combatants and is able to relay both the technical components and sporting drama of MMA better than just about anyone. Don’t you want an environment where the voices of your company can rely on that kind of material and discourse? In fact, in an environment where Kenny Florian just became embroiled in scandal due to plagiarizing a Willie Pep video by boxing scribe Lee Wylie -- he specializes in hijacked video-laden, technical breakdowns -- isn’t this the kind of content you clearly need in your company at certain times?
I’m usually one of the first people to push back against the emphasis of “martial arts” in “mixed martial arts,” allowing the sport’s essence to be clouded by stereotypical budo-type hokum. However, the fact is, there is a near-infinite amount of technique, both subtle and grandiose, that goes into making MMA as immersive and intense of a combat sport as there is in existence. There’s a reason so many corny martial arts quotes are about “knowledge.” Martial arts by nature are interactional, and whether you’re a fan, a fighter or a pundit, your passion for the game often requires the seeking of knowledge. MMA is a sport that constantly cries out for it -- “What the hell is going to happen?” or “How the hell did that happen?” -- and third-party content that satisfies doesn’t bust the UFC’s product; it buttresses the UFC’s product.
MMA is not unique in this way. John Madden always said that he was most proud of the EA Sports video game series that bears his name, not because of its success in the marketplace but because of its success as a teaching tool about football. The UFC might be well within its legal right to flex on BJJ Scout and similar channels, but what educates MMA’s participants educates its product by extent. A Cruz-Dillashaw rematch may never sell 500,000 units for Zuffa, but the company is still better off with the MMA community debating -- with Zuffa-owned fight material as evidence -- its technical merits and intricacies, if the fight is ever to find resonance with a larger public. The UFC is better off with some fan-made video explaining how Thompson could kick Hendricks in the head to promote its fight, and should that come to pass, the company is better off with a video using minutes of fight footage to explain how he did it. It offers a deeper, more profound understanding and connection to the fight itself and maybe the UFC and MMA on the whole.
Worries that the UFC’s business would be cannibalized by these sorts of videos seem woefully misplaced. With plenty of watered-down MMA products flooding cable TV outlets, it’s a reminder that live sports remains the most powerful tool broadcasters have in assuring advertising revenues; sports are one of the few things people will still watch live and suffer through commercials. Are stick-and-ball sports suffering by “SportsCenter” showing the outcomes of their products and breaking them down in technical detail? Certainly not. The UFC may ask people to shell out 60 bucks for some of its events, but at the same time, Zuffa is delighted when those fights get “spoiled” via the ESPN treatment; it’s a desperate appeal to authority, which also smacks the face of its real diehard constituents.
This sort of distinction comes down to nothing but the UFC itself. If the promotion can have someone, in addition to automated crawlers, going through YouTube to flag potential copyright violations, it can certainly have someone who can identify content that with a positive promotional influence. It’s a brave new technological world, and if the UFC can’t co-opt and hire them outright, it’s still in the company’s best interest to make these sorts of concessions to the select folks on the grassroots level and let them do Zuffa’s subtle, promotional bidding at the most micro level.
I appreciate the slippery slope, especially as it relates to intellectual property, which must be enforced to maintain relevance. It’s a legitimate question to ask if you’re the UFC: “At what point does a post-fight technical breakdown become just fight highlights?” At the same time, the company needs to appreciate that MMA has always relied on this sharing of ideas and this DIY fan sensibility. Fighting it, even if legally righteous, might undermine both the hype of its own product and incur wrath from a passionate part of its fanbase, folks that would never be swayed by Dana White and Joe Rogan’s screaming proclamations anyhow.
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