The WWE hosts popular shows every week, with Monday Night RAW claiming 3.4 million viewers as the most popular cable show of the night as recently as August 14, 2017, and WWE SmackDown getting 2.53 million viewers on August 15, 2017 – also the top ranking show of the night (Tuesday), among cable programs – as well as many headline pay-per-view events throughout the year. The Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather fight is, hopefully, a one-off event, so will naturally draw a lot of popularity for the uniqueness of the fight. Nevertheless, methods used by the WWE and the McGregor vs. Mayweather fight are very similar, but the outcome will be very different.
Can Any Wrestling Events Rival the Expected Figures of Mayweather vs. McGregor?
The night is creeping ever closer; the night which will see mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor take on retired boxer Floyd Mayweather in a licensed boxing match. From it starting off as a potential fight discussed in bars, it has become one of the most hyped-up sporting events of all time. One company that knows all about promoting their events and has garnered a gigantic following is the WWE: from Tuesday night SmackDown to WrestleMania, the WWE knows how to hold intrigue among their fans.
The WWE hosts popular shows every week, with Monday Night RAW claiming 3.4 million viewers as the most popular cable show of the night as recently as August 14, 2017, and WWE SmackDown getting 2.53 million viewers on August 15, 2017 – also the top ranking show of the night (Tuesday), among cable programs – as well as many headline pay-per-view events throughout the year. The Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather fight is, hopefully, a one-off event, so will naturally draw a lot of popularity for the uniqueness of the fight. Nevertheless, methods used by the WWE and the McGregor vs. Mayweather fight are very similar, but the outcome will be very different.
Top-notch social media strategies
Because the McGregor vs. Mayweather fight doesn't hold any real significance when it comes to either sport or the titles atop the professions, promotion and hype have been the most integral part of the event. This has been further reflected in the interactions of Conor McGregor's social media, particularly his Instagram. In a full analysis of the Irish fighter's social media account performed by Betway Insider, you can see his intent on winning over fans and showing that this will be a legitimate fight to him. As his career has developed, McGregor's posts have evolved from a fighting focus in 2013, to celebrities in 2015, to fashion in 2017. Since the fight was announced, 55 percent of McGregor's Instagram posts have been about fighting, which is the most since 2013, and 34 percent of the posts have been about his training, which is more than ever before. The uptick in these fighting posts both helps the promotion of the fight by keeping his fans enticed with the current occurrences and adds more realism to the event itself, proving that he's going all in. As you can see by a randomly selected training post, it garnered 528,103 likes, and Floyd Mayweather's training video has smashed in 6,559,473 views:
The WWE has events on all of the time and has a huge fan base to please, for which their social media strategy has proven to be supreme. As shown by Medium, the WWE has 6.4 million Twitter followers, 7.7 million Instagram followers, and 31.3 million likes on Facebook, but that's not even the full extent of it. The WWE wrestlers are essentially required to be on social media and use it as an extension of their character, from interacting with other wrestlers to promoting fights and replying to fans. As you can see, a single WWE event post concerning RAW on Facebook pulled in over 8,400,000 likes just seven hours after its posting on August 22, and there's superstar Roman Reigns' post, which racked up 3,600,000 likes and 955 retweets for responding on Twitter:
This is what really went down! I took what I thought was MY biscuit but @RonKillings def took that Apple Pie. 👀 #PieThiefKillings https://t.co/U3JJteWlhv— Roman Reigns (@WWERomanReigns) August 21, 2017
Both the WWE and those promoting the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight know how to give the fans what they want and keep interest at a high, but how do they fare when it comes to the audience and money generated.
The live event
The WWE's headline event WrestleMania is a gigantic event now, and the attendance numbers reflect that each and every year. WrestleMania 32 in 2016 was attended by a record-setting 101,763, and this year's WrestleMania 33 did well with 75,245 showing up. They're numbers for an event that happens annually and don't account for those sitting at home and tuning in. The Mayweather vs. McGregor fight, however, is struggling to sell. As reported by the Independent, promoters have slashed ticket prices for the T-Mobile Arena – which is only a 20,000 capacity venue – because as of August 18, tickets still hadn't sold out for the August 26 fight. Then again, tickets started off with a low-price of $2,500, which now sits at around $1,500.
This one off, incredibly hyped event labeled as 'the biggest fight of the year' is expected to surpass the $600 million generated from the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight in 2015, whereas the biggest revenue from a WWE event on-site was $17.3 million at WrestleMania 32 in 2016, per Benzinga. But, then again, the WWE hosts a huge array of pay-per-view fights and events, and do so throughout the year, every year. So there's no wonder why this fight is set to rake in more cash than any single wrestling event.
With the purpose behind almost every single event or fight night staged by the WWE as well as the building story lines around them, there's no way that the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight can even amount to half of the sporting significance of a major WWE event. However, through a similar use of social media promotion, the fight on August 26 is set to be a very, very lucrative one.
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