Dana White Announces UFC And Meta Partnership

Dana White has confirmed that the UFC and Meta will work together in a new partnership. 

It is a major move for the UFC after White recently joined Meta’s Board of Directors. Mark Zuckerberg is known for being a massive UFC fan. He also trains in MMA, having competed in some tournaments. That led to the recent talk of a super fight with Elon Musk, something which White was keen on promoting. Dana claimed the fight could break PPV records. Despite the hype, it never got made.

However, Zuckerberg’s respect for White led to a partnership. Mark praised White’s ability to improve brands, something which has made the UFC the global MMA brand. The partnership hopes to “leverage its leading technologies to deliver unprecedented engagement with hundreds of millions of UFC fans.” The CEO of the UFC addressed the news, saying he hopes he can change the current UFC ranking system in the hope of giving fans the best fights. 

Reaction

“I’ve had a lot of great partners over the years that have helped us grow this sport, but Mark and his team at Meta are going to do things that will blow away UFC fans. Meta has the greatest minds in tech and they are going to take fan engagement to the next level. We’ve already started to work on some innovations with Meta around a new fighter rankings system that I’ll be sharing soon. The next few years will be an absolute game changer for fans of this sport.

“I could go on and on and on [about the UFC rankings] but I won’t. We literally had meetings this week to work on it. I actually talked to Mark Zuckerberg, too, about AI, so yeah. I’m totally going to fix the rankings. We’re going to make a lot of strong moves here coming into 2025,” White

“I love this sport and I’m looking forward to working with the UFC to let fans experience it in new ways,” Zuckerberg 

Implications

White remained coy on the exact steps, but it raises questions over how the move can help the sport. There is a chance that AI is incorporated in the sport with scoring. Boxing tried this for the first time in the Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk rematch. The judges gave Usyk the win via a unanimous decision, although AI had it far wider on the scorecards.

If implemented correctly, the scoring system could increase transparency, reducing the number of controversial decisions. It also could allow fans to stay up to date during the fight and increase the use of statistics to decide winners. 

There is also the added benefit of improving fighters. Data could be used to improve training regiments and game plans. That would lead to higher-quality fights, giving fighters more of an even playing field to pull off an upset. The same concept could be used during a fight to change any plans if the corner spots something during the fight. MMA fans were looking forward to the potential.