Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the Las Vegas-based mixed martial arts organization, has partnered with IMG Arena to launch the UFC Event Center, providing bettors with a host of new options for live betting during fights. This marks the first in-game wagering for UFC as well as the first sports betting product created specifically for a major sports brand.
The partnership is set to launch in the first quarter of 2020.
The UFC Event Center will immerse fans in unique and official content every second of every round. A wealth of live, time-stamped data points will open a huge range of new betting opportunities, including reversals, knockdowns, submissions, takedown attempts, and takedowns landed.
Among the highlights of the agreement:
- Live in-round betting for every UFC event globally
- Official data delivery in less than two seconds
- Immediate bet settlement
- Live betting data points such as knock downs; submissions; takedown attempts; takedowns landed, all to provide new betting options
- Live statistics
- More than 50 betting opportunities, including 20 new wagers updated in real time
The partnership also provides fighter information and rankings, weight class, division, along with 3D visualizations.
“The UFC Event Center and its official data feed will be a game changer for how UFC fans engage with our events through sportsbooks and gaming operators,” said UFC President Dana White in a news release. “We have the most passionate, die-hard fans of any sport, and they’re going to love the option to place bets live during a fight. Betting operators are also going to love this product because, unlike other sports, UFC has no off season. The action will be non-stop for fans and sportsbook operators.”
Freddie Longe, executive vice president and managing director of London-based IMG Arena said: “The UFC brand is extremely powerful and already resonates strongly with the key demographics of global sports betting consumers. Through this partnership, we have been able to develop official products that will help unlock significant value for both UFC and our global sports betting partners.”
Official data from UFC will be available to sportsbooks for a licensing fee and a share of gross gaming yield for data access.
“In-game betting is the fastest-growing part of the sports-gaming industry,” Lawrence Epstein, UFC’s chief operating officer, told Bloomberg. “Some of the stuff we’re doing is stuff that hasn’t been done with respect to UFC in the past.”
Prior to this deal, 92 percent of UFC betting occurred before the fight, with bets such as which fighter will win, total rounds for the fight and the method of victory. New potential wagering options will include odds on number of takedown attempts, total strikes landed, if a fighter is knocked down and the amount of time a fighter spends on the mat, among others.
Though almost every U.S. sports entity is trying to capitalize on gambling, UFC’s approach is different from its peers. Leagues like the NBA, NHL and MLB have crafted deals with data companies to create betting products, and separate marketing deals with sportsbooks to license their logos. UFC has chosen to do it all in one package, according to Bloomberg.
IMG Arena acts as a middleman between sports organizations and betting operators. Its traditional sports partners include tennis’s ATP World Tour and golf’s PGA Tour, and it works with more than 300 operators around the world.
Epstein told Bloomberg he’s witnessed first-hand how gambling availability drives interest. “It’s fun to go to a Vegas sportsbook at 11 o’clock at night and watch everybody go crazy over the University of Hawaii game, which no one would care about but for the fact that it’s the only college-football game left,” he said.
