[Rocketfan]

The Ultimate Fighting Championship landed its biggest corporate sponsor today with the announcement of Bud Light as the exclusive beer sponsor of both the UFC and its sister promotion, World Extreme Cagefighting.

“Landing Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light is huge for us, our fighters and especially our fans,” said UFC president Dana White. “We’ve got the No. 1 selling beer in the world and one of the top marketers in all of sports as our sponsor. If our TV ratings, pay-per-view buys and venue sellouts weren’t enough, this definitely cements UFC as a major player in sports business.

When White was on a CNBC special last year about mixed martial arts and being given credit for the success of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, it was noted that a major hurdle his company had yet to overcome was getting blue chip corporate sponsors.

White said the company was doing fine on its own and didn’t necessarily need anything like that.

“I knew at the time we were going to get this deal,” said White. “It takes so long to get these deals done.”

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=A ... &type=lgns

[Hold My Own]

This is their desperate response to the announcement that MMA will be on network TV (I think CBS)

[matshark]

HMO is correct.

The UFC was sponsored by Miller Light back when Randy fought Vitor in UFC 46. That obviously went well for them as the UFC then went back to being sponsored by Mickeys Fine Malt Beverages.

The announcement is in keeping with Dana White's penchant for two year old politics of trying to one up everyone. The fact is that Dana (UFC President) actually was in talks with HBO, CBS and NBC about putting the UFC on network tv several months ago, but those deals fell through because Dana refused to relinquish control over the commentators and the production of the event. It seems to me that things are not happy in the Ivory Tower that is Zuffa (the company that owns the UFC) over missing out on A. a network TV deal and B. being the first MMA company on network TV, and that hopefully a few heads will roll, namely Dana White's.

[AZjonz]

I’m slowly starting to like MMA as I understand the fighting strategy better – so the network TV addition is a great move as more people will be exposed to it.

I like the fact that the best fighters are going to fight each other sooner rather than later (as opposed to boxing).

[Rocketfan]

This is their desperate response to the announcement that MMA will be on network TV (I think CBS)

Getting a major sponsor as opposed to a Network TV deal would seem desperate, until you realize MMA only gets on CBS 4 times a year. It will be all but forgotten when only on air that many times.