UFC Beating Competition In Social Media

MMA Mania made mention of this story yesterday, and well, it looks like the NFL isn't the king of all things sports after all. When it comes to Facebook, only the NBA (3.1 million) tops the UFC in fans.  Boasting an impressive 2,269,450 fans, the UFC is crushing the competition to determine whose admirers have more free time on their hands.  

per the Chicago Sun-Times- 

Sports entity Facebook followers
NBA                           3,180,826
UFC                           2,269,450
2010 Olympics          1,209,379
WWE                            757,845
NASCAR                       702,701
NHL                              574,112
NFL                               508,906
WNBA                           283,779

Major League Baseball came in at an inauspicious 14 place with just 105,495 Facebook fans.  Now, I know that these high numbers don't necessarily translate to a better bottom line for the UFC, but it's pretty apparent that their aggressive social media campaign is working.  Dana White even makes his fighters go through a 'social media boot camp.'  More from Mashable-

"In order to bring his organization up to speed, White hired PR firm Digital Royalty to teach the fighters how to properly use social media. He gave the fighters a simple instruction: "I want you to Twitter your asses off," recalled Amy Martin, Digital Royalty's founder and CEO. Digital Royalty ran a one-on-one boot camp with the fighters, churning out 200 new media mavens over the course of three days. After the boot camp, fighter education is still an ongoing effort. "We're constantly doing one-on-ones with them," Martin said. "They also have my personal email address and mobile phone number."