Executive Q&A: Fight industry exec does grunt work, too

The core of Flipps Media is being a technology company first.

But through a new niche app, it is becoming a large player in the fighting industry.

Flipps launched FITE TV, a phone app revolved around all things fighting — MMA, boxing, wrestling, Jiu Jitsu, sumo wrestling, arm wrestling, etc. — in February. As of the end of April, the app had 75,000 downloads. Michael Weber, senior vice president of marketing for FITE TV, wants to see that number surpass one million downloads by the end of 2016. While Flipps is based in San Mateo, Calif., Weber works out of Tampa.

FITE TV was designed with simplicity in mind. A user logs into the app, purchases the event he or she is interested in and it live streams directly to their TV.

Weber has worked on the marketing side of the fight and live event industry for 30 years. He started as an intern for WrestleMania 2. He has seen the industry evolve, and thinks FITE TV is primed for a large audience. “If it was only MMA or only wrestling or boxing, it would be alright,” he says. “But having them all together makes it work and they build exposure off of each other.”

Weber sat down with the Business Observer to share some of his marketing knowledge. Here are edited excerpts of the interview:

What is your day-to-day role?
My responsibility and my background is all marketing, so I work with all the individual promoters, make sure I get their market materials, and then I direct my staff on how we're going to list them and position them. I've got a sharp staff. One person focuses on social media. One person makes sure all the events are up to speed and up to date with the right pricing and adding events. We can add an event within 24-hour notice. I've got another woman who does nothing but concentrate on user-acquisition, meaning Facebook campaigns and Twitter campaigns to target geographic and demographics. We're a worldwide entity. The United States is number one, but the U.K., Brazil, Germany and Spain are two through five in our exposure, so we always keep that in mind.

What's the key difference between FITE TV and your previous jobs?
This is the first time I've worked with a truly international company. Most of our engineering is out of Bulgaria, and they're seven hours ahead of us. So when I wake up, I'm getting emails from them. And the same works the other way when they wake up. Plus, our CEO is based out of San Mateo, so I communicate with him on his time schedule as well. I have all the clocks on the wall in my office. It's a 12-13 hour day, but there are always cool things going on, so I want to respond to people.

What types of tools do you find most successful in marketing?
Well we use a PR agency, so we do a lot of communication involving blogs, podcasts, and writers. And let's face it, today 90% of that is on the Internet. But that works, because we're an app.
We also have a spokesperson named Jim Ross. He's been in the wrestling industry for 40 years and he's got a super loyal following. He has a podcast that gets about three quarters of a million downloads a week, and he has about 1.4 million followers on Twitter. So he's a very good influencer for a program like us. We use him as a conduit to speak for our event.
We've gotten more creative. We did a boxing event offered live from Poland and we offered it in English and Polish. We're able to offer events in multiple languages and gear our campaigns for multiple audiences. For that, we bought spots on Polish only language apps. And it worked.

How do you incorporate digital media?
As you can guess, I pre-date the Internet, and there are so many tools now that are better than radio spots. I can tell you how many people clicked on the banner, how many went to the site from there and how many ordered it. I can't get any better analytics than that. And we can do testing with tag lines and stay with the one that does better. You can make changes to your messaging mid-stride, unlike back in the day.
For our visual medium, the promoters supply spots and highlights. We'll do interviews with event spokespeople and add video to that. It really helps explain the event and the different forms of fighting. We also work with competitors to have them post videos previewing the event. Then we can push that through our social media, the competitor's social media and Jim Ross' social media. They're short form and people want to see videos like that. We do videos with Snapchat and periscope, too.

What are the keys to a successful marketing campaign?
Well the bottom line is how many people buy the show. But we're trying to build and improve our relationships. We've done over 60 live events in the last four months. Doing live events is not easy — we either get a direct Internet feed or get the stream via satellite. Bigger events generally use satellite. Then we have to make sure the stream comes to us and make sure there is bandwidth in the building. You've got to make sure the event starts on time. It's a lot of communication, and that's why I'm involved.

What is the key piece of advice you'd give to someone coming up in marketing?
Relationship, relationship, relationship. That's the business. Now in the latter part of my career, it's really hit home. I'm doing business with people I knew 15, 20, 25 years ago. One reason we got Jim Ross as a spokesperson is because I worked with him 25 years ago. And I've known his agent for 30 years. That type of thing happens often.
I remember the first time we live streamed the audio of a wrestling pay per view event in the mid-90s. We hit capacity, which was 200 people. Ironically, the company we used the technology from was a company called Broadcast.com, which was owned by Mark Cuban. It all comes around. We're actually now working with AccessTV, which is owned by Mark Cuban, and we might be able to get him more involved with what we're doing.
And you have to be willing to roll your sleeves up to do the work. For WrestleMania 32, I spent 3 hours outside of AT&T stadium passing out fliers. You can't be above doing anything.

How do you stand out in a competitive market like the fighting industry?
Technology. Nobody else has the capability of what we do. There are other apps and plenty of websites, but I don't think anybody does live events better than us. And nobody has an app right now where you can put it on to a television with such ease. We have three patents in it, four years and millions of dollars behind the technology.

What are your goals moving forward?
I'd like to see us approach a million (app downloads) by the end of the year. In my experience, if you're working with a successful product, it'll snowball. So with our product, I think it's doable.