Dana White sees Power Slap and boxing as UFC’s next growth lanes

Dana White is pitching investors, sponsors and fight fans on a broader future for UFC’s business: more Power Slap and a new push into boxing. For everyday investors watching the sports economy, the bet is straightforward: viral attention can turn into sponsorship dollars, and a more organized boxing structure could capture money that White says the sport already generates.

Speaking Thursday with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit in New York City, the UFC president and CEO said Power Slap “could be just as big as the UFC.” Power Slap is a combat format in which two competitors stand across a table and trade open-handed strikes until one cannot recover.

White pointed to short-form video as the engine behind the sport’s growth. He said Power Slap has produced the most-viewed sports YouTube Short and the most-viewed sports TikTok, adding that its audience is already international.

Socialpruf, a social media analytics platform, says Power Slap generated 1.88 billion impressions in the past year. Impressions are the number of times posts are shown to users. Socialpruf also says Power Slap posts drew nearly 40 million likes and produced $48 million in earned media value, a marketing estimate of what equivalent exposure might have cost through paid ads.

That online reach has helped bring in brands. CNBC identified Anheuser-Busch, Monster Energy, VeChain, Circa Sports and 500 Casino among the sponsors that have signed on. White said he expected sponsorship sales to be difficult, but Power Slap has attracted more sponsors in its first two years than UFC had after 10 years.

White said he first noticed slap fighting on social media in 2017 and 2018. He told the conference that his interest grew because he wanted to see the result, then looked more closely at the scale of the online audience. He later pitched the Fertitta brothers, who had sold their UFC stake, on investing in the business. Power Slap launched in 2022, according to CNBC.

White also described how he thinks about building the athlete pool. He said he is looking at people from wrestling and similar entertainment backgrounds who are used to physical risk and live performance. He said successful sports need two things: a strong in-person event and a product that works on television.

Boxing is the other growth track. White is leading an investment called Zuffa Boxing, which CNBC says is meant to apply UFC’s centralized model to boxing. A centralized model means one organization has more control over matchmaking, promotion and event structure, rather than separate promoters arranging fights case by case.

White said Zuffa Boxing plans to hold its first event in January. He also said boxing is the better short-term opportunity compared with Power Slap because, in his view, the sport has been poorly run for a long time. White told CNBC that rival boxing promoters are “really bad at what they do” and said the business is less sophisticated than he expected.

White said boxing can produce strong economics through individual fights and cards, but argued that the current structure does not build the business well over time. He also said his fight properties are meant to improve athlete pay, saying Power Slap competitors were unpaid before he bought the companies and now receive pay, while UFC fighter pay has risen since his group bought that business.

This story draws on original reporting from CNBC.