Dana White thinks much more of UFC’s future is Power Slap and boxing

Mixed martial arts has seen an unprecedented rise in popularity in recent years as the UFC has taken off. And, according to UFC President and CEO Dana White, it might not be the last fighting sport to do so. 

“[Power Slap] could be just as big as the UFC,” White told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit on Thursday in New York City. 

“When you look at the numbers, we have like the most viewed YouTube short ever in sports on Power Slap, the most viewed ever in sports on TikTok, and the numbers are just astronomical on what we pull on this thing,” he said. “And it’s global. It’s already a global business.”

Power Slap, for those who may have missed the infamously-brutal viral clips, consists of two competitors standing over a table in the middle of a padded stage, dishing out full-force, open-palmed slaps to one another until one person cannot physically recover. The mix of fighting and shock entertainment has captivated viewer attention, and White’s bullishness surrounding its rising popularity isn’t just talk.

According to the social media analytics platform Socialpruf, Power Slap has racked up 1.88 billion impressions over the past year, with its posts garnering nearly 40 million likes and $48 million in earned media value. 

Many high-profile sponsors have capitalized on this wave of popularity, jumping at the chance to throw their names into the mix of flying flat-palms. Anheuser-Busch, Monster Energy, VeChain, Circa Sports, and 500 Casino are among the many brands that have bought into White’s vision for the sport to this point.  

“I thought sponsorship was going to be tough,” White noted. “[Power Slap] has more sponsors [in its first two years] than the UFC had in 10 years.”

Finding participants willing to take the beatdowns seen on a regular basis in the Power Slap world might seem harder than finding advertisers. In going about this odd sort of talent acquisition, White emphasized toughness, grit, and a high pain tolerance as weighty considerations. 

“There are tens to hundreds of thousands of people who wrestle all over the world every weekend. They’ll jump off a step ladder onto a table full of tacks for $50 a night,” he said. “These are the guys that I’m going after.”

What makes slap-boxing so successful? Two things, White says, that can be applied across any successful sport: “You need to have a great live event, and it needs to be good on television.”

But as Power Slap’s main viewership growth comes in the form of short-form videos posted onto social media rather than conventional live televised broadcasting, White gave particular emphasis to the latter factor.  

That is also how White intially caught a glimpse of the sport.

“In 2017 and 2018, this stuff starts popping up on my social media,” he said. “Everything that I do in the fight business is done by gut, and the fact that I would watch it and want to see who won, I said this is interesting.”

White said as he dove deeper into it, he saw how many views slap-boxing was getting, which he said were “equivalent to like a Justin Bieber video at that time” on YouTube.

That led him to pitch the Fertitta brothers, who had exited their stake in the UFC, on investing in the business, which was launched in 2022.

White is also leading an investment into the boxing business called Zuffa Boxing, which aims to apply the same centralized model that UFC has followed.

Holding its first event in January, White said that Zuffa Boxing is a better short term bet than Power Slap, due to the fact, White said, that “boxing has been broken for a long time.”

“We’ve been at it six months now, and it makes sense why it’s broken,” he said. “All these promoters that I’m competing with, they’re really bad at what they do … it’s a lot more unsophisticated than I expected.”

White said that the “boxing business has always been economically incredible,” with fights and cards can generate large sums of money. But he added, “Every time they put on a fight, it’s like a going-out-of-business sale,” he said.

Zuffa Boxing — as well as the other fighting properties White is leading — aims to put that money back in the hands of fighters.

“It just gets better and better,” White said of the economics for fighters. “First of all, these guys in Power Slap were slapping for free when I bought the companies. Now they get paid very well. As far as UFC fighters, the pay has gone up literally like this since we bought the business,” making a straight upwards movement with his hands.