A fight night of epic proportions, UFC 189 attracted more than 16,000 mixed martial arts (MMA) fans to the MGM Grand Arena in July, with countless fans also dialing into live coverage of the event on Pay Per View (PPV) and Fightpass.com. As featherweights McGregor and Mendez took to the ring in a colossal battle for the interim belt, UFC introduced its new brand image, marking the entity’s first redesign in 14 years. Imagined by Troika Design Group, the updated look made its debut in a dynamic new broadcast graphics package featuring colorful title cards, tale of the tape, fight card promos, full screen fighter bios and more. Built by the team at Reality Check Systems, the graphics package and underlying technological workflow that powers it provide UFC with a creative storytelling toolset for engaging fans in the fights.
Ahead of the event, our team devised a list of graphics templates for UFC’s production and creative teams to review, one that could be tapped at any given time during a match in-arena, on-air and online. Troika then hooked us up with some stellar design assets, and our team created each template and built a comprehensive workflow, made up of eight RCS Bullet mobile graphics workstations, to get the graphics on-air. Drawing on fighter, coach, referee and match data from UFC-provided spreadsheets, we wrote custom scripts for all eight Bullets to interface the data with the templates so that fans could enjoy them. Our team was also on site at the MGM Grand throughout the week to ensure testing and production ran smoothly.
The project was a true collaboration between Troika, RCS, FightMetric and the UFC production and creative groups, and the package will continue to air in UFC programming throughout the remainder of the season.