Here’s the Sunday morning Google trends and–surprise, surprise–we learn that boxing and MMA can co-exist. If we have to pick a winner judging from the top ten its a decision for Mayweather/Marquez. The return of ‘Money’ Mayweather to the ring gets the top spot–specifically the term ‘Mayweather vs Marquez play by play’. The UFC shows up in 7th place with ‘Rich Franklin vs Vitor Belfort fight video’, but boxing gets another term in the top ten with ‘Shane Mosley’. Mosley challenged Mayweather in the ring after his dominating unanimous decision victory.
Here’s the breakdown of UFC 103 and Mayweather/Marquez terms in the top 100 Google trends as of 7:00 AM Pacific Time
1) Mayweather vs Marquez play by play 10) Shane Mosley 14) Shane Mosley calls out Mayweather 38) Who won the Mayweather Marquez fight 51) Floyd Mayweather 54) Floyd Mayweather vs Juan Manuel Marquez video 60) Mayweather vs. Marquez live stream free 69) Manny Pacquiao 71) Miguel Cotto 84) Mayweather Pacquiao 92) Max Kellerman 94) Mayweather wins 96) boxing 97) Boxing fight tonight 99) Pelea de Marquez vs. Mayweather gratis
7) Rich Franklin vs. Vitor Belfort Fight video 25) UFC 103 results 46) UFC 103 live stream free 62) Cro Cop vs Dos Santos video 73) UFC 103 fight videos 80) UFC resluts from last night 83) Tomasz Drwal
Pretty impressive showing for Mayweather/Marquez in terms of online ‘buzz’ and a rather muted showing for UFC 103. Making the Mayweather/Marquez results more impressive is that there were more ‘big names’ on the UFC 103 undercard but, oddly, Tomasz Drwal is the only one that shows up in the Google Trends. In addition to a number of permutations on Mayweather/Marquez (including a search term for free streams in Spanish) the results include ‘boxing’, ‘boxing tonight’ as well as an announcer (Max Kellerman) a couple of guys who didn’t even fight last night (Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto) and even a few terms related to Shane Mosley.
It’ll be interesting to see some PPV buyrate projections, but there was significantly more interest in the Mayweather fight among ‘casual sports fans’. Whether or not this will translate into PPV buys remains to be seen. My hunch is both events will do decent numbers, indicating that there’s good support for boxing and MMA. Best case scenario, however, is for MMA to try and get boxing fans interested in their sport and vice versa.
As far as we’re concerned, we had our best round by round turnout ever though this was likely a function of some improved SEO efforts than a huge groundswell of interest in UFC 103. In any case, we’re definitely happy about it and want to thank everyone who joined us for the round by round. I read an interesting figure somewhere last week–it may have been the Wall Street Journal–that reported that a recent Nielsen survey indicated that nearly 50% of TV viewers access the Internet on their laptop simultaneously. We used to say jokingly that the best way to enjoy the UFC was to turn down the volume and follow our round by round, but apparently that’s not a far fetched vision. More likely, people use the Internet to suppliment what they get from the TV audio and we’re happy to provide a running commentary on MMA events along with the broadcast team.
