While Dana White’s Power Slap League never managed to find its legs on terrestrial television before getting yanked by TBS after one season, the product is reportedly the hottest property in sports on social media.
That’s according to White, who revealed the full extent of his extreme sports empire at UFC 288’s post-fight press conference (watch it here).
“Lorenzo [Fertitta] and I own [Power Slap],” White said. “We own a company called Throw One, we own Ridiculousness, we own SLS [Street League Skateboarding], we own Nitro Circus, and we own Travis Pastrana’s NRX Rallycar.”
White suggested there may be more promotional tie-ins with UFC and those other leagues if he “feels like it,” before sharing an extremely positive update on the performance of Power Slap online.
“The deal that I just cut for Slap is bigger than the UFC deal we cut with SpikeTV after the first season of The Ultimate Fighter,” White said. “I don’t give a s— what the media thinks about it. They don’t matter. It’s unbelievable. Not only is it unbelievable money-wise, it’s been unbelievable as far as social media goes.
“We’re number one in all of sports, and when I say all of sports — if you take the NBA, NHL, NFL, F-1, WWE, and who am I forgetting, and add them all together, their numbers don’t compare to Slap.”
When told that sounded a little doubtful, White replied, “You can doubt it all you want.”
“Most of you guys don’t understand social media and how it works,” he said. “I’ll give you the numbers on Slap that were done by a third party that does this, we didn’t pull the numbers. These guys are like the Nelson numbers for social media. We destroy everything in sports with Power Slap.”
We won’t opine much on White’s claims of Power Slap beating all other sports combined until we get those numbers and see exactly what metrics he’s referring to. Are more people engaging with Power Slap than all other sports leagues on the Internet? No, of course not. Are they on Rumble, the new YouTube alternative Power Slap recently signed with? In that case, we could see it getting more views than other sports, which are focused more on other platforms.
And if you’re only counting the metrics of official league sites to Power Slap’s on platforms like TikTok, you can make a case for White’s statement.
For example, the NBA’s official TikTok has nearly 20 million followers, but its videos rarely break one million plays (most sit around the 70,000 to 400,000 play mark). Power Slap only has 3.2 million followers, but several of its videos from the past week are sitting in the realm of 4 to 5 million plays. There’s several videos on Power Slap’s TikTok page that are over 50 million plays.
Those are impressive numbers.
How many of those were promoted videos getting a half-second of play before being swiped offscreen is a valid question. But, it’s not one that execs on either side are asking when hammering out lucrative business deals. They just see impressively-high numbers of Power Slap’s social media accounts.
Is the league generating attention? In some corners of the Internet, yes. And White doesn’t care if it’s “freak” show viewing that people laugh at.
“I just did a deal that’s bigger than the UFC did when they went on SpikeTV, I don’t give a s— who’s laughing,” White said. “You know who’s laughing? This guy [points to himself]. That’s who’s laughing.”
For complete UFC 288: “Sterling vs. Cejudo” results and play-by-play, click HERE.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
