Drive to Survive Followed in the UFC's Footsteps

Since the massive success of Drive to Survive, the Netflix dou-series which details behind the scene drama from the Formula 1 season, a flood of similar sports-meets-reality programming has spun up.

Both Break Point and Full Swing debuted earlier this year, similar vehicles designed to do for tennis and golf respectively what Drive to Survive did for F1.

But Drive to Survive wasn’t necessarily the pioneering content marketing campaign that one may think. The show followed in the footsteps of the UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter (TUF), which debuted in 2005 & took a niche sport & unlocked new channels of connections to existing fans while offering an entry point to new audiences.

TUF brought together a group of up-and-coming fighters who lived and trained together in a house while competing for a UFC contract. Viewers were given a chance to get to know the fighters on a personal level and understand their motivations for pursuing a career in MMA — emotional ties which translated into ratings.

In just a few years, viewership quadrupled, with UFC slowly but surely becoming a mainstream sport.

This shouldn’t sound so foreign.

Drive to Survive (and the previously mentioned shows bearing obvious similarities) employ the same tactics.

• Bring a niche sport to a wide audience.

• Play up the human side of the athletes’ stories

• Forge the connection from the reality show to the sport itself

Time will tell if golf or tennis enjoy similar boosts to F1, but one thing remains clear: The Drive to Survive marketing strategy is not new.