SBJ Marketing: QuikTrip lands on UFC mat

Terry Lefton is on the mend, so his colleagues Adam Stern and Alex Silverman are taking the helm of SBJ Marketing tonight, bringing some news from UFC, F1 and the 4 Nations Face-Off.

At this past Saturday’s UFC Fight Night card in Las Vegas, Monster Energy was able to show off a new asset it negotiated in its renewed league deal that will get its convenience store partners even better exposure, reports SBJ’s Adam Stern.

The California-based energy drink company announced last week that it renewed with UFC for five more years with an option for a sixth, with UFC now saying this represents the biggest deal in value in its history, eclipsing A-B InBev in that claim.

As part of the renewed term, UFC suggested that Monster would have additional pass-through rights that it didn’t have in the last cycle, but it didn’t get specific. However, one of the ways was revealed at the event at UFC’s Apex venue when Tulsa-based convenience store QuikTrip had its logo in the center of the Octagon mat, below the Monster can image.

Previously, C-stores like QuikTrip only got pass-through branding on the vertical bumpers that line the edge of the Octagon. Other C-Stores that have been involved in Monster’s UFC pass-through program before include Circle K and the West Coast-based am/pm.

The new asset shows how UFC’s sales group continues to try to find fresh ways to get sponsors to stay involved with the property and renew their contracts at higher rates. For this renewal, UFC President and CEO Dana White, TKO Group Exec VP and head of partnerships Grant Norris-Jones, Monster Energy Chair and co-CEO Rodney Sacks and SVP/Sports Marketing Mitch Covington helped complete negotiations.

Monster has been UFC’s official energy drink since 2015 and represents the property’s second-most tenured sponsor after Toyo Tire.

The NHL has been experimenting with longer commercial breaks and shorter intermissions during the 4 Nations Face-Off, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman. The seven-game international competition concludes tomorrow with a U.S.-Canada final on ESPN.

Instead of 90-second TV timeouts during the regular season, the NHL and its TV partners are allotting two minutes for each ad break during 4 Nations games. To make up that time, intermissions have been shortened from 18 minutes to 17 minutes.

Ad inventory during a period is worth more than between periods, so it’s easy to understand why the league and its media partners would like the trade-off.

Playfly Sports Head of Research Gregg Liebman, whose company sells ad inventory on local NHL telecasts, said, “The intermissions are opportunities for audiences to leave, and we’ve seen that impact viewing at different levels. To keep that break as short as possible will retain more viewers, and having longer commercial breaks, that’s the most valuable inventory.”

The NHL declined to comment on if or when it would implement the change in the length of ad breaks for regular-season games.

Ferrari’s F1 team has been heavily promoting its new superstar driver Lewis Hamilton ever since the start of the year, and that’s led to record social media figures for the team and a shot to the arm of the Italian luxury brand, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.

One of the only seven-time champions in F1 history, Hamilton this year switches from Mercedes-Benz’s factory team to that of Ferrari’s, in a dramatic change that the property is counting on to help drive interest in the 2025 campaign. When the calendar changed to 2025, the Scuderia Ferrari brand team started deploying specific social media content that teased the arrival of Hamilton with the sort of classy touch one would expect from a supercar maker.

The videos were shot with cinematic quality and often included only natural sound without anyone speaking. For example, on the day Hamilton visited Ferrari’s HQ for the first time on Jan. 20, the team posted a video that simply said, “Thanks for waiting,” and showed Hamilton walking by a sign at the Maranello, Italy, HQ welcoming him. The post on X got 13,000 retweets and 80,000 likes.

Another post on Jan. 15 included elevator music and said, “The Scuderia Furrari family is growing,” as a hand is seen laying down a dog bowl to signify the team welcoming Hamilton’s famous dog, Roscoe. That post had 4,000 retweets and 29,000 likes on X.

Pedro Cebrian, head of content and social media for Scuderia Ferrari, wrote on his LinkedIn page that the team “broke our social media records” with the campaign around Hamilton’s arrival, “but best of all we did it as a team and had lots of fun.” Data from Endeavor Analytics generated for SBJ backs up the notion that the team broke records with the Hamilton programming.

In the 10 days starting Jan. 20, the team’s social channels saw a 379% increase in impressions and 279% increase in engagements per post compared to last year’s averages, according to Blinkfire data scraping Instagram, X, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok cited by Endeavor Analytics.

Moreover, citing Infegy data, Endeavor Analytics said that in the 10 days starting Jan. 20, Ferrari’s team was mentioned in 1.2 million posts on social media, an increase of 7% versus the average for an entire given month in 2024 and more than seven full months’ worth last year.

• The Portland Thorns signed the most lucrative front-of-kit sponsorship deal in NWSL history with Amazon-owned smart home security company Ring, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• Silverman also reports Coca-Cola plans to use its top soccer marketing assets, including deals with MLS and U.S. Soccer, to promote Powerade with the hope of attracting younger consumers to the 37-year-old sports drink brand.
• Fanatics is calling the resulting hot-market licensed merchandise sales after the Eagles’ Super Bowl win its top-selling NFL championship ever, notes SBJ’s Terry Lefton.
• The PGA Tour added ONEflight as co-title sponsor of its event in Myrtle Beach, S.C., reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.