PFL

Home » PFL

Case Study:
Professional Fighters League

Delivering Knockout Results

Explore how Acronym partnered with PFL, an international MMA (mixed martial arts) leader, to boost their visibility and grow fan engagement. Learn about our strategic approach that propelled ticket sales, expanded their reach, and enhanced their brand image through effective omnichannel marketing campaigns.

In partnership with Acronym’s expertise through full-funnel, omnichannel tactics, PFL met their tune-in and ticket sales goals while growing awareness and their fan base year over year. The strong collaboration between agency and client teams has had a significant positive impact on the gains won.

537

IN IMPRESSIONS DELIVERED CROSS-TACTIC

844

INCREASE TO SHARE OF VOICE IN THE MMA CATEGORY

444

INCREASE TO VISITS TO SITE

43

INCREASE TO SOCIAL FOLLOWERS

01 The Story

Professional Fighters League (PFL) is a global powerhouse in MMA and the only organization with a sports-season format, where individual fighters compete in a regular season, playoffs, and championship each year.

PFL has five live fight franchises, offering year-round content: PFL League Season, PFL PPV Super Fights, PFL Challenger Series, PFL International Leagues, and Bellator. The company leads in technology and innovation with its proprietary PFL SmartCage, powering fight analytics, real-time betting, AI scoring, and a next-generation viewing experience.

PFL is primetime on ESPN/ESPN+ in the U.S. and is broadcast and streamed in 150 countries with 20 premium media distribution partners.

02 The Challenge

PFL is the fastest-growing sports league worldwide. However, despite their innovative approach and growing popularity, PFL faced the significant challenge of effectively promoting their events across various digital platforms. They sought expert strategy and execution capabilities in order to launch an omnichannel campaign that could increase their visibility, engage fans, and ultimately drive growth.

Their goals were to:

• Expand awareness of the PFL league and individual fighters
• Drive event ticket sales
• Increase event watchers
• Expand fan engagement and newsletter subscribers

03 The Solution

Acronym stepped into the ring and developed a comprehensive marketing strategy tailored to meet PFL's unique needs. We proposed omnichannel, full-stack campaigns to drive awareness and grow their fan base alongside meeting ticket sales and viewership goals.

To activate and deploy tactics, Acronym supports a seasonal strategy that varies by fight schedule and franchise. To meet the campaign goals, we launch full-scale campaigns across many channels, including email, X, Meta, TikTok, podcasts, programmatic and direct site buys, OLV/CTV, OTT, OOH, e-com efforts for merchandise, Google, Reddit AMAs, and contests designed to drive user-generated content and buzz. Continual optimization is applied, considering both prospecting and retargeting tactics aligned to PFL’s goals.

Acronym also supports cobranded digital campaigns with sponsors such as CELSIUS energy drinks and Bose.

Given the high engagement of fans and prior results, Acronym is further involved in assisting PFL with influencer marketing via comprehensive programs that cover influencer selection, organic media consultation and content strategy, and media flight scheduling across all social channels (Meta, X, TikTok, Reddit). Additional support involves boosted posts by Alex Rodrequez, Jeremy Piven, Flavor Flav, and Wiz Kalifa. Additionally, Acronym runs and reports on real-time social sentiment tracking of each fighter to map the impact of lead-up content, during fights, and post-event social insights.

Due to our familiarity and partnership with the client, Acronym can rapidly deploy tactical approaches that show immediate lift, including extending the embedded and promoted video watch by 3X, and by optimization and use of deliberate editing to increase audience engagement.