Ultimate Poker launches UFC poker tournament
'Belt the champ' is the first event held as part of Fertitta Interactive's social arm sponsoring the martial arts championship.
Fertitta Interactive’s gaming arm Ultimate Gaming is poised to launch its ‘Belt the Champ’ tournament, giving players the opportunity to win VIP tickets to an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in September.
It is a free-to-play tournament accessible through Ultimate Gaming’s Facebook app, launched by Fertitta Interactive last month after several months of preparation since the company’s acquisition of CyberArts in October 2011. The winner will travel to Las Vegas and will place the UFC Light Heavyweight belt on the victor of the Jon “Bones” Jones versus Dan Henderson championship fight.
The tournament signals the first of many expected tie-ins with the UFC, of which Ultimate Gaming is now the primary sponsor.
Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who co-founded the Ultimate Gaming brand with Tom Breitling and Tim Poster, also co-own Zuffa, which in turn owns the UFC.
Ultimate Gaming CEO Tobin Prior (pictured) told eGaming Review last month that UFC provides a “perfect demographic” to market its new poker product, citing the UFC’s 2.4m Twitter followers, 8m Facebook ‘likes’ and 311m Youtube visits, from a core demographic of 21-35 year old, sport-loving males, as a “unique competitive advantage” for marketing the gaming brand.
“We’re extremely thrilled to be the official poker partner of the UFC. We’re all fight fans and poker players and feel like there’s a huge overlap in those two worlds. It really feels like a perfect match,” said Prior.
It is the second time an egaming company has agreed a deal with a mixed martial arts organisation, after PKR became the official gaming partner of the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts (BAMMA) last year.
Fertitta Interactive is one of several companies to have applied for egaming licences in the state of Nevada, with Bally and IGT the only two approved to offer online poker in the Silver State.