| The sport of mixed martial arts (MMA) has benefitted in recent years from promoters who have positioned their sport as a competitive player among the well-established sport entertainment entities such as professional boxing and wrestling (Purcell, 2007). Although there are numerous MMA promotional companies in business today, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) continues to be the sport's premier league (Gregory & Osborne, 2009). With significant revenue streams through pay-per-view shows, event gate receipts, and various merchandising and product-licensing agreements, the UFC franchise is reported to be worth well over a billion dollars (Miller, 2008). Despite the overwhelming growth, rampant fan attraction, and financial success of the UFC, little research has been conducted related to this sport organization in particular and the sport of MMA in general (Andrew, Kim, O'Neal, Greenwell, & James, 2009; Kim, Greenwell, Andrew, Lee, & Mahony, 2008; Lim, Martin, & Kwan, 2010). Currently, there is no research that examines the coverage given to this sport and organization, respectively. One way to examine media coverage is through the print media content analytic method (Grau, Roselli, & Taylor, 2007).;Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the coverage devoted to the sport of MMA and its most recognizable promotional company (i.e., UFC) in a popular sport publication (i.e., ESPN The Magazine). This study—which employed a content analysis methodology—examined the quantity and prominence of various media components of the coverage devoted to MMA and the UFC fighters, promoters, fans, and stakeholders. Agenda-setting and hegemonic theoretical frameworks were used to guide this investigation of the magazine's first 13 years (i.e., 1998–2010). In addition to benchmarking the coverage given to an emerging sport, the current examination explored whether or not an agenda is being set by a popular magazine's cover of MMA compared to two sport properties (i.e., X Games and National Football League [NFL]) that have a preexisting contractual relationship with the magazine's parent organization, the Walt Disney Company.;Intercoder reliability was established for the article and photographic coding with agreements ranging from .815 to 1.0 according to Scott's Pi. Frequencies, Chi-square, and ANOVA tests afforded insight into the magazine's coverage over the 13-year investigation. From the 339 issues examined, there were a total of 992 feature stories and 6564 photographs included in the scholarly investigation. The findings revealed that MMA's written coverage accounted for 17 (1.7%) articles, while the X Games and the NFL comprised 124 (12.5%) and 845 (85.2%) articles, respectively. In terms of pictorial coverage, there were 100 (1.5%) photographs for MMA, 969 (14.8%) for the X Games, and 5420 (82.6%) for the NFL. There was no difference (ηp 2= .00, F(3, 987) = 1.06, p = .364) in the total number of photos per article across MMA, the X Games, and the NFL. Other findings involved article and photographic prominence, gender focus (e.g., 94.2% of the photographs featured male athletes and 93.4% of the articles were focused on males, but there were seven articles devoted to female participants in the X Games), article length and photographic size (e.g., a difference between league [(χ2(6) = 49.52, p < .001)]), accompanied photographic coverage (e.g., there was no statistical difference between the leagues in terms of pictorial enhancement of articles [ηp2= .00, F(3, 987) = 1.06, p = .364]), cover pages, league acronyms (e.g., a statistical difference across the sport categories and the sport words and acronyms on the cover page [χ2(12) = 241.85, p < .001]), photographic type (e.g., 41.8% of the photographs were action shots, 88.4% of the MMA photographs were non-violent in nature and there was a statistical difference between the leagues in terms of non-violent photographic content [χ2(3) = 139.22, p < .001]), coverage of sport organizations (e.g., 88.2% of the MMA articles and 89% of the MMA photographs were devoted to the UFC), and emphasis of coverage (e.g., 64.7% of the MMA articles were focused on individual athletes). Overall, although MMA received far less coverage on the pages of the prominent sport publication over the 13-year investigation, the results determined that there were instances where the magazine did not extend more favorable coverage to the sports under contract with the Walt Disney Company as suggested in previous research (Clavio & Pedersen, 2007). |
