UFC.COM fasting growing website...

Report: UFC.com Fastest-Growing Web Site In Professional Sports
Posted by UFC Junkie on April 25, 2007 at 4:58 pm ET

UFC.comThe UFC is the sixth most-popular sports organization on the Web -- based on its traffic, anyway.

Additionally, UFC.com is the fastest-growing Web site of any professional sport, according to Complete.com, a company that tracks Web clicks from more than two million users to gauge the popularity of various sites.

According to the report, the UFC's official Web site ranks only behind MLB.com, NFL.com, NASCAR.com, NBA.com and NHL.com in overall popularity. And UFC.com actually draws more visitors than organizations' sites such as PGA.com, MLS.com, PBA.com and ATP.com (which are the sites for professional golf, soccer, bowling and tennis).

While that total traffic is impressive, consider the UFC's growth in popularity in the past 12 months. UFC.com (+106%) was one of only four of the organizations whose sites increased in traffic; NHL.com (+35%), PBA.com (+22%) and MLS.com (+10%) were the others. The remaining six sites had negative growth over the past year.

As Greg Saks, the report's author, stated:

The sport's detractors have called the UFC a flash in the pan, but the growth in consumer interest doesn't show any sign of slowing. As of this writing, the UFC is the fastest growing sport in America, with a 106% year over year increase in online interest. The NHL, rebounding nicely from a holdout-canceled 2004-2005 season, was a distant second with 35% growth.

It's worth noting that the report only looks at the sports' official Web sites and doesn't include traffic to specific teams' Web sites (or in the case of the UFC, fighters' official sites). It also doesn't include third-party Web sites that cover the sports, such as BaseballAmerica.com, NFL on Yahoo! Sports, or UFCjunkie.com, for example.

For the full report (which is an interesting read), head over to Complete.com.