Success of Mixed Martial Arts Video Topics on YouTube

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify if the YouTube viewership is related to a subject of mixed martial arts (MMA) videos. To do so passive and active viewership were featured, based on Checchinato, Disegna & Gazolla (2009) work. Content analysis was used as the method and the sample consisted of 200 most popular videos gathered from supreme canals belonging to MMA organizations. Over half of the videos were classified into previews and whole fights categories. The robust least square regression explained 27% of passive viewership, and whole fights were the predictor of highest passive attention. Just two categories were found significant as the predictors of active viewership in the logit regression. Whole fights generated more active response in contrary to previews. Pure sport-related videos were generally found to generate higher interest among YouTube MMA spectators.