In the summer of 2021 UFC was looking for a complete rebrand across all platforms ahead of UFC 273 in Jacksonville. For six months the UFC creative services team worked with Troika to rebrand UFC as a mainstream sport focusing on athleticism, competition and star power. From guiding principles that drive the organization to a dynamic brand identity, the rebrand included everything from broadcast packaging to marketing and promotional toolkits. With the rebrand locked, UFC brought on RCS to build and implement the broadcast graphics package in the Vizrt, Ross Xpression and Singular.live platforms as well as providing remote hardware system and support.
Ahead of the high profile Alexander Volanovski vs The Korean Zombie UFC 273 card RCS began collaborating with the UFC creative services and Troika teams on the buildout of the new remote and studio graphics packages. The design was a streamlined look to reflect the new brand values established by UFC and Troika. Starting with motion theory provided by Troika, RCS built out a full suite of real-time elements, including the title card, tale of the tape and fight clock on the Vizrt, Ross Xpression and Singular.com platforms. The RCS development team then mapped out a new graphics workflow for UFC’s remote productions. Included was an user-friendly template data interface that populates the real-time graphic elements with both historical and real-time flight data.
Concurrently, the RCS hardware team designed specialized, micro footprint RCS Bullets, which have become the standard for Vizrt-based graphics hardware on UFC event productions around the world.
The week leading up to UFC 273 on April 9th, 2022 an RCS team traveled to the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville and Apex in Las Vegas to collaborate with the UFC production crew on testing and rehearsing the entire real-time graphics package and workflow. UFC 273 was a monster success from both a live event and PPV standpoint with riveting fights up and down the card, culminating in Alexannder Volkanovsky dramatic win over The Korean Zombie.
RCS continues to collaborate with UFC on major events from London to Fight Island in Abu Dhabi. RCS provides production consultation, graphics support and hardware rental systems for all major UFC events worldwide.
A successful rebrand with Troika in 2022 pushed UFC into the mainstream by focusing on athleticism, competition and star power. The simple but bold real-time broadcast graphics that RCS created from that new brand are as powerful today as they were on that historic spring night at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in 2022. RCS continues to collaborate with the UFC to develop innovative graphics solutions across their content portfolio.
