Year: 2025

What marketing lessons can the fight game learn from other sports?

Whether you’re a fighter, a combat sports brand or a fight promotion, it’s important to consider how other sports promote themselves via content. The reason is that sport is more than just sport; it’s an entertainment business which is focused on placing bums on seats and its assets, drawing as much attention as possible. For that purpose, I’ve decided to dedicate a weekly blog post covering some of my favourite brands across different sports to discover how they create content and how this can benefit the fight game.

The Lionesses demonstrate how to make content as inclusive as possible on X.

pic.twitter.com/VAV5M3nyog

— Lionesses (@Lionesses) February 21, 2024

The Lionesses, also known as the England Women’s National football/soccer team, utilise the specific features well on X. For example, each image has an alternative text description. This is a built-in feature to support platform consumers who may have visual impairments. Instead, they can read the description of the image to gain an idea of what is presented on their screen. Plus, getting into a consistent routine of being as comprehensive as possible with alt-text descriptions can be beneficial for ranking your content higher on others’ X feeds.

If you’re a fighter and you’ve got images from a recent training session that you’d like to share on your social feeds, whether that’s X, Instagram, or both, just remember to add an alt text description, it can make a world of difference to grow your brand.

The same applies if you’re a combat sports brand that is covering updates across boxing, MMA or another combat sport. If you want to grow the amount of leverage your posts are receiving, alt text can help with ranking it higher across search feeds.

Lastly, if you’re a combat sports promotion that owns a carousel of images following an event you’ve recently held, create some alt text descriptions to add when publishing the content across your feeds.

LET Golf lead by example around how to optimise interview clips

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ladies European Tour (@letgolf)

When it comes to media features, if you’re an upcoming fighter, brand or promotion, it pays off to collect good content habits early on. A great example is how the Ladies European Tour Golf (LET Golf) promoted this interview clip of golfer Charley Hull. They’ve created a branded graphic of a quote from her interview, and the next bit of media in the Instagram carousel is the full clip of her sharing her passion for golf.

This is a really effective branding tactic because of the colour coding, font and format that’s utilised by the content team to make this as engaging as possible.

If you’re a fighter, you can transfer this tactic to optimise your brand by getting a consistent house style practised across your social feeds, whether that’s hashtagging your fighter nickname, colour grading, etc.

If you’re a combat sports brand that’s looking to gain more recognition for sharing updates across the fight game, take notes from how this single carousel post from LET Golf has been branded.

If you represent a combat sports promotion, implementing this as a part of your marketing strategy with pre-making graphics and videos will pay dividends in the long term.

Natalie Long, a long-distance runner, shows the value of community management

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Natalie Long | Ⓝⓐⓣ ⓡⓤⓝⓢ | ᴜʟᴛʀᴀ ʀᴜɴɴᴇʀ (@nat_runs_)

Nat_runs, also known as Natalie Long, is a long-distance runner who has grown rapidly on TikTok and is also growing her brand across Instagram. Something that stood out to me when I first saw her content across my TikTok feed is that her brand is very community-driven. For example, every TikTok & Instagram reel is orientated through her comment section. As shown in the above post, “run until you see a pregnant woman running” was a comment that someone left on a previous video.

Content like this is easily transferable in the fight game. For instance, if you’re an upcoming fighter looking to build an audience, stay consistent with creating content and get into the habit of consistent replies when that audience grows. Also, consider hosting Q&A sessions via YouTube, livestreams, etc., to further endorse your desired audience. The same applies if you’re a combat sports brand or a fight promotion.

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That’s a wrap! I hope that’s provided you plenty of value. By all means, I’m all ears if there’s anything I’ve missed out on.

How can you use emojis to grow your personal brand?

The use of emojis across social media marketing has become increasingly popular over the last several years. They’ve increased the level of creativity brands can explore when producing content, and they support communication online to be more succinct and concise while enhancing the tone-of-voice brands want to express. For that reason, I’ve created a blog post to help fighters, combat sports brands, and fight promotions learn more about how emojis can be used to grow your personal brand.

I know what you’re thinking; what’s the point of growing ‘my brand’? Well, it’s something which can open up opportunities for you. For example, the more active you are on social media, the more you share content, produce it, engage with others, etc. The more visible you become. Then, the more marketable you become due to that activity, it can lead to an income through social media. This is often achieved via sponsorship.

So, let’s explore some case studies where emojis have proven useful for building a personal brand across the fight game.

Ilia ‘El Matador’ Topuria case study

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by El Matador (@iliatopuria)

Whether you follow me across Instagram, X or LinkedIn, you’ll know I’ve been VERY vocal about Ilia since his win against Alexander ‘The Great’ Volkanovski. I don’t need to go into detail how incredible his KO was, instead, I’m going to talk about the personal branding aspect of how he promoted himself pre and post fight.

If you scroll through his last few Instagram posts and check out his bio, you’ll see a rose emoji, and this is something that represents his personal brand hugely. The same applies when you visit his X feed as well. As a result, you’ll find it aligns with the colour red on his UFC shorts, on the Spanish flag, included in the colour code of text for his X cover photo, etc. Plus, after his victory speech in the Octagon, the space was soon covered in red petals, an initiative contributing towards his personal brand.

With this leverage, the rose emoji, in particular, became shared and curated by many other brands in the combat sports space, such as tntsportsufc, as seen below.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by UFC on TNT Sports (@tntsportsufc)

The further this spreads across social content, the more awareness will be raised of Topuria’s brand via the rose emoji and then that can be repurposed for other purposes, such as:

• community management: his fanbase posts rose emojis across their social feeds for upcoming fights.
• As his leverage continues to rise, it could lead to sponsorship opportunities associated with flower brands, expanding his niche outside of combat sports.
• When a fight fan see’s the colour red, it can be a symbol and represent the brand identity of Ilia Topuria.

Andrew ‘The Gladiator’ Valdina case study

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A post shared by Andrew Valdina (@andrewvaldina)

Andrew, ‘The Gladiator’ Valdina, is a pro-MMA fighter who fights for the regional MMA fight promotion Cage Titans, based in Massachusetts, New England. What stands out about how he’s using emojis as a part of his personal branding is including the cross swords emoji to represent his ‘the gladiator’ nickname. This post, in particular, stood out as he created a community-orientated post entitled #GladiatorSZN. This culturally sensitive nickname is a good move to have a tracker to increase brand visibility.

Scrolling through his comments sections across his Instagram feed demonstrates others have invested in his brand by sharing the emoji through endorsements, discussion and more.

Staying consistent with using this tactic for personal branding and other consistent marketing tactics can lead to further sponsorship and online monetisation opportunities. For example, creating merchandise dedicated to the term gladiator with the crossed swords as a logo. Using it as a part of his branded graphics, typography through fight promo etc.

Joe ‘Skeletor’ Giannetti case study

vs
Winner gets Hardwick?@CageWarriors https://t.co/uvhNTm30zF

— Joe Joe Giannetti (@Giannettimma) February 24, 2024

Joe Joe ‘Skeletor’ Giannetti, is another Cage Titans MMA fighter who has done a remarkable job with his personal brand. Similar to Andrew, he’s utilised the skull emoji to represent his brand identity to link with his nickname ‘skeletor’.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joe “Skeletor” Giannetti (@giannettimma)

Similar to Andrew Valdina, he’s utilised this as a hashtag, ‘skeletorsevilarmy’, which again is effective as a brand awareness tracker to encourage others to use it. Furthermore, he’s utilised this as a part of his merchandise, which is driving his audience to be treated as a community rather than online fans. All of this from a simple emoji.

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As always, I decided to keep this blog post short and sweet, I hope you found value from it.

How can X/Twitter Spaces grow your online visibility?

X/Twitter Spaces is an audio-centric chatroom allowing users to form and be involved in live conversations, similar to Facebook & Instagram Live, without video. Considering that X is a microblogging social platform, having an audio-orientated feature offers its users another way of engaging with their community. In the fight game, there’s plenty of value for fighters, combat sports brands and promotions to gain from utilising this feature.

Reaching a wider audience

According to highperformr, there are over 200 million daily active accounts on X, which expresses the volume of diverse industries and backgrounds on the platform. Considering that the fight business is driven via entertainment first before its sporting prowess, it adds more string to your bow to ensure audio-centred content plays a part in your marketing strategy. Long story short, occasionally hosting an X space via your brand will make you more likely to reach a higher audience volume than a traditional X post.

Build a community rather than just a following

From personal experience, I’m a big fan of voice notes on WhatsApp for many reasons. It’s easier than texting, it’s helped with my communication, and it’s simpler to interpret the tone of voice for the person you’re sending a voice note to. This applies similarly to X spaces; when on X, it’s very easy to scroll through our feeds mindlessly when just seeing a choco-block load of text. Instead, you’ll be more likely to stop scrolling and engage if you spot an engaging graphic, bite-size video or audio clip. Then, once that user stops scrolling, that increases the chance of gaining a follower/having another user join your community.

Be the brand to trust

Considering the leverage you’re likely to gain with the X algorithm favouring X spaces over traditional X posts alongside the impact that audio-orientated content has, this can rank your content higher to make yourself more visible. Regarding being the brand to trust, ensure the content you share via the feature is on point regarding what will bring in new followers, community members, subscribers etc.

Therefore, if you’re a brand in the fight game, here are some ways to utilise X spaces to grow your visibility.

• Q&A session: Host a questions and answers session with your audience either live via the chat room or to boost engagement and reach, perhaps asking your demographic in advance to create X posts, accumulate them together and spend the session using them as the topic of discussion.
• Prize giveaways: A commonly themed trend that’s proven successful in building a community. Whether that’s a discount for an upcoming event or a chance to meet a fighter under your promotion, it’s likely to bring traction towards your brand, gaining a stronger community.
• Industry conversations: Away from the UFC for a change, history was made in women’s MMA last weekend. Professional Fighters League athlete Claressa Shields beat Kelsey De Santis in Saudi Arabia. This is a chance for brands representing Women’s MMA, female fighter communities, female sports brands, etc. To endorse this to the core about the positivity this brings towards female sport, particularly in MMA, where it’s come a long way.
• Re-purpose across other platforms: X spaces has an option where you can save the audio recording. You can use this as a fighter, fight brand or combat sports promotion to share across your other content feeds. For example, editing a simple graphic on Instagram and sharing it via the audio feature, sharing a video via YouTube while including the audio etc.

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That’s a wrap! For further details regarding optimising X spaces, get in touch for a marketing consultation.

How can you build your personal brand from studying other sports?

Across the marketing world, tactics, tricks and trends are transferable regardless of whatever industry you’re in. Plus, particular sports are quicker to jump on trends than the combat sports world. However, it’s not just about the trends; it’s about following tactics that help optimise visibility, community management and branding. One way or another, it’s time to learn how to build your personal brand from other sports.

The Lawn Tennis Association content team know exactly what they’re doing with X threads

https://twitter.com/the_LTA/status/1762814337113100307?s=20

Andy Murray is currently competing at the Dubai Tennis Championships and recently had an interview where he shared his thoughts about competing again at the Olympic Games. Considering that Paris 2024 is coming up soon, the LTA have optimised this by including their handle, which is beneficial for generating brand awareness towards their account. Furthermore, they’ve included Andy Murray’s X handle at the beginning of the caption while including an emoji before it. This is because if you simply start an X post with someone’s X handle, X will register that as a reply rather than an X post, limiting the level of impressions you can reach.

Another excellent marketing tactic the LTA has adopted is using alt text and creating an X thread for the key quotes that Andy shared during the interview. Alt text is a specific feature on X which allows you to describe an image you post through an X post. Its purpose is to make your content more accessible to those who are visually impaired. It also benefits the algorithm across X as social media generally appreciates content that is as comprehensive as possible.

Transferable lessons that fighters, combat sports brands and promotions can take away from this include the following.

• Use alt text when promoting images to describe images as comprehensively as possible across your X feed.
• Utilise X threads when covering long-form content.
• Remember not to make the mistake of not registering an X post as a reply; to avoid this, place a full stop ahead of a handle when writing an X post.

That’s not how you promote web links on Instagram!

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3gJ6p0Mig6

Now, this is a lovely compilation of some of the best goals in football at the Olympic Games, no question. However, the content team made a slight error regarding promoting their web link via the captions. Unfortunately, on mobile devices, web links aren’t clickable via captions. Instead, when promoting web links via Instagram, it’s best to direct users to a link in your bio. Then, when sharing a story, there’s a link option available when creating one; utilise that to optimise as much awareness of the web link as possible.

Therefore, if you’re a fighter, combat sports brand or promotion, there are various ways to promote traffic to your website or an alternative platform. The most common platform is to set up a Linktree account; this allows you to store multiple web links to different platforms through one channel. It can also be used for different marketing channels, such as X.

Take YouTube Marketing notes from BBC Sport

Australian Motorsport racing driver Oscar Piastri was recently featured on the BBC Sport YouTube channel. He certainly had plenty to say regarding his verdict on McLaren’s legacy; at the same time, the BBC Sport content team did a great job branding the content to draw in as many eyeballs as possible.

First and foremost, the gradient of their colour branding is very consistent within their thumbnail as it aligns with their logo. The typography is also immaculate and consistent across other videos on their channel. The video description includes keywords for optimising YouTube Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Those include a comprehensive summary of the video, encouraging viewers to subscribe, and raising awareness of other channels across social media alongside a community management tactic by promoting their hashtag #bbcsport.

There are plenty of transferable marketing lessons fighters, combat sports brands, and promotions can take away from this breakdown; they include:

• Be consistent with your videos’ typography, colour codes, and tone of voice. For example, include the taglines/nicknames, etc. Alongside promoting your sponsors/products/services simultaneously during your videos.
• When writing your YouTube video descriptions, keep a template of text relating to copying and pasting your external links, which will be placed in each video upload.

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Now that’s a wrap! Feel free to ask any questions or if you have any other content pieces that you think are valuable to learn from.

How can other sports educate you to build your personal brand?

It’s another week and another opportunity to build your personal brand from other sports. Today’s blog post focuses on how fitness influencers use social media and methods to adopt from football broadcasters and brands.

Focus your content marketing on fan behaviours

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by DEMI BAGBY (@demibagby)

Fitness influencer Demi Bagby, a few weeks ago, did a walk around at a gym and asked several members what songs they were listening to while working out 

Music is similar to sport in the sense that it brings people together, such as on the way to work, you’ll likely have your headphones in and be listening to some tunes 

If you’re a fighter, combat sports brand or fight promotion, you can repurpose this idea through the following avenues 

 a fighter can share the songs they listen to while training, foods they eat before/after camp. 

 combat sports brands, similar to Casuals Corner MMA, can create a food-related series regarding snacks and treats they make ahead of MMA-related events.

 Fight promotions can use the opportunity ahead of events to promote local artists to attend their events to gain traction towards more audiences buying tickets to events 

Get into the habit of adapting your branding relating to your adventure

In the football world, it’s currently the round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League. 

Therefore, the footballontntsports account has raised awareness of this to casual supporters of the beautiful game. Across the fight game, this is a transferable content lesson fighters, brands, and promotions can learn about 

 If you’re a fighter, ensure your cover photo and pinned post are related to an upcoming fight, media feature, promotion of yourself to compete, etc. 

 If you’re a combat sports brand or fight promotion, ensure your creative assets, such as a cover photo, pinned post, etc., relate to your latest event/opportunity. 

Joey Swoll is a great example of how to use taglines for personal branding 

@thejoeyswoll

Her membership has been cancelled! #gymtok #gym #fyp

♬ original sound – Joey Swoll

Joey Swoll is a fitness influencer who uses his profile to call out those who give gym culture a controversial and exclusive name for itself. Long story short, through his content, he’ll regularly call out toxic behaviour and ends his videos with the tagline,” You need to do better”. 

If you’re a fighter or represent a combat sports brand/promotion, this is a habit you should get into. It becomes a part of your brand identity to get more casual audiences to recognise you. Almost similar to colour codes across social content, it’s an avenue to capture attention and gain a community long-term. 

If you want to learn about branding, check out COPA90 Football! 

On the COPA90 Football YouTube channel, they’ve got a series called BWSL | Behind The Baller. What initially caught my eye was the consistency and engaging colour codes/typography used regarding the thumbnails. 

As I’ve mentioned, this is a deal breaker to whether somebody chooses to click through to the video. Something else that struck me was their YouTube description, including a bit.ly link. 

What’s a bit.ly link, I hear you ask; well, essentially, it’s a link shortener that you can use as a part of writing captions across social media, meaning you have slightly more space for writing or putting in different content pieces to make your brand potentially more engaging. 

Bit.ly have free accounts you can create, so feel free to check it out! 

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Now that’s a wrap!

How did it feel proving myself wrong?

Hi one and all, I’m Ash and I’m feeling super blessed to say that I’ve achieved a walk marathon

Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, I had some bad news about cancer. All of the tumours have grown, got a new one spotted in my lung where it is about 1.1 cm

Last year, I didn’t have a better experience as the cancer spread to my spine, which affected my walking and running to an extreme level. Long story short, I had to re-learn how to walk and run. I went from training for a marathon where the maximum distance I achieved was 19 miles, although, after that, the metastases just began to grow in that area; I didn’t know at all about it

It was a massive curveball and a horrible thing to deal with on top of what I’m going through already. It made me shed plenty of tears, especially when I heard the awful news that my cancer had grown; this was several months after I was diagnosed with spinal metastases. However, I remember chatting with a 3-time gold Olympic Medalist, Pete Reed OBE, who reminded me that “what gets in the way, becomes the way”. Unfortunately, quite some time ago, he went through a spinal stroke, which has caused him to be paralysed from his waist down, and he is in a wheelchair. He is a friend and former teammate of my step-brother, Jack Beaumont

“What gets in the way becomes the way”—one of the first thoughts that came into my mind. I initially thought I was training for a proper marathon, which was going well. However, life is too short to be upset constantly, so I thought, why not just go for walks more often? Eventually, I did over 13 miles in two days, in just under 11 hours, and chose to fundraise money for the Royal Marsden Charity. So far, just under £100 has been raised, and I plan to increase further by staying consistent with continuous charities and being able to say to myself, “This is a big deal towards my legacy”.

How did I feel after the walk marathon? Very rewarded, I proved myself wrong and others wrong. People with spinal cord injuries, epilepsy, cancer, etc. They’re, according to doctors and the average person, weak, unwell, and have low immunity, which affects their routine and other stuff. However, I’ve been one of the odds breakers, and I continue to be. Its not just with this, its also to do with this

cancer shrinking further treatment after treat

the lung tumour being the primary cause of stage 4 but became dead after chemotherapy.

going from approximately 6 brain tumours to now a total of 2.

keeping active and well throughout chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

“I hope everyone in this arena and saw this knockout can experience my level of happiness, just one time in your life. But I’ve got to say, that isn’t going to happen if you don’t go for something” – Israel Adesanya

If I were to summarise something from my walk marathon achievement is I was so happy after I did it regardless of my health. It reminded me how important it is to achieve things and put your mind to it as life is too short.

If I could teach yourselves from my achievement would be, “regardless of whatever challenges you’re going through, always remember that there always something you can do to make you happy and proud of yourself, look at me, I’m the evidence”.

How amazing is colour coding when growing my personal brand?

Hey, fighters, brand reps and promoters! I hope we’re enjoying the fight game as much as possible. I’m starting the week with some value around how there are plenty of dudes and dudettes in the sport who have done a good job of branding themselves to open new opportunities for themselves and others

So let’s go with some case studies, Ash Sports Media followers!

What can you learn about how ESPN MMA brand themselves through colours?

https://x.com/espnmma/status/1814357987080765909?s=46&t=PJ_Gp3khAFSbWPAX656cbg

https://twitter.com/espnmma/status/1814357987080765909?s=46&t=PJ_Gp3khAFSbWPAX656cbg

ESPN MMA, across both Instagram and X are, a leading voice regarding the latest updates across MMA, particularly the UFC

Not only is ESPN MMA one of the most super cool with colour coding, which looks good, but they’re also great at the consistency behind it

Considering that their logo is red, black, and white, This plays a quality role when you want to be recognised by a viewer on social media/alerts/notifications etc. For that reason, being consistent with whatever content you’re producing, place that in mind

The content marketing team at ESPN MMA have done a good job at that with this X post endorsing Charles ‘Do Bronx’ Oliveira

They’ve highlighted the core message through the text on the image, which is the same colour as the logo

Why does this matter?

An example for myself involves whenever I get a notification on BBC Sport, Strava or LinkedIn. I can spot it straight away when looking at my phone purely based on its colours, It is also something to help those that aren’t able to read so well due to visual issues

To discover more about how I can help with this, get in touch

Casuals Corner MMA are the ones to learn more about colour grading

https://www.instagram.com/casuals.corner.mma?igsh=bGZhcmg0ejhtMmV0

It was an honour to feature on their podcast last year purely down to how consistent they are around engaging and punchy colour grading

Here it is https://bit.ly/3S4cTd4

Plus, there’s plenty of accounts on Instagram that use carousels to produce their content, although, Casuals have treated the first carousel as a thumbnail whereas there’s others who don’t meaning they have a lower chance of getting a fan to stop scrolling

Focusing on smaller details like this can definitely help make a big difference simply through consistency

The proof is in the pudding through what Casuals have accomplished

If you want to chat further, go for it

Mr. Jake ‘the problem child’ Paul certainly is a marketing machine

https://twitter.com/jakepaul/status/1814823577733956008?s=46&t=PJ_Gp3khAFSbWPAX656cbg

The Problem Child this weekend fought against MMA veteran, Mike Perry

This post on X definitely stood out through the ’s promotional knowledge no question. Want to know more?

First and foremost, he’s showing off what boxer outfit he’ll be competing in which is definitely something I remember and it looked

Secondly if you’re not creating a video, make the most of designing a post accompanied with pictures, just like how Jake has

Maximum amount of images and to get even more visibility, feel free to do an alt text feature which can improve how many more people see your brand through being as descriptive as possible

I thought I’d keep this short and sweet for you as a long blog post isn’t every ones cup of tea, for that reason, for further help and advice, give me a message

What are fighters, brands and promotions teaching us about the value of personal branding?

Oleksandr Usyk

The heavyweight champion has sharpened up his personal brand after beating two of the toughest boxers in this generation, Anthony Joshua & Tyson Fury

His Instagram description is also comprehensive from summarising his legacy as it list the belts he has despite not every fan will be aware of which ones are affiliated with the heavyweight champs status

Adding to the weblink Usyk has in his IG bio, this is an opportunity for upcoming fighters to use with creating for promoting sponsors, partnerships, portfolios that give them further light into the sport

When it comes to making short-form content long-term and using the element of IG stories to do so, that is another avenue if content that can help you with growing long-term supporters

BRANDS

Sugar Sean O’Malley says Mike Perry would defeat Jake Paul under Bare Knuckle rules but not boxing #UFC #MMA #Boxing pic.twitter.com/4EFNOjPFGq

— MMA UNCENSORED (@MMAUNCENSORED1) July 24, 2024

This page is often found on X due to the tone of it sparking controversial content across the MMA scape

Something that MMA uncesored do really well with their content often involves where they get their features from, whereas this one refers to one of UFC stars Sean O Malley

Sugar Sean O’Malley says Mike Perry would defeat Jake Paul under Bare Knuckle rules but not boxing #UFC #MMA #Boxing pic.twitter.com/4EFNOjPFGq

— MMA UNCENSORED (@MMAUNCENSORED1) July 24, 2024

Fight promotions

Andrew Valdina continues to be an advocate for Cage Titans

6-0 https://t.co/7KKy4D7sRT

— Andrew Valdina (@Andrew_Valdina) July 22, 2024

At #CTFC66, none other than one of their superstars Andrew Valdina. Despite the images being sharp and engaging to captivate Cafe fans across New England and beyond they’ve gone to focus on image carousels very often for their events

Something that could be done by copywriters at the promotion can include the following

alt text to comprehensively describe what each picture is an describes on representing the company

have a direct conversation with the sponsors mentioned in the caption to also promote content they’re affiliated with

The same applies with Andrew re-posting the Cage Titans post as he’ll likely have a wider audience or niche fans that were not necessarily aware of who Valdina competes through.

Through these avenues it only helps to increase more opportunities for Cage Titans due to athete-driven marketing

So that’s a wrap-up for todays content

Marketing wrap-up for today’s fight game, which has been led by Andrew Valdina, specific features on X that Cage Titans can use to improve their visibility alongside the value of athlete-drive marketing

Remembering Ash (Ashwyn Paras Lall)

Dear Subscriber,

It is with profound sadness, we share the news of Ash’s passing (8th Oct ‘24) – our beloved son, friend and colleague – the inspiring mind behind the “Ash’s Sports Media” community. His dedication, creativity, support and passion for sports social media marketing touched all of us, leaving an indelible mark on our hearts and our work. Ash was more than just the founder of Ash’s Sports Media; he was a visionary who believed in the power of connection and the potential of social media to bring people together to support and help each other. His innovative spirit and unwavering commitment to excellence inspired us all, and his legacy will continue to guide us in our journey.

During this incredibly difficult time, we celebrate Ash’s amazing life and the vibrant community he built. Despite the immense challenges, including physical and psychological pain and severe disabilities (including regular grand-mal seizures) Ash suffered due to his cancer symptoms, like a true warrior he never surrendered but faced all difficulties with incredible courage, fortitude and resilience. Towards the bitter end when Ash reluctantly accepted that no further cancer treatment was available, he remained strong and I remember him saying, “my body may be broken and weak with cancer, but cancer won’t ever break my spirit – my spirit is still strong and one day it will fly away to be free from suffering, leaving my body behind”.

Amongst his many great achievements during his cancer journey, Ash completed writing an autobiography in 2023-4 which is currently being prepared for publication. Also, incredibly, Ash proudly completed a challenging twenty-mile marathon training run just before suffering a very serious spinal cord injury due to spine tumours. This caused devastating disabilities including major lower leg mobility issues which meant Ash was not even able to walk normally let alone run. Despite these horrendous disabilities, Ash persevered with his goal to do a marathon charity fundraiser by eventually walking a full marathon (within 24 hours). Ash’s legacy continues to support people, who are suffering, through his “Much-Loved” tribute webpage (AshLall.MuchLoved.com) which has so far raised over £6.5k in charitable donations for the Royal Marsden Hospital cancer charity where Ash received life extending cancer treatment.

Although there are currently no plans to actively run, manage or develop Ash’s website AshSportsMedia.org, to honour Ash’s life and legacy, it will continue to be browsable as an inactive legacy site (IMPORTANT: please note that the other website address URL aliases “AshSportsMedia.com” & “AshSportsTalk.org” will no longer work). I hope you can all honour his memory by following his passion and continuing his mission in your own work and strive to uphold the values he championed.

Our deepest condolences go out to everyone who had the privilege of knowing Ash. Let’s together support each other as we remember and celebrate his life and contributions. Thank you so much for being a part of Ash’s journey – your support and engagement meant the world to him, and it will always mean the world to us too.

With heartfelt sympathy,

“Ash’s Sports Media”