TUF Contestants' Myspace and Facebook Friend Count

I’ve become more and more fascinated with how being on The Ultimate Figher affects a fighter’s popularity and fame, which in turn affect their pay, matchups, endorsements, etc. It’s difficult to accurately and statistically quantify a fighter’s increase of popularity, however I thought of one fairly simple way to do it: Myspace and Facebook. So for TUF 8, I decided to track the number of MySpace (and in a few cases, Facebook) friends each of the contestants had before the show aired and note the increase from week to week through the finale. It was very interesting to see the correlation between the increase in friends had with success and camera time on the show. Those who won their fights and had more camera time gained significantly more friends than those who lost early of had less than reality-show friendly personalities.

Here are a few comparisons from the start of TUF, Season 8 to the beginning of Season 9, about 8 months later:

Top 5 greatest friend increase:
1. Junie Browning 3,571
2. Ryan Bader 2,331
3. Efrain Escudero 1,458 (1,382 FB)
4. Krzysztof Soszynski 1,198 FB
5. Phillipe Nover 1,049
(Vinicious Magalhaes 1,171 estimated, his GF made him delete all the girls from his MySpace friends)

Average Increase for those who made it into the house and onto the show: 875.4
Average Increase for those who didn’t make it onto the show: 247.8

Just getting on the show, however, doesn’t automatically mean your popularity will increase significantly. Those who lost their first fights in the house only showed an average friend increase of 322 compared to 1,461.9 for those who won. And it goes without saying that the bigger the personality, the bigger the increase in popularity as evidenced by Junie Browning’s significant lead on all of the other competitors. Love him or hate him, he obviously made an impact which translates into fan interest in watching him fight.

Now that TUF 9 has begun, I decided to again track the contestants’ increase in MySpace friends, however this season I’m including many more Facebook pages than last season. So far, here’s where they’re starting off:

Team US:
Welterweight:
DaMarques Johnson W
MySpace 141
Facebook 173
Mark Miller W
MySpace 3,130
Facebook 215
Jason Pierce W
N/A
Kiel Reid TBD
MySpace 110
Frankie Lester TBD
MySpace 318
Facebook 80

Lightweight:
Santino DeFranco W
N/A
Cameron Dollar W
MySpace 507
Richie Whitson W
MySpace 433
Facebook 253
Jason Dent TBD
MySpace 49
Robert Browning TBD
MySpace 344


Team UK:
Welterweight:
Dean Amasinger W
Facebook 900
David Faulkner W
N/A
Nicholas Osipczak W
Facebook 240
James Wilks W
Facebook 83

Lightweight
Jeff Lawson W
MySpace 86
Ross Pearson W
MySpace 182
Facebook 945
Martin Stapleton W
Facebook 207
Andre Winner W
MySpace 59
Facebook 769

Coaches
Dan Henderson
MySpace 37,684
Facebook(Fan Page) 2,778
Michael Bisping
Facebook 4,360
Facebook(Fan Page) 6,748

Out
Team US:
Ray Elbe L
MySpace 5109
Christian Fulgium DNMW
MySpace 241
Kevin Knabjian L
Facebook 444
Paul Bird L
N/A
Tom Hayden L
Facebook 289
Waylon Lowe L
MySpace 87
Josh Souder HERPES
N/A

Team UK:
A.J. Wenn L
Facebook 667
James Bryan L
N/A
Dan James L
N/A
Gary Kelly L
MySpace 195
Facebook 430
James Bateman L
N/A
Tommy Maguire L
Facebook 229
Che Mills L
MySpace 235
Facebook 766
Alex Reid L
MySpace 123
Facebook 492

I'll keep checking the progress from week to week and will post the results on WarMMA.com.