UFC's matchmaking board, taken off the wall
War Room puts the UFC matchmaking team's fight-card board on web and mobile, so the team can plan together from anywhere.
The challenge
Fight cards for UFC events are planned in the War Room at headquarters, on a large board that shows each card as it comes together. It works for whoever is in the room, but the planners are often travelling.
The digital version had to feel like the board the team already knew, suit fight experts rather than software people, and be as polished on a phone as at a desk. Accuracy mattered above all: several people editing one card could never lose or overwrite a change. And it had to be designed, built and launched in three months.
What we built
- An event list, and a board for each event laid out like the one on the wall.
- Fighter search, linked to the UFC's own internal systems.
- UFC and meta rankings beside the matchups, updated live.
- Separate desktop and phone interfaces, each designed for how the team works there.
- Write locking, so two people editing one event never overwrite each other.
- A full audit log, and every edit in a session can be undone.
How we worked
Our engineers built War Room alongside TKO, whose own team handled the design. We kept the stack deliberately simple: Django with server-rendered templates, HTMX and Alpine.js. That kept the interface quick and the deadline in reach, without the weight of a large front-end framework.
Outcome
- Launched in three months, from start to live
- Planning has moved fully to digital
- The team plans events from anywhere in the world
