Legitimacy, celebrity, and the emergence of new sports: a case study of mixed martial arts

Research on new category emergence has largely treated legitimacy as a prerequisite for resource acquisition and category formation. However, the early development of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) presents a puzzle. Despite stigma, regulatory resistance, and limited formal legitimacy, MMA achieved substantial commercial growth and mainstream visibility. MMA’s emergence as a professional spectator sport in North America is examined using an abductive case study design and treating MMA as a theory-revealing case. Our analysis draws on a longitudinal archival corpus spanning 1993–2016, including articles from five major U.S. newspapers, books, and peer-reviewed studies. Materials were read chronologically, tracing attention-generating events alongside indicators of legitimacy and using mismatches between commercial traction and institutional acceptance as analytic anchors for iterative engagement with theories of the attention economy, ecosystem logic, and social approval assets. This paper argues that celebrity provides an alternative, attention-based mechanism that enables emerging sports to acquire resources despite limited legitimacy. To address this, a two-stage model is developed. In the early stage, celebrity temporarily substitutes for some of the market-enabling functions of legitimacy by converting attention into market access and provisional support through circumvention, multiplier, and network effects. In the later stage, celebrity facilitates legitimacy development through buzz and resonance effects, which shape how audiences interpret and accept the sport. This study clarifies when and how celebrity matters, challenging legitimacy-first assumptions in institutional and category theory and advancing sport-based theorizing with implications for broader organizational and management research.