Since you’ll be changing up your television line up to include FX and FUEL tv, you may also want to dump MTV2 if you only picked up the channel to watch Bellator Fighting Championships, as rumors continue to surface of a possible move to Spike TV.
With the deal between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and FOX television this past week, Spike TV will be without a mixed martial arts lineup and may be looking at Bellator Fighting Championships as a replacement for early next year.
On Saturday night, Spike TV execs were spotted in the crowd at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut during the Bellator 48 event. Sherdog.com attempted to interview Spike TV senior vice president of sports and specials Brian Diamond but instead spoke to Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney about Spike’s presence at the event.
“They’ve been at all of our shows,” Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney said of Spike honchos. “They’re part of the MTV networks family. Our deal is with MTV Networks, it’s not a deal that we did with MTV 2, or a deal that we did with MTV Tres. So we’ve been able to leverage that expertise.”
“I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “I know what the specifics are of our agreement with MTV2, but from a transitional perspective, our deal is with the bigger corporate entity and they make all of the programming decisions. [I’m a] big fan of Spike and an enormous fan right now of MTV2 as well.”
Both MTV2 and Spike TV are owned by the same company, Viacom.