Is the UFC’s Fox Deal Hurting Business?

(Video courtesy of YouTube/StudioMMA)

An interesting quote from the interview above by our friends at StudioMMA got me thinking today whether or not the landmark TV deal the UFC struck with Fox is helping or hindering Zuffa’s bottom line.

According to UFC president Dana White, every day he deals with fans who say they had no idea that the UFC is broadcasting events on Fox and it’s affiliates like FX and Fuel TV.

“Our deal with Fox is seven years. Over the next two years we’re working our asses off to get this Fox deal dialed in… Fuel, FX and big Fox — as far as the production goes, as far as the type of programming we’re going to continue to put together, fine-tuning the Ultimate Fighter that’s live and reaching out and letting not only the hardcore fans, the sometimes fans and people who aren’t yet fans know that we’re on Fox. That’s a bigger job than people could imagine. How many people that I still talk to on Twitter that have no idea we are on FOX, FX or FUEL; oh, it’s crazy man. It’s crazy. So that’s what we’re going to be doing in the next two years.”


(Video courtesy of YouTube/StudioMMA)

An interesting quote from the interview above by our friends at StudioMMA got me thinking today whether or not the landmark TV deal the UFC struck with Fox is helping or hindering Zuffa’s bottom line.

According to UFC president Dana White, every day he deals with fans who say they had no idea that the UFC is broadcasting events on Fox and it’s affiliates like FX and Fuel TV.

“Our deal with Fox is seven years. Over the next two years we’re working our asses off to get this Fox deal dialed in… Fuel, FX and big Fox — as far as the production goes, as far as the type of programming we’re going to continue to put together, fine-tuning the Ultimate Fighter that’s live and reaching out and letting not only the hardcore fans, the sometimes fans and people who aren’t yet fans know that we’re on Fox. That’s a bigger job than people could imagine. How many people that I still talk to on Twitter that have no idea we are on FOX, FX or FUEL; oh, it’s crazy man. It’s crazy. So that’s what we’re going to be doing in the next two years.”

Add to the fact that FX and Fuel aren’t available in Canada (unless you count FX Canada, which shows past seasons of its popular original shows making it about as appealing as a Netflix membership), the only affiliate in the country that is licensed to air UFC events (Sportsnet) doesn’t broadcast The Ultimate Fighter Live! live. Instead, it’s aired two hours after FX shows it.

Early ratings numbers for the show illustrate a definite decline in viewership from the SPIKE TV-helmed shows, but that’s because SPIKE is available in most cable and satellite packages in North America.

White expressed his disappointment in the turn in viewership in a recent interview with MMAJunkie, but admitted that he expected some transitional speed bumps when he signed the deal with Fox. He also said that Zuffa and it’s Fox cohorts are optimistic that things will turn around.

“There’s so many things that are involved in those numbers,” White said. “I didn’t expect to jump on FX and do 3.5 million viewers right out of the gate. But here’s the thing: The format is awesome. It’s perfect. We’ve got a great season, and we’re going to build this thing. Believe me, the way that FX deals with their programming and how they handle it, they’re so analytical. These guys are like fucking rocket scientists how they break this stuff down and look at it. Trust me, everything is positive over there.”

What are your thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly of the first three months of the Fox era of the UFC?

Video Proof That Kimbo Slice Knows Which Side His Bread is Buttered On

When SPIKE TV announced that it had hired onetime backyard brawler-turned UFC fighter Kimbo Slice to host the first instalment of its The Ultimate Fighter recap show, which will air opposite FX’s new live incarnation of the show, it looked like they may have briefly gotten the upper hand in the battle against their ex partners at Zuffa.

Leave it to Dana White and Co. to one-up the competition by trying to fuck them worse than they’ve ever been fucked before.

Somehow (okay, it was probably dollar signs and decimal points) FX convinced the gold grill-wearing Ultimate Fighter alumnus to cut a promo for TUF Live, convincing viewers to watch the new series, — a somewhat odd request, considering it runs at the same time as Kimbo’s “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays” premiere. In his defense, he could have filmed the spot before SPIKE hired him, but you would think he would have mentioned it to them beforehand to avoid looking like a fool, you know, more than he did bobbing all over shadowboxing while doing the promo.

When SPIKE TV announced that it had hired onetime backyard brawler-turned UFC fighter Kimbo Slice to host the first instalment of its The Ultimate Fighter recap show, which will air opposite FX’s new live incarnation of the show, it looked like they may have briefly gotten the upper hand in the battle against their ex partners at Zuffa.

Leave it to Dana White and Co. to one-up the competition by trying to fuck them worse than they’ve ever been fucked before.

Somehow (okay, it was probably dollar signs and decimal points) FX convinced the gold grill-wearing Ultimate Fighter alumnus to cut a promo for TUF Live, convincing viewers to watch the new series, — a somewhat odd request, considering it runs at the same time as Kimbo’s “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays” premiere. In his defense, he could have filmed the spot before SPIKE hired him, but you would think he would have mentioned it to them beforehand to avoid looking like a fool, you know, more than he did bobbing all over shadowboxing while doing the promo.


(Video courtesy of YouTube/UFC)

But if Kimbo says we should avoid his show and watch the new TUF, who are we to argue? The man is a mage.

You can bet the powers that be at SPIKE are pissed they decided to go with Kimbo over James Toney and Dana likely can’t stop smiling long enough to eat his Pinkberry before it melts. Glad we don’t have their problems. Being rich and vengeful seems like a hassle, doesn’t it?

SPIKE to Release Bellator Video Game [VIDEO]


(Looks like Viacom is putting its cash behind its latest investment.)

Divorces can be so bitter, can’t they?

SPIKE is really rubbing in how much more they like their new wife’s kids than they do the ones they helped make. It must be hard for the UFC to  see them spending so much time with Bellator buying them ice cream and cotton candy, when they don’t even call them on their birthday or pay any child support.

They rubbed salt into the fresh wound this week when they announced their latest family outing: a new Bellator video game developed by their newly-formed SPIKE Games family.

Funny, they won’t even give their own kids their old home movies, yet they start a new company to help their stepkids prosper. That’s cold.

Kung-Fu Games, the group responsible for creating the somewhat underwhelming Supremacy MMA title, are helping with the project. They also worked on on the new Deadliest Warrior: Ancient Combat and Ugly Americans games released by 345 Games — the Viacom-owned collective made up of Spike Games and Comedy Central Games.

According to the release, the game, dubbed Bellator: Onslaught, should be out this summer.

Check out a sneak peek of the game after the jump.


(Looks like Viacom is putting its cash behind its latest investment.)

Divorces can be so bitter, can’t they?

SPIKE is really rubbing in how much more they like their new wife’s kids than they do the ones they helped make. It must be hard for the UFC to  see them spending so much time with Bellator buying them ice cream and cotton candy, when they don’t even call them on their birthday or pay any child support.

They rubbed salt into the fresh wound this week when they announced their latest family outing: a new Bellator video game developed by their newly-formed SPIKE Games family.

Funny, they won’t even give their own kids their old home movies, yet they start a new company to help their stepkids prosper. That’s cold.

Kung-Fu Games, the group responsible for creating the somewhat underwhelming Supremacy MMA title, are helping with the project. They also worked on on the new Deadliest Warrior: Ancient Combat and Ugly Americans games released by 345 Games — the Viacom-owned collective made up of Spike Games and Comedy Central Games.

According to the release, the game, dubbed Bellator: Onslaught, should be out this summer.

Here’s a sneak peek of the game:


(Video courtesy of GameTrailers.com)

Spike TV Is Going Uncomfortably Hard With Their UFC Counter-Programming


(“Fuck it, I’m calling in the air strike.”)

This week in “not honoring the spirit of the deal” news: Spike TV is upping the ante on their UFC counter-programming efforts, launching a new best-of-TUF series that would compete directly against season 15 of The Ultimate Fighter. “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays” will be a three-hour programming block debuting on Friday, March 2nd, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, featuring the best episodes from the first 14 seasons of the reality show. According to the press release, Spike will air special-themed editions of “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays” with input from fans via Facebook and Twitter.

Meanwhile on FX, The Ultimate Fighter LIVE is scheduled to kick off March 9th at 9 p.m. ET/PT, helmed by coaches Urijah Faber and Dominick Cruz. Moving the show to a different network on a different night of the week will surely leave some fans confused if they haven’t been paying attention, and Spike’s new programming block just throws a few more tacks on the road, so to speak. But wait, there’s more…


(“Fuck it, I’m calling in the air strike.”)

This week in “not honoring the spirit of the deal” news: Spike TV is upping the ante on their UFC counter-programming efforts, launching a new best-of-TUF series that would compete directly against season 15 of The Ultimate Fighter. “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays” will be a three-hour programming block debuting on Friday, March 2nd, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, featuring the best episodes from the first 14 seasons of the reality show. According to the press release, Spike will air special-themed editions of “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays” with input from fans via Facebook and Twitter.

Meanwhile on FX, The Ultimate Fighter LIVE is scheduled to kick off March 9th at 9 p.m. ET/PT, helmed by coaches Urijah Faber and Dominick Cruz. Moving the show to a different network on a different night of the week will surely leave some fans confused if they haven’t been paying attention, and Spike’s new programming block just throws a few more tacks on the road, so to speak. But wait, there’s more…

Just as Spike aired the incredibly named “Dos Santos vs. Velasquez: Unleashed for the Heavyweight Title“ marathon to steal a few gullible viewers from the UFC’s first FOX broadcast last month, they’re doing it again on January 28th with an eight-hour block called “UFC Unleashed: Evans vs. Davis,” which will (of course) run against the UFC on FOX 2 broadcast headlined by Rashad Evans and Phil Davis. As MMAFighting put it:

Labeling the event “Evans vs. Davis” may do a disservice to some viewers who will set their DVRs for “Evans vs. Davis” only to realize after the fact that they recorded the wrong program, although it’s hard to imagine many viewers will be fooled into watching the wrong fight.

Spike and the UFC will also compete with weekly MMA news shows in 2012 — MMA Junkie Live on Spike and UFC Tonight on FUEL. Time-slots haven’t been finalized yet, but don’t be surprised if they go head-to-head as well.

Related: Hate to Say We Told You So, But SPIKE TV is Planning a Bellator-Based Reality Show for 2013

Hate to Say We Told You So, But SPIKE TV is Planning a Bellator-Based Reality Show for 2013


(Sources say the new show will have 75% less bodily fluid ingestion in each season.)

A couple weeks back on The Bum Rush Radio Show we predicted that SPIKE TV would pick up the slack left by the exit of The Ultimate Fighter by putting together a different MMA-based reality show, likely with Bellator fighters. Considering they are all technically employees of the Viacom-owned channel since the media conglomerate purchased a majority stake in the promotion last month, it would make sense.

In our reality, they would put all of the upcoming opponents from a scheduled card in the same fighter house, which we know would never happen, but we can still dream, right?

Well, according to a report by SI’s Loretta Hunt we were half right.


(Sources say the new show will have 75% less bodily fluid ingestion in each season.)

A couple weeks back on The Bum Rush Radio Show we predicted that SPIKE TV would pick up the slack left by the exit of The Ultimate Fighter by putting together a different MMA-based reality show, likely with Bellator fighters. Considering they are all technically employees of the Viacom-owned channel since the media conglomerate purchased a majority stake in the promotion last month, it would make sense.

In our reality, they would put all of the upcoming opponents from a scheduled card in the same fighter house, which we know would never happen, but we can still dream, right?

Well, according to a report by SI’s Loretta Hunt we were half right.

SPIKE president Kevin Kay — TV executive responsible for bringing TUF from its original conception to reality, is planning a new MMA reality show that could go head to head with Fox’s incarnation of TUF starting in 2013.

Kay insists that the new show won’t be a carbon copy of the old one.

“One thing we won’t do is duplicate The Ultimate Fighter. It’s a great franchise and it’s going to go on to another network. I actually think the tournament format is a little bit like The Ultimate Fighter without the reality piece of it, per se, because every fighter is fighting three times over the course of the tournament to win the championship. You fight, you lose, you go home. There’s a lot of reality already baked into that idea. There’s different kinds of reality ideas that were starting to kick around — nothing we have our hearts set on yet — but we’re hearing lots of good ideas for reality programming around Bellator. But it won’t be 16 guys in a house. We’re not doing that show over again.”

He also touched on the technicality that will keep Bellator programming off of his channel for the next year and two months.

“While we own [The UFC fight] library, we can’t put another mixed martial arts promotion on Spike proper, on the linear network [until the agreement is up]. They could buy it back if they chose to. They chose not to do that. We have the library and we’ll use the library. I don’t have an opinion about [whether or not they decided not to buy the library back to block us from airing another promotion’s fights for a year after our deal with them expires]. I think that’s their decision. We have the library and we’re using it because we’re paying for it and why wouldn’t we? Whatever their motives are for not wanting to take it back and put it somewhere else, you’d have to ask them.”

A true optimist if ever there was one, Kay is looking at the extended period between live MMA broadcasts on SPIKE as a positive thing.

“One of the great things about having this much time to prepare and having Bellator on MTV2 throughout next year, is we have the next 14-15 months to hear a lot of pitches, pick what we want to do, put things in production, (including) a lot of reality programming around Bellator, some shoulder programming. We’re going to take Bellator’s library of fights, see what’s there and see how we can package that because, for the fans, they’ve not seen most of these Bellator fighters before so we want to build those stars. And it’s actually fresh library product, so there’s lots we can do and we have 15 months to figure it out.”

Check out the rest of the interview HERE.

Viacom Buys Majority Stake in Bellator; Spike to Begin Broadcasting Events in 2013


(Well, well, well…)

Spike TV will become the new home for Bellator starting in 2013. According to a new USA Today report, Viacom — the parent company of MTV Networks — has purchased a majority stake in Bellator Fighting Championships, signaling the official end to their six-year relationship with the UFC.

CEO Bjorn Rebney will remain in charge of Bellator. Speaking about the Viacom deal with USA Today, he said: “It puts all of those cornerstones of ownership in place for us, which is something that’s been so seriously lacking in the MMA space with so many different companies, including Strikeforce and the IFL and Affliction and all the different failures that have occurred…It alleviates those issues…It’s a very, very good day for mixed martial arts as a whole, because now you have two groups in the space that have a very substantial presence that obviously isn’t going to go anywhere for a very, very long time.”


(Well, well, well…)

Spike TV will become the new home for Bellator starting in 2013. According to a new USA Today report, Viacom — the parent company of MTV Networks — has purchased a majority stake in Bellator Fighting Championships, signaling the official end to their six-year relationship with the UFC.

CEO Bjorn Rebney will remain in charge of Bellator. Speaking about the Viacom deal with USA Today, he said: “It puts all of those cornerstones of ownership in place for us, which is something that’s been so seriously lacking in the MMA space with so many different companies, including Strikeforce and the IFL and Affliction and all the different failures that have occurred…It alleviates those issues…It’s a very, very good day for mixed martial arts as a whole, because now you have two groups in the space that have a very substantial presence that obviously isn’t going to go anywhere for a very, very long time.”

According to the terms of their current contract, Spike will broadcast new UFC content through this December, but the channel also reserves the rights to the promotion’s library of fights through 2012. As a result, Bellator events won’t air on Spike until 2013, which means Bellator has another year of main cards on MTV2 and prelims on the SpikeTV website. After that, Spike will broadcast two seasons of Bellator events per year, and expects to run additional Bellator-related content both on TV and online.

Spike TV president Kevin Kay sees the move as a positive change in the way the channel handles its MMA business: “We had a great relationship with UFC and we still do. We helped each other to build each other’s brand. Like all good things, you know that at some point it’s going to come to an end…As we realized that our relationship with UFC was likely to come to an end, our Viacom mergers and acquisitions folks, and us, started to have conversations with MTV2 about getting invested in a mixed martial arts promotion and become owners as opposed to renters. You’re building value in something that you own, and you own it for the long term. You’re not in a constant state of negotiation.”

And the increased exposure for Bellator isn’t lost on its fighters either. Said lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez: “They’ll have a ton of more money to negotiate with. As long as I keep doing well and do what I’m supposed to do, the future looks bright…I’m smiling ear-to-ear right now. I couldn’t be any happier. Endorsements are hard to come by when you’re on ESPN Deportes and these other smaller channels.”

For more details on the Viacom/Bellator purchase, visit USA Today.