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Monday media headlines
By Zach Arnold | January 15, 2007
- Jake Rossen: Un-“Natural” Selection
- UFC HP: Promotion will charge $50 USD for PPVs in HD
- The Houston Chronicle: Coaching gives BJ Penn route back to lightweight division
- PR Newswire: New fantasy MMA web site targets UFC & PRIDE fans
- Media Syndicate: More PR for Elite XC
- KTLA: Love packs a punch (written by the same LA Times writer from Sunday)
- The Houston Chronicle: Ultimate matchup – Liddell vs. Silva
- Radio: Eddie Goldman interviews Wallid Ismail
- Variety: UFC signs new video game deal with THQ (first game release in late 2007)
- UFC Junkie: Spike TV made the call to make Lister vs. Marquardt a non-TV fight
- Rush PR News: Fox to re-invent My Network TV after ratings disaster (it looks like they’ll pick up UFC’s new syndicated TV show)
- The Day: Lou DiBella says that “boxing is eternal”
- Boxing Scene: Lou Savarese to fight Travis Fulton
Topics: All Topics, Boxing, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 12 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
UFC ratings drop, and now Spike are censoring a potentially “boring” fight? I’d have felt a lot better about this had it been UFC’s own decision.
Nooooooooo!! NOT THQ! THey suck! Unless they can completely overhaul the gameplay of MMA games, then the UFC games are going to suck (still.)
And nice to know that Spike is still up to their TNN style tricks (they were doing simular things with ECW.)
To be fair, though, Spike TV is trying to matchmake a card that, on paper, will appeal to the largest fan contingent possible and pop a nice buyrate. The two biggest criteria to decide the merits of a fight card are: (a) fan interest in the two fighters and any potential feud they have (such as Ortiz-Shamrock, Ali-Frazier, etc.) and (b) the excitement value to the casual fence fan (which is a larger pool of potential viewers than the hardcore fanbase). Just because 2 fighters may be top 10 in a weight class does not mean that there will be a significant interest in watching the fight. For example, Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. ‘Winky’ Wright may be a big fight to make in terms of the value of both fighters in the Pound for Pound rankings, but on paper it looks like a real stinkfest and neither fighter has real mainstream appeal, which would probably lead to a half full venue (unless its a small one) and maybe 250,000-350,000 buyrates. On the other hand, putting Floyd (the generally regarding #1 P4P fighter in Boxing today) against Oscar De La Hoya is setting general expectations of a sell out at the MGM Grand and a 1 million+ buyrate (pretty easily). The reason? Oscar is one of the most charismatic drawing cards in Boxing history and the promoters can angle Mr. Money taking on the best Boxer in the world. It also helps that Oscar is (generally) a pretty aggressive fighter (although there were stinkers such as the end of the ‘Tito’ Trinidad fight).
That is why I personally believe that even if a fight like Ken Shamrock-‘Tank’ Abbott may seem horrible from a hardcore fans standpoint (given the advanced age of both fighters and their recent losing streaks), as a promoter/matchmaker, it would probably make sense if the fight headlined a UFN card and was hyped up as on ‘Inside the UFC’ and other shows. It has a good chance of selling out the Red Rock (or another smaller venue in Las Vegas) and could pop a 2.0+ buyrate if angled right. After all, look at Tito-Shamrock III, even after Shamrock was embarassed twice. If the history of combat sports has proven anything, its that a promoter worth his salt will be able to promote a mismatch or ‘worthless’ fight into a classic that you would be foolish to miss, thus increasing their bank accounts.
As for the Sylvia-Couture matchup and the seeming confusion expressed by Jake Rossen in his article, it really is the most sensical matchup at Heavyweight for him. Yes, they could book him against Gonzaga, Imes, Hardonk, Arlovski, etc., but the fact of the matter is that Couture is reaching the tail end of his career (if he isn’t already there) and given that he’s probably going to cost the UFC several times more than most of those opponents listed to book into a fight and that he still has drawing value due to his legendary run at Light Heavyweight, it would be foolish to potentially kill him dead by having him lose to one of the aforementioned. With a Sylvia title fight you can hype up his chance to become the first three time UFC Heavyweight champion and a 5 time UFC champion. With any of the other bouts, there simply isn’t as much interest for the average fan to see him fight beyond ‘Is he too old to continue to fight’? In addition, I suspect the UFC fears another Frank Mir incident where Mir got upset by Cruz in his ‘warm up’ fight to face Arlovski in what was probably the potentially biggest HW bout that could have been booked at the time, money wise.
To put it simply: money talks.
The $50 for High-Def UFC PPV’s scares me. They are testing the market for that price range. They will get people use to it at $50, and then when most of the PPV channels move to HD completely, the UFC PPV’s will all be $50. Even as a devoted fan, $40 is about as much as I am willing to spend for a monthly PPV. Anything more, and I will start to become more selective on what I order.
SpikeTV was absolutely horrible with ECW. The WWE had issues with the channel from the first day they went there. It is no shock that the UFC is having some issues as well. The UFC should only have to put up with that crap for another year or so. After that, they should be enough of a proven entity to be able to shop their product around to other stations who will give them the freedom they deserve.
Randy Couture is a legend in his own right in the sport but I still will never understand when people put out the “legendary LHW (run)”.
He moved down from HW where he was beaten pretty soundly (great fight with Ricco)…upset Chuck, beat Tito (who’s proven to be a B fighter), traded wins with Vitor (another old guard star), beat Van Arsedale (didnt look good doing it) and lost twice to Chuck.
Not really a dream run or something that you’d say “yah he really dominated the LHW ranks.” I think if anything he will be best remembered b/c he a top guy when the popularity of “UFC(-mma)” exploded in NA.
I’d say a revitalized Couture brings a lot to the table and leave it at that. Personally, I’m excited to see what he does and win or lose he’ll have my respect.
Regardless of whether of not he’s “earned” the shot – he’s injected some more life into the HW division while they’re busy introducing Cro Cop, Herring et al…and they’re really looking to gain some steam with this previously lifeless division.
Regardless of how damaging a fight can be to the ratings, the development here IS worrying. Not because the fight isn’t scheduled to air, but because it WAS scheduled and hyped as a main event by UFC(who have had their own doubts about Nate The Great, mind you), and then flat out vetoed by the TV-network two weeks out. Not to mention it happening after a steady decline in ratings, which, one would think, would give the network more leverage in negotiations. We haven’t seen this before, and I for one just hope it isn’t the start of a trend.
Whether Spike’s reason is that it will probably be boring or if it’s because it’ll probably be three rounds on the ground is also a question hanging in the air. Hopefully the first of the two.
What was the rating for UFN7 anyways? It didn’t break 2, did it?
If I was the UFC i’d pay a bit more attention to what I put in my UFNs, mainstream appeal is what is giving them their financial stability in the PPVs. Give an UFN fights like Ortiz vs Shamrock and you have a 3.0+ rating and your ppvs boost up over 500k. Diego vs Riggs and you have a 1.8 rating.
It is interesting about the UFC and mynetwork tv deal
I just saw this in the sportsbusiness daily
FSN, MYNETWORKTV AND IFL AGREE TO TV AND NEW MEDIA DEAL
FSN and MyNetworkTV today announced a three-tier TV and new media programming alliance with the Int’l Fight League (IFL). FSN gains multi-year rights to air 22 one-hour late-night event programs produced by the IFL beginning in Q2 ’07, and also has the right to produce PPV events and VOD product. Additionally, FSN and the IFL will create a joint venture to manage IFL-related digital media rights. MyNetworkTV will broadcast 22 two-hour IFL-produced programs beginning the middle of this year (FSN).
So both UFC and IFL will be on the same network? This will be interesting.
The Gaijin: It was an amazing run considering those 3 guys (Chuck, Tito & Vitor) were the entire UFC LHW division and the advanced age of Randy at the time. In addition, while he went 4-3 in the LHW run, the Vitor loss was off a cut at the very start of the fight, a vast contrast to the beating he dished out to Vitor in the rubber match (even if you take in the headbutt into consideration – you don’t get beaten into submission over a single headbutt, you just get swelling and/or cut). And even if you think Tito is a B-level fighter (which I disagree with given that he’s beaten a good number of the top fighters of his time such as Silva, Kondo, Mezger, Tanner and Matyushenko and had not lost in 4 years entering into the Couture fight, a HEAVY betting favorite even with Randy’s demolition of Chuck in the previous fight), Randy DESTROYED Tito, even slapping his ass at the end of their fight in a sign of mockery at his pretty weak leg lock attempt . And Chuck needs no defense, I would imagine, and look at how Randy was able to (quite intelligently) dirty box, takedown, gas out and beat up Chuck into a stoppage in their first fight.
And I do agree that throwing out Lister-Marquardt with a few weeks to go by Spike was idiotic. If you are going to nix fights, at least do so with enough time to hype up the ‘set’ final card. Mystery cards rarely are big successes in terms of ratings/buyrates/gates (unless the main fight(s) are more than enough to carry the ratings no matter the undercard).