Zach, one word for you, INFOtainment..

All about ratings, so sad that they don’t report legitimately.

And I have been talking about New York not getting MMA legislation done until 2010 for over a year now and no one listens!!!!

They NY Assembly goes on recess for the rest of the year in two weeks!

Have you read that on any MMA blog other than mine?

The financial impact this will have on other sports (boxing, rugby, motor sport, and football to a certain extent) is why it is being covered as a big sports story in the UK.

The potential impacts on the UFC are threefold –

i) losing significant exposure of UFC99, the TUF Finale and UFC100 if Setanta goes down and the TV rights get caught up in the administration process. To be honest I can’t imagine three worse cards for them to lose coverage of. Given the wider exposure of TUF series through Virgin it would be a diaster if they can’t extract the TV rights and resale (assuming Setanta still hold them and haven’t already conducting a fire sale). Likewise for Bisping’s fight at UFC100 – if, and it’s a big if, he wins they will be looking to promote a supershow around him in the UK. Lesner is also a proven huge draw on UK TV for UFC.

ii) Losing revenue. As previously pointed out Setanta likely put in a significant bid for exclusivity. They are unlikely to get anywhere near that bid on resale (the collapse in advertising revenue dependent stations leaves Sky in a dominant position). Additionally Setanta may well have already missed quarterly payments to UFC which they will never get back.

3) Not being able to get a TV deal that gives them the coverage they want. Ideally they want TV in the UK to be both a significant revenue earner and advertising for UK live events. Sky might save them but given their huge portfloio of sport (on their premium subscription channles) they are likely to low ball. Otherwise a Bravo or Virgin deal might offer wider exposure (greater reach) but would pay less and events would also be aired on tape delay reducing the importance of the brand.

To be honest all of this creates significant problems for all of the sports currently with significant exclusive deals with Setanta and UFC is no exceptions.

Lets not forget it’s alreadly heavily rumoured David Haye pulled out of his heavyweight title fight because Setanta asked him to take a pay cut.

I just think its funny how few MMA sites are getting into this.

Few sites wanted to talk about the collapse of PRIDE when it was ongoing. Few sites want to rock the boat or talk about any important story. For the most part, the MMA media corp is not that serious in consistently and repeatedly covering legitimate stories.

What can I say? It’s hard to make money covering legitimate stories, and those in the media corp who would rather post press releases and kiss ass end up making some coin.

The other explanation is that there’s a lot of stupidity right now amongst the various writers.