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Bellator’s scheduling problems on Comcast Sportsnet and how UFC is influencing Comcast
By Zach Arnold | April 8, 2010
I’ve had many people ask me this week how I was able to view the Countdown to UFC 112 hype show so early (I saw it on Monday on CSN). I was simply watching the network and it appeared. Normally, the hype specials are set for Spike TV, but they are now airing on Comcast. On Thursday, the same show aired on CSN affiliates.
In addition to the hype specials, Comcast has been airing non-stop barker blasts and ads for UFC PPVs. This started with the UFC 111 PPV and has been amped up significantly for UFC 112. The ads in essence tell people how to order the PPV on their Comcast system.
So why is Comcast amping up the hype for UFC on such a regular basis? Because Comcast and UFC are now television partners. It all started with the move to Versus. Being on Versus alone isn’t a big deal right now, but having access to Comcast’s advertising and marketing resources sure is. Which is why Comcast hyping up UFC is such a big deal. They have a big financial stake in how UFC does on PPV given the % cut that the mega-cable company makes in America off of those PPV events.
Which leads us to Bellator. The excruciating pain of trying to find the live Thursday Bellator events on CSN affiliates is proving to be a challenge to everyone. CSN has lots of programming — from basketball games to baseball games, the network affiliates have plenty of reasons to pre-empt airings of Bellator shows. In my case, if I can’t get access to the live Bellator shows, I will end up having to watch the edited versions on Telemundo each Saturday. (For the record, Bellator’s debut show aired on CSN Bay Area at 8 PM on Thursday night. I couldn’t find it in my TV guide, however.)
The only ray of sunshine I can give to anyone out there who wants to see Bellator events live on FSN/Comcast but can’t get access on cable or small satellite (DirecTV/Dish Network) is this — if you already have a Ku wave satellite set-up (with a C-wave conical scalar set-up) or a BUD (big ugly dish) with C-band LNBs in place, you can try to pick up the “wild feeds” each Thursday night on your satellite if your receiver has blind scan has an option. If you don’t have that option, then contact management at this site and ask them each Thursday to do a blind scan to get you the wild feed information on telecasts. Wild feeds = legal.
As for Comcast users/subscribers, I don’t know what else to say.
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 11 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
My Comcast SportNet wasn’t even playing a major sports leagues game tonight and the first 30 minutes of Bellator was not shown. Instead, they had a studio show on the Celtics.
The problem just isn’t Comcast. FSN is just as bad. Some guy on The Underground said Bellator was not shown in order for his FSN affiliate to show a REPLAY of a Kansas City Royals game.
The diehards…. The hardcores…. Are having a hard time watching Bellator. Which means for the casual fan, it’s going to take a small miracle for them to find it each and every week.
The Comcast/FSN combo is just not a MMA option. It’s really that simple. It works for a filler show like UFC Unleashed or a UFC Countdown show. Trying to put on a live event across so many markets is impossible.
With all of that said…. Comcast does have a vested interest in the UFC staying strong and dominant…. And they have the power to help them out when needed. That certainly doesn’t help the small organizations like Bellator.
“So why is Comcast amping up the hype for UFC on such a regular basis? Because Comcast and UFC are now television partners. It all started with the move to Versus. Being on Versus alone isn’t a big deal right now, but having access to Comcast’s advertising and marketing resources sure is. Which is why Comcast hyping up UFC is such a big deal. They have a big financial stake in how UFC does on PPV given the % cut that the mega-cable company makes in America off of those PPV events.”
You are also forgetting something that hasn’t been talked about but was a big move for the UFC and that is that currently you can order UFC fights and old ppv’s on Demand with UFC on Demand. I’ve been ordering several of these shows myself since I found out about the option and I know i’m not the only one. The fact is the Comcast and the UFC go hand in hand now because their success is beneficial to each other in several ways.
As far as Bellator goes I also missed the entire first half hour because of Celtics now and the same thing will happen next week. That is a huge hit for anyone who wants to check out Bellator’s shows looks like they have fallen into the same traps that many other orgs have with making bad tv deals that only end up hurting them in the end.
I was able to watch it twice. Luckily, the Cardinals had a day game so it was on as scheduled (FoxSports 9-11pm) and the Cubs played in the Eastern Time Zone (Comcast 11:30pm-1:30am).
I think the scheduling issues could be a hindrance to hardcore fans, because I think there are some who will stop looking for the show if they find the results online, and it’s going to take effort to avoid the results if you live somewhere where the first showing is at 2 AM and you can’t stay up and can’t watch during the day the next day.
On the flip side, if their FSN is going to be playing the replays constantly (ala spike and unleashed) that could help them pull in the casual fans. For them, fights (especially fights with people the don’t know) are sort of evergreen, and I could see people watching the same fights over and over without realizing it, or flipping over and sticking to the fights if they happen upon them.
Honestly, I don’t think UFC is going out of their way to hinder Bellator. People paint Dana White as starkly anti competition, and he is when guys want to go head to head (Aflliction, Strikeforce) but not so much with the small leagues. Bellator has been careful to pretty much remain a feeder league, picking up and building up young up and comers, and I’ve read interviews where DW has basically said he appreciates those types of orgs being out there.
You don’t see him trying to smash KotC out of existence, ya know?
I think if someone catches Bellator on Telemundo and decides hey this stuff is cool, they’re that much more likely to buy the UFC PPV that comes up a few weeks later. I don’t see them taking business from UFC at all.
The only problem with Bellator is that they have a champions clause for their fighters that makes the UFC’s look weak by comparison.
Which means they won’t be acting as a feeder league because they won’t allow their champions to move to the next level.
That’s a hard claim to back up considering how active their champions were this past offseason. It didn’t seem to be any problem for the fighters at all.
Bellator got scrubbed altogether by my local FSN affiliate.
A tape-delated show was scheduled to air at 11pm but the Cavs game ran long so their post-game studio show didn’t start until after Bellator was scheduled to air. So I flipped to Comedy Central and watched The Daily Show & Colbert and by the time I switched back, they had already moved on to their daily SportsCenter-style show an hour early and just skipped Bellator entirely.
Awesome.
Might as well still be on Deportes as far as I am concerned.
The entire BE frontpage has UFC 112 PPV ads all over it as of today. And the ads are from Comcast….
Bellator is getting hosed by these stupid deals. When hardcore MMA fans have to resort to piracy (downloading the events the day after) to watch your product, that’s pretty sad. MMA organizations from now on need to avoid FSN like the plague. Nothing good can come from FSN.
I can’t believe how calm you guys are being. You are all hardcore fans like I am. My blood is boiling over this issue. When Bellator was first being shown here in the New England area the live events were being broadcast each and every week. However, most weeks the start time was 8:30 instead of the actual 8:00 start time. So I would end up missing the first half hour of the event. That alone was extraordinarily irritating. I am the type of long time MMA fan that was a fan from the start of MMA. So I realize maybe I am in the minority. Having said that I still find it extremely unprofessional and straight up bush league of comcast to behave the way they are behaving. After such a great start all of a sudden comcast would advertise on my cable guide that they were going to broadcast the bellator even and then it wouldn’t be on. From there is has been downhill. Now it’s not even being advertised. In my mind, I am just destroying anything and anyone responsible for doing this to the great bellator MMA events that I am now missing. The anger I have is really at a high level and I wish my fellow hardcore MMA fans would feel the same way as I do and boycott anything that comcast has to offer, call comcast business offices and lodge complaints on a daily basis, and anything else that will have a negative impact on comcast’s profit margin in order to slap them into putting bellator back on. Of course this will never happen. Too much effort I am sure will be the excuse. But to me, this seems like only the beginning. What’s next? Skip UFC prelims on spike? Shorter WEC shows on Versus? I don’t know about you all but I friggin love the bellator shows and the fights are absolutely top notch and often times are better than even Strikeforce or the UFC fights. So does this mean that Alvarez vs Huerta isn’t going to be shown??????????????? That is something I will not be able to take.