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Saturday super links
By Zach Arnold | February 2, 2007
On Friday night, I saw several MySpace bulletins from fighters who are claiming that the Utah state legislature is trying to attempt to pass a bill that would curtail or ban MMA in the state. Does anyone have more informaton on this story (as to whether its true or not)?
Onto today’s headlines.
- 24 Hours Vancouver: Mike Tyson joins same drug rehab center as Lindsay Lohan
- Fight Report: Could live boxing thrive at movie theatres?
- Television Week: Fox stations buy UFC series
- The Hollywood Reporter: ‘UFC Wired’ pins 9 Fox stations
- The Washington Post: Travis Lutter doesn’t mind being the underdog against Anderson Silva
- The Baltimore Sun: Building MMA from the ground up
- The Canadian Press (via The Metro Toronto): Travis Lutter fails to make weight in UFC
- Canada.com: Mirko Cro Cop makes UFC debut Saturday night in Las Vegas
- The Pacific Business News (Hawaii): Auditor says that MMA fights need oversight in Hawaii
- CBS Sportsline: UFC 67 – Some routs, contentious undercard bouts in forecast
- MMA on Tap: UFC 67 – All or Nothing Preview
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Just to clarify on the UFC Wired situation since there seems to be a lot of confusion (ie, people on forums thinking that the UFC has a Fox deal or a MyNetworkTV deal)…
The difference here is that the UFC show (UFC Wired, which will be like a mix of UFC Unleashed and Inside the UFC) is syndicated… ie, not a national television deal, but a nationally syndicated television deal.
A national television deal is something like the IFL has with MyNetworkTV or the UFC has with Spike TV.
With a syndicated deal, it’s going to have a different day and time in most markets. Every market will be different.
With a full-fledged national TV deal, you can say, “The show airs on X day at X time all throughout the country.†ie, every Monday and Saturday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM on MyNetworkTV in the case of the IFL… or every Thursday from 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM on Spike TV in the case of The Ultimate Fighter.
Also, Fox Television Stations owns numerous local TV affiliates, including some Fox affiliates, some MyNetworkTV affiliates, and even some affiliates of competing networks because Fox Television Stations a separate division of the News Corp. empire than the broadcast TV network known as “Fox.”
So, for example, UFC Wired might air on Saturdays at 11:00 PM on the local Fox affiliate in Baltimore, and Thursdays at 10:00 PM on the local MyNetworkTV affiliate in Minneapolis, and Mondays at 6:00 PM on the local CW affiliate in Chicago. It’s different for each market with a syndicated show.
intrestiing, Dana sure knows how to fight off competiotjn. Wonder when they will air Im guessing more likely on the weekends as Ivan gave an exmaple for.
Dana White is clearly trying push out all other competition as far as other fighting federations go. This could and likely will lead to a collapse in the fighting federation as we know it. With players like Showtime and HBO coming into the game, the focus will eventually turn to the fighter and not the organization. We are slowing seeing the evolution of this in the forms of FEDOR, Frank Shamrock, Brandon Vera and Matt Lindland as high profile examples. All of the fighters are in the sport one for the money and secondly for the competition. Showtime, HBO and other boxing promoters realize that the large dollars come in the form of having the best face the best, The fans want to see the best face the best. The top fighters are starting to have the pull to call their own shots in the form of the best fight financially. In Fedors case he is fighting outside of Pride for large dollars on his home soil. Fedor is not fighting the number one contender by any stretch, but he is taking control of his career. If history tells us anything, the Dana Whites of the world should not be looking out for the next upstart organization, but he should be looking after his fighters as they will be his biggest competitor.
By the end of 2007, Zuffa will be on the following channels:
– PPV
– HBO
– SpikeTV
– Versus
– FSN en Espanol
– My Network TV
Just amazing. I remember not being able to even get a PPV during the UFC 20’s….
I’ve read where the IFL on MY Network TV is a big deal, that EVERYONE in the country will be able to see it. Well thats not completely accurate, as I don’t have a local My Network TV station. I can see 3 different “CW” stations, but no local MY Network TV station. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in this boat either.
My Network TV is available to around 97% of the country. Its a strong clearance, but has absolutely no traction as a brand at this point. IFL will be on everywhere but no one will likely know about it.
FTI: IFL is claiming 4500 in attendance at the last show, now how much of that was papered, I dont know.
The rumor was around 1,500 paid attendance. I haven’t heard of any credible reporters sya that number though. And who knows if that number includes people who bought 2 for 1, with both tickets counting as being paid.
By the way, the UFC sent out an email to everybody on their list basically with just text, informing them that Travis Lutter didn’t make weight. I bashed the UFC yesterday for not having a headline on their front page that specifically said this. I am happy they sent out the email. Good ethics.
Ivan…so could stations potentially use UFC Wired as a lead in for the 2 hour IFL show?
Man, with that UFC Wired story, it feels like 15 years ago, when WWF had an insane amount of programming on cable, syndication, and PPV, not including the lead in shows of smaller and rival promotions. IMO, the only thing missing, is the IFL getting a three hour block on TBS every Saturday at 6:05 pm, EST :D.
Zack,
My understanding is that the show was specifically developed to fill the weekend syndication void in the 18-34 demographic. Several years ago it was a booming market with shows like Zena, Hercules, Baywatch, etc.
Just some specuation on my part, but anyone heard anything about the UFC getting a network TV deal with NBC?
We know they’ve been talking to HBO forever. We know that NBC’s and HBO’s sports departments have a working relationship. We know that NBC recently launched full-scale UFC coverage on their website. Combine this with the fact that Dave Meltzer said the UFC wired deal wouldn’t be the last network TV deal announced this week and I start to wonder.
It would certainly explain alot about what the hold up on the HBO deal has been. It also fits nicely into NBC’s courtship of the end-all-be-all 18-34 male demographic, right along side the xtreme sports coverage.
The UFC on NBC would be the biggest single event in the history of MMA. I honestly would never have even of imagined it a few years ago.
“Combine this with the fact that Dave Meltzer said the UFC wired deal wouldn’t be the last network TV deal announced this week and I start to wonder.”
That was in reference to BodogFight airing soon on the Ion Network. (Ion is the former PAX network that is now mostly infomercials.)
Once again, the UFC does not have a deal with MyNetworkTV, they have a syndicated TV deal that will include many MyNetworkTV stations. Still different timeslots for each market. Also, the other network deal that Meltzer was referring to was Bodog on PAX, which doesn’t really count (just ask the promoters of Real Pro Wrestling).
Ivan,
I heard that while the IFL has a TV deal with MyNetworkTV, that they are still paying for the timeslot. Is there any truth to this? I have to wonder how much advertising revenues they will actually see from this show. Typical shows on that network get small dollar commercials, and most of the time can’t even fill up the entire time.
MMACritic— The IFL is not paying for the MyNetworkTV timeslot. On the contrary, the MyNetworkTV deal is the first deal where the IFL is actually getting paid a programming rights fee. It’s $50,000 per episode plus $20,000 for each episode replay. That adds up to approximately $1.5 million for the upcoming 22-episode season. Not enough to recoup their costs, but still a very important step because it’s the first time they’re getting paid a rights fee to air a TV show.
The IFL deal with FSN is one where the IFL does not pay FSN for the timeslot, and FSN does not pay the IFL for the programming rights. Instead, they split the ad time, so on an hour-long show with 16 minutes of commercials, FSN gets the revenue from 8 minutes of commercials and the IFL gets the revenue from 8 minutes of commercials.
So does that mean the IFL does not get any advertising revenues from MyNetworkTV? Just that flat fee?
Yes (other than the in-show sponsorships like the Mickey’s Malt Liquor Replay on UFC broadcasts), but that is still infinitely more than the IFL is making from half of the ad revenue of a 0.2-rated show on FSN. It’s an important step up towards where they need to be in terms of revenue, while still being nowhere near enough to cover expenses yet.