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K-1 signs a new South Korean TV deal
By Zach Arnold | February 23, 2007
Report by Yeo Jong-Hoon
On Friday, CJ Media announced a new TV deal with FEG (the backer of K-1). The deal starts this year and expires in 2010. CJ Media will start airing K-1 World GP shows (beginning with the 3/3 Yokohama Arena event) on their cable channel, XTM. All four K-1 tour series (World GP, World MAX, HERO’s, and Dynamite!) will air on the network. Financial terms were not disclosed, but one source speculated the following: 15 billion won for the TV rights, 6 billion won for K-1 South Korea tour shows, and 10 billion won for investment in a new company called FEG Korea. The total price tag is 31 billion won, almost triple what OCN paid for the rights to PRIDE.
This represents a significant financial increase in K-1’s previous South Korean TV deal (the previous K-1 TV deal was with MBC/ESPN and it was worth 720 million won over three years from 2004-2006). PRIDE used to air on XTM (CJ Media), but now the network has chosen K-1 programming instead.
Topics: All Topics, HERO's, K-1, Media, MMA, South Korea | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
31 billion won is around $33 million USD.
Yes, it is. 33,047,409.56 on google’s currency converter 😉
What I find of more interest is that they decided to go with K-1 versus their former PRIDE programming. I’m not sure what that means to MMA as a whole, but I do believe it to be significant, at least for PRIDE.
Hey, that’s a different biz model for Korea and East Asia. There is no concept of PPV. It’s hard to enforce and people are not used to paying cable companies or their TV providers. So broadcast companies basically pays for them and then sell advertising. Understand the point here?
That’s why Pride never gets it in the U.S. They don’t understand that the U.S. is not the same country where piracy reigns and laws can’t be enforced. They can really expand in the U.S. because of the PPV potential. But they don’t have the marketing expertise to do it right.