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Today’s chalkboard: HDNet buys IFL assets, Patry leaves TKO, WEC 11/5 Florida card
By Zach Arnold | October 30, 2008
Satoshi Ishii will make his formal retirement declaration from active Judo competition on November 3rd.
Yoshihiro Akiyama won an award at the Style Icon Awards in Seoul, South Korea on the 30th. (Details here in English.)
A note to various MMA blogs: Keep your eyes open to Google News and watch for any spam blogs (splogs) that lift your material wholesale. The two most common sites that I see material get lifted from for Spam Blogs are Yahoo Sports and Bloody Elbow. Here’s a perfect example.
MMA Canada: Stephane Patry, CEO of TKO Quebec resigns
“After eight years as president of the organization, I am ready to undertake new challenges. I will continue to manage the atheletes that I am currently involved with and I have received a few interesting offers which I need to follow and develop” added Stephane Patry.
IFL 8-k SEC filing: HDNet LLC buys out assets for $650,000 USD plus some IFL debts
UGO: Interview with Miguel Torres of WEC
WEC 11/5 Florida card line-up:
- 145 pounds: Urijah Faber vs. Mike Brown
- 185 pounds: Paulo Filho vs. Chael Sonnen
- 145 pounds: Jens Pulver vs. Leonard Garcia
- 185 pounds: Danillo Villefort vs. Jake Rosholt
- 155 pounds: “Razor” Rob McCullough vs. Donald Cerrone
- 145 pounds: Jose Aldo vs. Jonathan Brookins
- 170 pounds: Johny Hendricks vs. Alex Serdyukov
- 135 pounds: Rani Yahya vs. Yoshiro Maeda
- 155 pounds: Danny Castillo vs. TBD
- 205 pounds: Steve Steinbeiss vs. TBD
Topics: Canada, Japan, Media, MMA, South Korea, WEC, Zach Arnold | 8 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
$650,000?! That’s it?!?! Man HDNet got a good deal for IFL. I’m not kidding, that is quite a bit cheaper than when Vince McMahon bought out WCW (that was for I think 2 Million, and that comapny was worth in the hundred millions years earlier.).
Is it just me or are there far too few Miguel Torres interviews in this world. On Breen’s show, the interview above and others I have seen on the internet makes me a fan of this guy. A nice gift for the gab.
Actually if you read the article about the deal on MMAJunkie.com HDNet got hosed on the deal. Apparently they were only bidding against themselves. The IFL tape library probably isn’t worth that. The name itself and title belts have absolutely no value.
There is something to be said for owning the fight footage of guys that started in IFL and then you can sell it or use it later on as they get famous. But the reality is that there weren’t that many good fights in the IFL ring. And any of the guys i.e. Horodecki, Hieron, Ben Rothwell, etc by the time they are big marketable stars one day they’ll have fought a bunch of fights for UFC, Strikeforce or whoever else and their 3-5 IFL fights won’t really matter.
Is HDNet going to make shows out of the old IFL fights and run them as filler. I’m sure they’ll do that. And over time will recoup the $650,000 with sponosrships/ads I guess (they don’t run ads on HDNet though do they?). But I still think they could have gotten this for less. Realistically you probably could have just gotten it for picking up some of the IFL debts.
Bad buy in my opinion.
Roadblock is right, exhibit 99.1 to their 8k says that the bankruptcy court held an auction to find other bids, and no one bit.
I’m kind of skimming it, and it seems like “certain liabilities” only includes $30k that IFL owed to Winnercom. Since Winnercom had possession of their tapes, to get them, HDNet or IFL had to pay Winnercom. Anyone else lending money to IFL got screwed because they didn’t have possession of hard assets.
They’re getting the tapes, the company name and branding, and contracts…but according to the bankruptcy court’s decree, they aren’t obligated to do anything with the contracts. I don’t know what fighters that might affect. HDNet doesn’t really own many fighter contracts now (I think they have Mayhem’s ticket, but I’m not even sure about that).
HDNet has already produced shows for several IFL events, so this really is about making sure that they retain those shows that they already produced.
HDNet does show ads, but there aren’t many, particularly in the timeslots where they usually show MMA events.
So basically, you’re talking $680k to keep the eight or ten hours of HD programming that IFL had produced by HDNet. HDNet has no interest in their SD stuff, and probably no interest in whatever contracts remain.
What most of you fail to realize is that they don’t have to pay royalty fees for showing IFL fights, keep the IFL Brand name if they ever want to do anything with it, and also take over the Fox Sports Net tv network deal that the IFL had in place.
The amount of footage they have of fighters fighting in the UFC, WEC, Sengoku, and Affliction is all worth it. A good buy, in my opinion.
I believe the FOX Sports deal expires at the end of this year and that IFL wasn’t recieving money on it.
As far as the fighters being other places. That’s my original point. The quality of fights in the IFL were never that good. You’d be hard pressed to make a DVD of 10 great IFL fights. Horodecki/Palasewsi I is probably the best fight in the organization. Good fight. Not some epic fight you need to see 5 times though.
The UFC has most of the IFL “stars” and Affliction has the two best heavyweights and best Welterweight and neither of those companies even bid on the library. That tells you that HDNet overpaid. That was my point. I am correct.
What HDNET should do is send out scouts to find and MMA fighters that can put on an entertaining fight, whether stand up, on the ground, or a good mix, then put them on a live weekly show that’s all about good, exciting fights. Let the fans vote on which ones they like, along with “experts.” The top vote getters would be back when they were ready. That might be a good way to start an MMA show.
FSN was paying $20,000 per program to the IFL. Honestly, that wasn’t bad money for TV coverage.