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The limitations of the CBS/Showtime model for Strikeforce
By Zach Arnold | November 9, 2009
Over at the Heavy web site, Jonathan Snowden has an interview posted with Scott Coker after Saturday’s night show in Chicago. For all intents and purposes, I thought Coker did a good job with the show. Obviously the scheduling situation with the Mark Miller fight being canceled at the last minute on the undercard is a bad move on their part, but it’s the same type of thing that happened to Jay Hieron on the August show where he wasn’t on TV and ended up losing sponsorship money. Does the heat go on Strikeforce or should it go on CBS & Showtime? Probably the latter.
I wrote an article for MMA Memories talking about the problems that Strikeforce faces by being under the CBS/Showtime business model. There was a reason last week why I transcribed the interview Kelly Kahl did with Fanhouse. He talks a big game in terms of what CBS has done for Strikeforce in terms of promotion and either he’s a total spinner or he’s not looking at the ways to promote Strikeforce from multiple angles. Having 10-seconds ads featuring Choi Hong-Man on top of Fedor is not the way to promote him. I don’t care if you ‘flood the zone’ on NFL or SEC football games or not, that’s not effective advertising. When the whole goal is to try to promote new stars, CBS did the bare minimum on Saturday – no interviews from the fighters, a poor ad campaign leading up to the event, and no sense of either CBS or Showtime doing episodic programming with Strikeforce in the future.
If you want to be event-driven only in terms of promotion, that’s fine, UFC is that way, but Spike TV invests countless hours each week to promote the brand. Roger Goodell likes to say that he protects “the shield” (the NFL logo)… well, Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta do a pretty good job of protecting the UFC brand. Scott Coker, at this point, finds himself at the mercy of what Showtime and CBS want to do. Sure, Kelly Kahl and company can say that Scott is the head matchmaker and that they defer to him on many decisions, but ultimately Showtime and CBS runs the show and not Strikeforce. As the ratings information comes in and we see how things play out both politically and in a business sense, you get the feeling that UFC made the right decision in not immediately giving up control in exchange for exposure on CBS.
Note in the MMA Memories article what Kahl says about the idea of working with UFC in the future.
As for Jake Shields… the only defense I can say for him for his boring fight performance is that he was lucky Chad Dawson was fighting Glen Johnson. Who’s more boring – Shields or Dawson?
Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 156 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I don’t disagree with you assessment Zach but I don’t believe that CBS is completely sold on MMA thus they have yet to substantive push.
I think they are trying to “Jay Leno” the situation aka grab a lucrative demographic with a limited investment of capital.
What is up with this sudden bombardment of MMA coverage from “Heavy.com”? I would never begrudge a person trying to make a living in their chosen profession, but it must be humbling to have your work appear alongside other hard-hitting journalism such as “What is America’s Sexiest Sandwich?”
smoogy
jon snowden sold them on the idea of doing an mma-dedicated section instead of just the videos from the UFC… jon is heading up the section for the most part, they fly him out to the uFC’s …he writes and also wrangles up other writers, paying gigs not huge money but hey paying gigs are paying gigs… he talked to me about writing but i wasn’t to keen on doing anything anywhere….
Yeah, you gotta give Jon credit as he does a great job getting Heavy.com off the ground. No offense to the other dudes, but they just don’t know MMA like Jon does, nor do they have the connections to the right kind of writers (guys like Zach, Rome, of course myself~!).
Anyway, Zach, the only thing about Shields not being as boring as Dawson is that Shields was on national television in a spot where you could make or break the audience for the main event, and it broke them.
UFC has a TV relationship that’s just completely unrealistic to assume anyone else can get.
There was a perfect storm for them that they blew up in popularity at the same exact time Spike had a bitter parting with WWE. And WWE had their position when they were basically a brand new network looking for a flagship, so in turn UFC became the flagship. No major network would give them as many commercials/infomercials as they please and the ability to program at will. The NFL wouldn’t even get that from FOX or CBS. In a way, the UFC were the lucky guy who happened to be sitting next to the super hot chick at the bar after she had a few drinks trying to get over a nasty break up. CBS’s relationship with EliteXC ended completely differently.
As Zak pointed out, they’re cheap programming and since they’ll be on a dead night for television every other month at the most, as long as they don’t get XFL-level abysmal ratings they’ll give them airtime.
More people celebrated in the ring with Fedor than watched the show on tv. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had 14 year job security like Kelly Kahl
A few of my opinion on this topic:
1) I have read people online say the Shields fight was great to watch. I think some people try a little too hard to like something. I fully understand grappling, and that bout was extremely boring for the majority of it.
2) I think it was Mike Rome who pointed out that the entire show was called Saturday Night Fights and barely made a reference to Strikeforce. I would not be happy if I was Scott Coker on that one. That is CBS basically saying we will put anybody under that banner, and we are not willing to build up your brand as a result of it.
3) The direction of the show was horrible. Watching Antonio Silva coming to the cage as they went to break was weird. Rushing all the fights one after another with no real context didn’t help matters. Not having the walk-ins for the MAIN EVENT was a HORRIBLE TV decision. The walk-ins build towards the fight. Even UFC Fight Nights feature the walk-ins for the main event fighters. This is what happens when the entertainment and not sports side handles the show.
4) Another issue was the woman’s undercard fight. The fight lasted a minute. It would have taken 5 minutes maximum to splice that fight into the live telecast. And yet it didn’t happen. CBS obviously doesn’t care about helping Strikeforce build towards their next card. Of course, that fight should have been on the main card anyways, but that is for a completely different discussion.
5) I can’t imagine Strikeforce being back on CBS until at least March or April of 2010. Fedor, Gina, or both will have to be on the show. Fedor alone did not get them great ratings. Being on every 6 months does not build up momentum when the rest of the shows are on Showtime which gets 500,000 viewers tops for a show.
At the end of the day, the UFC always talks about having PARTNERS when it comes to making deals with other companies. Whether it be a sponsor, a video game company, or the network they put their shows on. They want somebody who understands their business and understands what they want to get accomplished. This has gotten them crapped on by many fans for not signing network deals or not doing co-promotion. And when you see a show like we did on Saturday night, it becomes obvious why they make such requests. Without it, the networks have basically no regard for the quality of the product…. They just want to churn it out in a 2 hour block and sell TV ads…..
I highly doubt they’d be on in March with their wall-to-wall NCAA coverage that month. February is very possible since that’s a dead month for them with the NFL and college football seasons being over.
There’s nothing to suggest CBS is dissatisfied with Strikeforce outside of wishful thinking. They gave Elite another show after the 2.0 overall rating the Lawler-Smith show got, and showed no signs of severing ties with them if the stand up incident didn’t happen. Not only that, but they signed another MMA company a year later. That shows commitment to MMA programming. MMA is a hot trend and they’re getting the #2 company in America cheaply.
45 Huddle,
We get it already. You think anything that is not the UFC is utter crap.
We get it.
Save your posts for ufc.tv
The Shields/Miller fight WAS fun to watch. You hate it because it was not in the UFC. If that fight HAS been in the UFC, I am sure you would be here gushing about the awesome display of grappling.
Oh, and listen to the Sherdog “Beatdown After the Bell”. Breen, DeSantis, and Sherwood agree that Fedor beats Brock no problem.
But I know the idea of someone in the UFC “losing” makes you quiver, so I do not expect you to acknowledge it.
Part of the fight, yes. Part of it, no. After the choke near the end of R3, Shields went into protect mode and went for the decision.
After the Lawler/Smith show, CBS gave EliteXC one more chance… Which was the Kimbo/Shamrock card. If that did a poor rating, EliteXC would have been off of CBS regardless of what happened during the fights. So CBS hasn’t exactly been great for MMA. They have shown that they will end it in a heartbeat if they don’t like what they see. That forces the promoter to do some funky things in order to try and get good ratings for every show instead of building a bigger fanbase slowly through like a bi-monthyl type of show.
You are correct about March…. Won’t happen then. My guess is April at the earliest then. They are going to want Gina Carano, and she isn’t going to be available in February….
“That shows commitment to MMA programming.”
That doesn’t show commitment. That shows a network with the oldest demographic of viewers making an attempt to bring in a younger fanbase to it’s programming. They saw the results of Kimbo Slice, and wanted to see if they could do it again with the #1 Heavyweight in the world. They did not strike gold twice. In fact, MMA is more popular now then it was during the EliteXC Era (if there was such a thing), and yet the ratings don’t show for it. With more MMA fans out there, this show should have easily matched the Kimbo rating. That it not a good.
The other issue for Strikeforce and CBS/Showtime is $$$$$. Where do they get it from? Strikeforce already gave away their Fedor/Rogers fight for free on CBS. Fedor/Werdum has no value to anybody. Overeem is completely unknown in the states no matter how the fanboys try and pump him up to be some sort of god. Showtime does have an increased base of subscribers, but they don’t get enough per subscriber to really shell out a lot for MMA. Strikeforce needs to be able to generate revenues to compete with the UFC and to have a big enough front office that they can handle what they are trying to accomplish. Heck, Scott Coker has admitted that he put off negotiations with fighters because he has too much on his plate the past few weeks.
When all is said and done…. SHOWTIME is the one who needs to make the decision here. DO THEY REALLY WANT QUALITY MMA ON THEIR NETWORK?
If No…. Continue to do what they do. Pay little to Strikeforce and then get what you pay for.
If Yes…. Then they need to put more money and effort into it. Pay Strikeforce enough for them to be a real force in the industry. Work with CBS in order to get the broadcasts right, instead of just being a once in a while show to sell some “young people” ads.
Showtime has yet to really commit, and that will always hurt Strikeforce. And I don’t have much confidence in them making a true commitment EVER. If their boxing program is any indication, they will allow this to fall flat on it’s face. Yes, they have the Super Middleweight Tournament, but it is filled with no big names (to the general fans), and is not the typical stuff that they do…..
Jonathan,
Read my first post again. All my critisms have nothing to do with the UFC. I only compare it to the UFC at the end. Each of my complaints are valid and worth mentioning. I know you are trying to blow my comments off as just a pro-Zuffa rant…. But if you take the time to read them and understand them, you will see that there is some logic to them. What happened on Saturday night was not all good.
As for Shields/Miller…. It reminded me of watching Abu Dhabi. Very talented grapplers who put me to sleep. Shields ia a VERY TALENTED GRAPPLER!!! I just don’t find grappling interesting. I wrestled for multiple years, and I fall asleep watching that on TV too. And yet competing in it was the ultimate rush for me. What is great technnically is not always great visually.
As for Sherdog…. I’m not sure why anybody puts any weight into their opinions. Breen talked for about 10 minutes to start off the show praising everything possible, and completely leaving out the major issue. We all know Sherdog’s angle. They have overly pumped up every single organization that has tried to compete with the UFC. From the IFL, to EliteXC, to Affliction, and now Strikeforce. They go crazy on their amount of coverage and fanboy out thinking this with be “the one” that finally makes the UFC hurt. It’s as laughable as Josh Gross’s opinion at this point…
When the whole goal is to try to promote new stars, CBS did the bare minimum on Saturday – no interviews from the fighters, a poor ad campaign leading up to the event, and no sense of either CBS or Showtime doing episodic programming with Strikeforce in the future.
Two quick points:
-Fedor being who he is makes himself less accessible than Kimbo. Kimbo did about everything imaginable leading up to his CBS debut, up to and including the Country Music Awards. I remember lots of criticism that it wasn’t effective at the time. In retrospect, that hype made him. Clearly, it was Kimbo who brought the viewers to TUF, not the other way around. And without him, those viewers are gone.
-The criticism of it not being given the appearance of “episodic” seems an odd one, as this is pro fighting and thus is not episodic. Its like when you see people point out that the UFC is making a foolish move by being so reliant on revenue generated by their events, as if there’s some sort of substantial alternative product they can produce. They’re a promoter and distributor of mixed martial arts bouts. They can’t corner the market on fighter apparel nor is it likely that it would be a revenue stream approaching that of other team sports if they had some sort of method to do so. Equipment sales for MMA are minimal compared to stick and ball sports. Hell, they’re probably minimal compared to entry level racing. It seems to me that people have very unreal expectations of what these guys should be doing.
Regarding heavy.com, I think it’s a matter of perspective. K. Thor Jensen, who wrote the sandwich article, is a phenomenally talented writer and artist. I am honored, seriously, to be in his company. If anything, he should be upset his material is next to “cagefighting” articles.
I hope you will give heavy.com a chance. They have just started covering MMA and we’ve already had interviews with some of the biggest names in the sport like Dana White, Fedor, Shane Carwin, Matt Hughes, Cung Le and dozens of others.
Jeremy Botter is breaking news all the time and we are adding talented and opinionated writers, some of whom Dave mentioned. I hope by next year no one will remember a time heavy.com wasn’t part of the scene.
Zach, could you expand more on the ratings they got and why they aren’t looking great? I don’t disagree at all, I just want to hear what you think.
I am longtime BJJ practioner, the shields fight was exciting for me. Shields and Miller are both great grapplers so it’s nice to see them get on the air versus glorified toughman’s junk we sometimes have to bear through.
I don’t think anyone runs through Lesnar at this point until I see it. Fedor is defintely the top dog, but Lesnar is interesting match-up for anyone.
If Rogers is a free-agent, will the UFC go ahead and sign him? Assuming they are following the WWF model as we are always told, I would assume they will try and pick up anything of value from Strikeforce and pick apart their roster for anyone of value.
I’m really sick and tired of supposed fans of MMA calling matches decided on the ground boring and praising sloppy, pseudo kick-boxing fights. Grappling is, realistically, 75% of the MMA world when you consider ground and clinch work on top of the striking game having to always be aware of the potential for a takedown or a clinch. If you don’t like grappling, watch boxing or kickboxing, but don’t call yourself a fan of the sport if two guys putting on a ground clinic for 25 minutes bores you. It’s the equivalent of calling yourself a fan of chess but hating when people use their Rook.
Amen. Look at what happened with Sean Sherk. I loved his old smash mouth style. The Franca and Florian fights were pretty cool to watch. I was sad to see him lose to Edgar in the manner he did. Even worse was Stevenson for not standing and banging and relying on his grappling.
I’m a fan of MMA grappling, not pure grappling. Watching Shields have Miller in the sitting position and nothing happening for a minute is not fun to watch.
Compare that to BJ Penn’s MMA grappling which incorporates solid striking and absolutely beautiful use of his legs to trap the arms to apply the rear naked choke… And that stuff is a thing of beauty to watch.
I find it funny how people hear somebody doesn’t like grappling, and their first reaction is to say it is better then toughman striking. There is a middle ground….
Like Zach said, the first 3 rounds of the Shields/Mayhem fight were good. I thought they were awesome. Shields got very conservative after the choke, but it’s hard to blame him.
Strikeforce needs to pay Miller and Davis their full win bonuses, period.
45,
Shields in has a very positionally dominate game. He manhandled BJ Penn’s training partner in an earlier Elite XC show. Again Shields is ton more fun to watch then watching some wrestler try to play kickboxer all the sudden.
45 Huddle said:
So…You want Jake Shields to put you to sleep?
That’s a really great mental picture! đ (j/k 45, you know we all luv ya, I just couldn’t resist)
It seems like CBS/Showtime is interested in making money (gasp). They are in fact doing so in an acceptable fashion – paying the least to make the most. However, I think we can all agree they have a ways to go in their production.
I remember articles (some on here) that have attributed creative control a reason the UFC hasn’t signed a similar deal. There might be a point to that.
But the UFC has had since the early 1990s to sort out production. I’m all for the new guys on the learning curve. I mean think about the enormity of it! We all got to see the baddest man on the planet fight for FREE on NETWORK TV! There are bound to be a few kinks for the first dozen or so shows. Like the non-live feeds, but that’s an entirely different topic.
Bottom line – more fights on free tv can’t be a bad thing for the sport.
Have to go with GassedOUt, let’s give these guys some time to make the show prettier. If anyone happened to see the Valuev-Haye boxing US PPV broadcast on Saturday afternoon they know the Strikeforce production was top notch compared to where it could be.
I really enjoyed the Shields fight, maybe because I spent time training in grappling. It was surgical and highly impressive, though I can agree completely it went on longer than necessary. Does this mean I’m trying too hard?
Showtime does great things in boxing despite being the second tier player. Trust me if they carry out this role in the same manner for MMA then we are in for many years of solid fights, and thankfully close to ZERO of this showbusiness star-making building that many here seem to enjoy more than the fighting.
3 interesting posts by mmalogic on this topic that I thought were a different perspective of looking at this…
“well it also hurts ZUffa that the best fighter in the sport came in last place in the timeslot⌠against reruns.”
AND
“the overrun is also a seed somebody is planting⌠counting the people tuning in for their local news is just more spin.
It only matters in the context of: âx number of people saw Fedor fightâ which is true and valid⌠but if you want to know the real number this special GENERATED (which CBS knows) you look at each frame of the ACTUAL time slot.
CBS and Advertisers purge the usual viewers by demo in the overrun to get the real number which isnât mentioned in the press releases”
AND
“When a first run special loses 2.5 million usual viewers (which is produced by shitty reruns) and comes in last place in the time slot Itâs a hard pill to swallow if youâre a network exec.
With the demo gains If they would have simply broken a 5m average it would have been enough to get to the next show.
I think Scottyâs gonna have to put together an even better package for CBS to revisit this.
Mike Rome was right, Ginaâs the winner. Her value has just shot up to around 500k per fight.”
I love to watch MMA in all aspects of the fight standing, clinching, or on the ground. With that being said the Shields fight was boring after the 3rd round. If you are in mount/back mount for 90% of the round 4 and 5 you better be able to put your to sleep or tap him out. This like the Machida Shogun fight was a not that good.
Also I agree with marlowe, I dont thin anybody “runs” through Brock at the moment. That is not to say he can’t be beaten or that Fedor wouldn’t beat him. I just think that Brock would pose problems for Fedor on the ground just like Rodgers did because he was so big and strong. Plus we are talking about Fedor now, not Fedor when PRIDE was still number one. He would have to get Brock in a leg or ankle like Mir did or knock him out. But all of that is easier said then done when he puts his 285+ frame on you. Again I dont want to be called a Brock lover or a Fedor hater people just need to realize the Fedor is not what he once was and short quick wrestlers are going to pose him problems. I still want to see Couture v Fedor. I think that would be a great fight even with Randy on the decline.
I think that StrikeForce has a lot to work on for their CBS shows. I think the commentary was sub par for a StrikeForce show. Also the need to get rid of the WWE style ring entrance. No need to announce fighters entering the cage if you are just going to do it again in 5 min. when they are both in the cage. Pointless waste of time. Also I think it would be good for StrikeForce to go a full 3 hours and show prelims to fill time. With all of the being said I hope they do another show but they need to consider doing it in the next 3 months or they will quickly become like an Award show. People watch it then forget it because it doesn’t stay relevant. And you can’t say that the shows on ShowTime keep it relevant because of the limited viewer ship.
And people need to get off of the UFC heater band wagon. Just because someone says that this show was not on the level of UFC does not me they disliked the show. UFC is the benchmark of what an MMA show should be like. Same when for the UFC when they were being compared to PRIDE. If you are not the best you are being compared to the best
I thought that the first three rounds of the Shields/Mayhem fight were very good, but then of course it slowed considerably in the last two rounds. I’d certainly rather watch the highly skilled ground fight that Shields/Mayhem put on for three rounds than watch another Jorge Gurgel sloppy kickboxing match.
Also, the average number of viewers for the broadcast as a whole was 4.04 million.
“The final Nielsen ratings are in and 5.46 million viewers tuned in Saturday to watch Strikeforce and M-1 Global’s main event between Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers from 11:00 pm to 11:15 pm ET on CBS.”
Looks like a pretty good spike for the main event…5.5 million viewers.
The last 15 to 20 minutes got 5.46 Million viewers. The real question then becomes, as mmalogic pointed out….
What demographic turned in for that last 15 to 20 minutes? If those additional viewers were a younger audience, they could have been there to see Fedor. If they were 50+, those are just people waiting for the news to come on and doesn’t really mean much.
As a reference….
Kimbo Slice vs. James Thompson got 6.51 Million viewers. Kimbo Slice vs. Roy Nelson for an entire hour of TUF got 5.3 Million.
Desperate spin to make this look like anything but a success…
LOL 45 got owned again
Mr. Snowden, I’m all for more original, competent MMA reporting and analysis. I enjoyed the 10 questions with Scott Coker and your thoughts on Henderson’s free agent status. I guess I was just curious about that site popping out of nowhere. I assume it is a new “portal” aimed at younger people. If the sports section is MMA only for now, perhaps an mma.heavy.com subdomain is prudent? That way I don’t feel like I’m going to the Maxim homepage to get my MMA coverage?
45 Huddle: Aren’t you going to rip Josh Gross a new a-hole given the ratings results? He was off of his prediction by a whopping .04 million.
Didn’t he say anything below 5.5 million would be a “massive disappointment”?
Regardless, it’s a good rating. If you took out Shields/Miller and had one of the Carano fights from the Kimbo shows this probably would have beaten the Elite shows.
This is ridiculous. Gross was off by 0.7%. The Nielsen margin of error is 4%. Are people that hard up trying to find points of criticism?
I’m not trying to rip Gross, but it wasn’t a prediction, he set a baseline below which would be considered a major disappointment. Unless the only two possibilities are major disappointment and success, there must be something in the middle. I think he set the bar too high for what is a disappointment.
I think for CBS the total numbers are middling but the main event growth was great. Just shows they need a second draw to reach the Kimbo numbers.
smoogy,
Heavy.com is actually a site that is 10 years old. They have been entertaining (literally) millions every month for a decade with their videos. I can excuse you for not knowing them, as I didn’t know them either!
Agreed that a subdomain and plenty of other changes would be prudent. I am working hard to make it a place that will be useful, fun, and not embarassing for fans. We’ll see what happens!
Mike,
At the end of the day, is Josh Gross the determining factor for whether this event was a success or a failure? While I agree that his internal inconsistencies may be on display, it is largely irrelevent. I should also point out his writing remains spectacularly good.
http://www.heavy.com/sports
Should avoid any unsavory content..
Where can I click for only unsavory content?
I think a good way to look at this is regardless, a ton of people saw Fedor fight live.
Couple of random thoughts I had about CBS’s production of the show.
As I said before, I thought the lighting was great and great camera angles. Both of those were way better than UFC broadcasts. CBS sports has a very talented team. The director needs to bone up on MMA a bit, lots of shots of the referees’ backs that could have been avoided.
I think going forward they’ll probably schedule 2-3 live fights per event and use more taped fights so the broadcasts don’t run long.
Also if you just randomly flipped on the TV, you were watching Saturday Night Fights on CBS. Strikeforce looked like another sponsor with their add on the canvas. With that hideous, idiotic logo of theirs. That’s a tangential point and one we can talk about in the future. That logo is so bad it should be taught in marketing classes as a what not to do.
The point being, CBS treated fighting the way it did college basketball. It focused on the fighters, not the promotion. They’re setting up to do what HBO and Showtime did with boxing. You tune in to CBS to show MMA, they’ll let any promoter who can put on a good fight have a date. Coker better keep an eye on Jerry Millen and the rest of the M-1 staff.
Ultimately I see MMA as being Saturday afternoon fare on TV. The way boxing was back in the 80’s. Maybe with an event per month or so From January to September. Then when football comes on TV you get one or two primetime shows in the Fall. I think that can be a successful model.
Well, his baseline and this number are statistically even. Its not a massive disappointment by his standards, and its not a runaway success that will change the world forever. Its something inbetween, like the ratings news has been the whole time.
I almost think the people that believe the additional 1.5 million people that tuned in at 11pm are trolling. That or they are just not smart.
It is clearly people turning on their local news at 11pm.
What’s funny is I wonder how many of those old folks who love the 11pm news are going to write their local stations complaining about seeing a man with a broken nose almost knock the head clean off another man. They’ll write about how offended they were by the violence and how inconvenienced they were not to be able to hear about all the awful news on their local broadcast.
At the same time, I wonder if some of the old timers tuning in for the news will become MMA fans now. I bet some will. My grandfather, God rest his soul, was a huge boxing fan. He stopped following in the 90’s with all the corruption. But he’d still talk for hours about how you could walk down the street in Bay Ridge and hear a Joe Louis or Rocky Mariciano fight on the radio your entire walk. If he flipped on the tube and saw Fedor KO Rodgers, I’m sure he’d have called me up and asked when and where he could see more of this.
Kimbo Slice’s first big number was a overrun. Matter of fact, this entire thread of discussion the last week or so is eerily familiar.
How did I get owned here? I understand what your argument is, but it is so way off base.
Overall, this rating is BAD FOR THE ENTIRE SPORT.
1) If the rating was closer to 3 Million for the entire show, the UFC could easily make the case that it is their brand that sells and work that angle.
2) If the show got 5 Million viewers, the UFC could easily make the case that they could add an additional 2.5 Million to 3 Million viewers and make it a real blockbuster.
This is an inbetween rating that makes it hard for Zuffa to use either one of the above mentioned.
So now we are left with:
1) Strikeforce likely not going to be back on network TV until Gina Carano is available.
2) UFC losing negotiating power to get a good network deal.
The sport loses in all directions.
“45 Huddle: Arenât you going to rip Josh Gross a new a-hole given the ratings results? He was off of his prediction by a whopping .04 million.”
Gross is a fool. His opinion means little to nothing.
“Regardless, itâs a good rating. If you took out Shields/Miller and had one of the Carano fights from the Kimbo shows this probably would have beaten the Elite shows.”
Except they didn’t have her, and this is the rating that everybody is left to ponder with. Not to mention that the sport is far more popular today then it was 2 years ago. With inflation taken into account, this was not a success.
I love it how people try to spin things…. This wasn’t a success for Strikeforce. This hurt the UFC. There is no other way to say it truthfully.
“With that hideous, idiotic logo of theirs.”
At one point when one of the fighters was on the ground over the logo, it really looked like his blood splatter. Not good.
“Coker better keep an eye on Jerry Millen and the rest of the M-1 staff.”
This is very true. CBS shows little care of what company they have MMA with at this point.
LOL @ 45’s meltdown. Who will console the widow Zuffa?
“Kimbo Sliceâs first big number was a overrun.”
I’ve addressed this, Kimbo’s big number is also inflated by local news. Kimbo’s real draw was 10:30-11. The credit Gina is given for brining viewers on that show should really be attributed to Kimbo, since that is when he would have fought if the show were running on time.
Interesting responses today. First I got owned. Now I am having a meltdown.
How about I’m just discussing MMA… Geez….
You own yourself by making half the posts on this website without even getting paid. I don’t even bother reading your posts anymore because it’s obvious what they’re going to say.