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Judging the progression of Bellator FC during season two
By Zach Arnold | May 4, 2010
In an MMA world where news is largely driven by how many events there are going at any particular time, it is interesting to see how the second season of Bellator FC is playing out. After being on ESPN Deportes last year, the promotion is now airing live shows every Thursday on Fox Sports Net/Comcast Sportsnet and those showed are aired in edited versions every Friday at Midnight on Telemundo and every Saturday night on NBC (the old Strikeforce television slot).
In an interview with Matthew Kaplowitz, Bellator FC boss Bjorn Rebney says that the numbers look good so far business-wise.
“Fox Sports Network, we’re the highest-rated national broadcast on Fox Sports Network on both Thursday and Sunday nights and the male demographic 18-54 we have done over 100% increase in terms of attracting that very desirable demographic to that network, so the Fox numbers are very, very strong. We got our NBC numbers back and they’re very strong as well in terms of the late night time slot. We still haven’t received our Telemundo numbers.
“It’s all going well. It’s never going as well as I want it to go, but it’s all going well.”
There’s certainly a different feel and look to this season’s version of Bellator FC — from the production (camera shots, announcing) to the kind of variety of fighters being booked.
“The production’s new, new production team, spectacular fighters, great signings, magical venue alliances with the likes of Mohegan and Madison Square Garden sports properties, I mean just a lot of different, UB.net coming on board, Everlast coming on board with a co-branded line, lots of great stuff happening. The Hornbuckles, the Warrens, the Karakhanyans, the Karls, signings, Huerta, a lot of great fighters. Just a continual step up in terms of the maturation of the brand and development of the brand. So, exciting, really cool exciting stuff. The show is starting to look more like what I saw it in my head looking like two-three years ago. It’s starting to actually, it’s not exactly there yet, but it’s starting to look like what I saw in my head which was really cool, you know.”
Mr. Rebney has played up his tournament format as being unique from other promoters in Mixed Martial Arts. He believes that it gives the fans a true champion and lets the fighters control their own path to success. However, part of the tournament process is bringing in a mix of veteran fighters along with newcomers who could prove themselves to be legitimate stars down the road. It’s a mixture of bringing in name power and building up the Bellator FC brand.
“There’s been some interchangeability,” noted Mr. Rebney in the interview with Mr. Kaplowitz. “I mean Roger Huerta was a great signing for us, Hornbuckle was a great signing, Warren was a great signing, but Ben Askren was a great signing for us and Patricio Pitbull was a great signing and Georgi Karakhanyan a guy I’ve been watching fight in the Southern California fight scene for a lot of years, he can go and he can win 45 so, you know I mean a lot of, it’s just a combo of both of them.”
Last year, the company focused particular on bringing in fighters that would help pull in ratings numbers on ESPN Deportes. This year, the recruiting of fighters has more of a global approach by Bellator management.
“We’ve got this Fox Sports Network audience of 92 million homes and the NBC audience of 112 and then Telemundo is 62 and Mun2 which is 35 million homes, so you know what we wanted to do is when we opened it up to the general market, we wanted to go out and literally just secure the best fighters that were available any place in the world and it didn’t matter if they were from Brazil in Portuguese or whether they were from Poland or whether they were from England or Tennesseee. So, obviously in our first season on Deportes, the focus was really Latino so we put on a lot of effort into recruiting top Latino fighters and ended up with Joe Soto, Eddie Alvarez, Lyman Good, and Hector Lombard. Every single one of our champions ended up being from Latino descent. We haven’t abandoned it but we are surely expanding the breadth of who were out recruiting.”
Part of the recruiting has involved some pretty interesting fighters signings, including the likes of Josh Neer and Hector Lombard, who fought in PRIDE through J-ROCK. Guys like Neer and Lombard are not cheap signings. It is interesting to note that they are fighting sometimes in smaller markets that you normally wouldn’t expect UFC-level talent to be fighting at. Along with the weekly tournament matches, Mr. Rebney is also booking some “super fights” involving the champions from the first season’s tournaments. One of the names booked in a super fight is Eddie Alvarez, who is quickly climbing the ladder as one of the best Lightweights in the world. If someone like Mr. Alvarez was to lose in a super fight, it could certainly complicate booking down the road.
“You got Eddie Alvarez fighting the dentist Josh Neer coming up [on Thursday] in Boston which should be a spectacular fight in terms of those two styles. You got Hector Lombard fighting Paulo Filho on the 13th of May in Monroe, Louisiana on our Thursday night show and then you got Diego Saraiva fighting Joe Soto on the 20th in Dallas, Texas, on the show where the actual Askren-Thomas re-match is going to happen as well. Lyman, just as soon as he’s ready to go physically, we’ll set him up in a super fight as well and then the actual goal being of course the September fight against you know Askren, Thomas, Hornbuckle, or Karl whoever ends up the last guy at 70.”
Mr. Rebney was asked if he thought the booking of the super fights involving last season’s tournament champions could possibly ruin story lines leading up to the tournament championship fights at the end of the season.
“Absolutely and that is more of I’ve said many times part of the time I wear the promoter’s hat and part of the time I wear the fan’s hat and the safe road to pursue would be the road that would Eddie Alvarez sitting back and basically fighting conceivably fighting nobody or sitting back and waiting for the tournament to play itself out… but the fan in me would like to see the Josh Neer/Eddie Alvarez and I don’t think that it’s fair to an Eddie Alvarez or a Hector Lombard or o Joe Soto to put them on the fence for five-six months and have them just sit. The life expectancy of these guys in this game is relatively short. You’re talking about a few years in some instances. I mean some guys are freaks like Randy Couture who are able to fight on and on in an never-ending fashion, but for most guys it’s a pretty short life expectancy. So, to fight a guy twice a year based on that to me is not fair and as a fan I want to see Eddie Alvarez, I want to see him challenged and I also don’t think… Boxing has this ridiculous glass ceiling if you’re not 24 and 0 HBO doesn’t want to put you on or Showtime doesn’t want to put you on a big fight. In MMA, you got a Henderson or you’ve got a Randy or you’ve got different fighters who’ve got records where if they were boxers, they would be opponents and yet they’re amongst the top ranked fighters in the world at their given weight in MMA. MMA doesn’t have that fake glass ceiling. When Eddie fights Aoki, Eddie’s going to win some of the time and Aoki might win some of the time or if Eddie fought Gilbert, maybe Eddie wins x amount of times and Gilbert wins, so it’s a much different dynamic.
“I think that the MMA fans are much more accepting of the fact that when you fight the best and you lose it doesn’t mean that you go back to the back of the pile, it means you’re still a really good high-quality fighter and you lost to another extremely talented fighter.”
Ultimately, the success of Bellator FC will depend on whether or not the public looks at the product as major-league or minor-league. Bjorn Rebney thinks that as business picks up and money starts coming in on a higher scale, it will allow him to offer fighters more money which in turn will bring in higher-ranked talent into the tournament format.
“I think it can because you know we’ve got, and again this is my opinion and it’s subjective, BJ (Penn) was #1 in the world and (Shinya) Aoki was #2 and there’s a good argument that Eddie was typically #3 in that line on most people’s rankings so BJ loses a fight and Aoki loses a fight pretty handily and Eddie is sitting in a position now where he can fight Josh Neer and ultimate establish himself as #1. [Joe Soto’s] ranked in the Top 10 in a lot of organizations so my hope is that we keep doing the tournaments and the breadth of the coverage gets bigger and we’re reaching more households and we’ve got more ability and we’re drawing bigger gates and we got bigger international licensing deals and everything that we’re doing in terms of sponsorship continues to increase, the revenues come in, the dollar figures will get higher for the fighters because that’s the way it should work and ultimately you’re going to be able to draw in even more of the Top 10 ranked fighters in the world to compete. My hope would be that seasons four and five and six it continues to climb and ultimately you see three or four guys in the Top 10 in one of our rankings of eight different guys fighting at 70 or 45 or 55, but that’s incumbent on us because the higher the guys are ranked, the more money that they deserve to make hence we’ll have to make the ultimate prize at the end of three fights bigger.”
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
1) Highest Rated National Broadcast on FSN is a meaningless statistic. All that means is it did better then their talking head shows. It doesn’t compare it what FSN gets all the real viewership on, which is local sports. I highly doubt they do anywhere close to what the local markets do for those sports. Plus, when they put out a press release, they only used percentages and not actual viewership numbers.
2) They have received their Telemundo numbers by now. Nothing in TV takes that long for feedback. He is full of it.
3) One thing that he is says is true is the difference between boxing and MMA. Loses in MMA mean so much less. In boxing, 1 loss can remove you from HBO or Showtime and it could take years to get back on those stations (if at all).
4) The tournaments this year haven’t been as good as I thought they would be. The level of fighters just isn’t there. Outside of Huerta & Hornbuckle… The tournaments feel around the level of TUF guys…. Which isn’t very high. Now, just like TUF, there is always the chance to get those 1 or 2 shining prospects from the end result…. But that doesn’t always happen.
5) Eddie Alvarez as #1?… And fighting Josh Neer can help him with that? You have to be kidding me. Alvarez isn’t even Top 5 on anybody’s credible rankings. The best guy outside of the UFC is Gilbert Melendez, not Eddie Alvarez…. And Melendez is probably #4 in the world at this point.
6) I just don’t see where the money is coming in from. The venues can’t be paying that much as they are barely getting crowds to these events. The IFL already showed us what it costs to run these sort of shows…. And it wouldn’t shock me to see Bellator to have expenses of $5 Million per year minimum. And with 2 seasons for 2010, I bet its much more then that. No way they are pulling in enough revenues to cover those costs. And there is no end game for them. There is no other station for them to get on that would increase their profile.
7) FSN is horrible. We have all said this previously, but it needs to be restated. Anybody in a FSN Baseball Market will not have a constant time slot for the show. Heck, in my market, they randomly don’t show 30 minutes of the beginning of the broadcast for a rerun of a talking heads show.
He is the only man on planet Earth that has this opinion.
No matter which way you choose rankings, Alvarez isn’t going to be #1.
If you give rankings by the fighter who beats the #1 ranked automatically becoming the top ranked fighter, then Frank Edgar is #1.
If you push #2 into the #1 spot with a loss, then Aoki was #1 for a week and with his loss Gilbert Melendez became #1.
Even if you solely base it on who has the best win-loss percentage, Alvarez still isn’t #1. Everybody has either Edgar or Melendez in their #1 spot. Unless you rank by alphabetical order, then yes, Alvarez is #1.
I hate Champions fighting non title fights. Makes it a WWE style more than a professional one. And the belt’s loose creditblity very fast. Just look at Sengoku handling of Jorge Santiago as Middleweight Champion for their organization.
I really disagree with 45’s assertion that Bellator’s tournaments are TUF level outside of Huerta and Hornbuckle. Unless maybe you are comparing it to the absolute cream of the TUF crop.
Ben Askren, Joe Warren & Cole Konrad are uber-prospects. The only guy who has ever been on TUF that comes remotely close to them in terms of amateur wrestling accolades is Josh Koscheck. Wilson Reis, Jacob McClintock, Bryan Baker, & Alex Shlemenko are also top notch prospects. Any one of those guys would be an odds on favorite to win any season of TUF. And that doesn’t even take into account last seasons champions, who are a mix of guys who are already world class fighters (Alvarez, Lombard) to a couple of guys who are excellent prospects in their own right (Soto, Good).
All of the guys I mentioned will one day migrate to the UFC and be major stars in the sport.
Askren and Warren would be submitted before they made it to the finals of any equivalent TUF season….
I can tell you now that Askren will never be a star in MMA. He would be as successful as Munoz or Rosholt… Which isn’t really at all. Sadalloh would have submitted him by the 2nd round if they fought in the TUF house.
Warren is a guy who if you match him up against a guy without a real submission threat, he can go places. But once he gets in there with the better submission guys, he is done for.
Reis is a one trick poney. He has that great sweep. A good wrestler who knows how to control him will beat him every time. Just like last season. Not to mention he really should be fighting at Bantamweight.
There is a lot of junk in this season so far. The guys who fought Hornbuckle and Huerta looked horrible. Ryan Thomas, who couldn’t even remotely hang with Brown or Saunders…. Is actually looking like he could have a chance of beating Askren in their rematch and reaching the finals.
I think the finals will end up being decent at best, but still with a lot of irrelevent fighters.
They’re equivalent to the first two seasons of TUF, maybe. Easily better than the TUF Danzig won or the last two seasons. These are guys that should be on TUF and aren’t because the money sucks.
TUF isn’t exactly the smartest binch in the world. For all we know they could’ve turned down some of these guys. I mean they did turned down Tyrone Woodley.
They wanted to give the Brits a chance.
Woodley would have wrecked them.
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[…] are right up there at the very top of the Lightweight division. When Bjorn Rebney (Bellator CEO) made the argument that Eddie Alvarez was #1, his argument drew nuclear heat online as “crazy promoter talk” for even making the […]