MMA Fighting reports that the World Series of Fighting will be airing two events on NBC in 2014. Coming off of its seventh event last night, WSOF says it will hold 8 to 10 shows in 2014 with its other scheduled events occurring on NBC Sports Network.
WSOF president first told the Huffington Post on Friday and the news was confirmed by Ariel Helwani from WSOF’s executive vice president Ali Abdel-Aziz. The first event on NBC will take place in the “early summer” according to Abdel-Aziz.
Payout Perspective:
As MMA Fighting points out, WSOF becomes the fourth MMA promotion to land on network television and it will be the first time that NBC will air MMA on its network. Notably, NBC has had boxing (which airs quarterly on NBCSN) air a couple events on its network in the last year with success as over 1 million viewers have tuned in. CBS experienced the same ratings success with boxing on the network last December. Certainly, NBC hopes that it can achieve the same success with MMA.
With international expansion into markets and a couple events moving to network television, does WSOF have a better business plan than Bellator? Assuming that WSOF puts on these events on network (and does well ratings-wise), can cultivate talent and capitalize on stories like Nick Newell, it will be in a good position to compete with Bellator as the second organization in MMA.
neither bellator nor wsof are making money… the difference is WSOF’s tape library may actually be worth something.