Bjorn Rebney recently spoke with HispanicBusiness.com about his nascent MMA promotion, Bellator Fighting Championships. The article goes into detail about Bellator’s unique ability to reach the Hispanic market, noting “Currently 30 fighters have signed up with Bellator and 60 percent of them count Spanish as their first language.” Rebney and his group did market research prior to making the leap into MMA and found the results intriguing:
Bellator commissioned a Nielsen study to track the difference between national ratings in the general market and in the Hispanic market for MMA programming. That study showed that “Hispanics disproportionately watch mixed martial arts programming.”
He said that according to the study, “In many cases there is a 2 to 1 ratio in willingness and desire for Hispanic viewers and consumers to watch MMA programming.”
Mr. Rebney also noted that Hispanics tend to be “fiercely brand loyal and have a tremendous amount of purchasing power. If you deliver a high quality product, where you have great fights, highly competitive programming, and really solid back stories in terms of getting feature pieces told about the fighters, you may be fortunate enough to capture the loyalty and alliance of that market.”
“Our target coming out of the box with this partnership with ESPN Deportes, our advertising, our marketing budget, and our promotions is the Hispanic market,” Rebney told HispanicBusiness, but there has also been mention of providing an English language version of the programming. If they are unable to get a television vehicle for the English language programming, an aggressive online campaign via streaming and other efforts will be helpful in bringing in other groups than just their Hispanic base.