Bill Wilson of the BBC News has written an interesting piece detailing the exploits of ESPN’s Lynne Frank (Managing Director of Europe, Middle East, and Africa) in trying to build the ESPN UK channel line-up.
And Ms Frank says that despite such a pressurised schedule, ESPN has made time to listen to feedback from its new audiences.
On its Ultimate Fighting Club programming, viewers complained the channel was breaking for advertisements at crucial points in the action, or going to ad breaks in the middle of analysis.
“We listened to what people said about our UFC coverage and we have tried to address that ,” says Ms Frank.
This week ESPN announced another deal, to broadcast Europa League (the former Uefa Cup) fixtures for the coming three seasons in conjunction with ITV and Channel 5.
Many industry experts now expect ESPN to make a move for the live FA Cup games, once owned by Setanta, that are still available.
But Ms Frank points out that the rights to Blue Square Premier football, Guinness Premiership rugby union, NBA basketball, and Indian Premier League cricket rights are still up for grabs.
“We are continuing to talk to all sports rights holders.,” she says. “Where they are available and they make sense to our business model we will continue to acquire rights.”
Payout Perspective:
ESPN UK came online in August and to the delight of MMA fans its debut content offering included UFC programming: UFC unleashed, The Ultimate Fighter, Countdown to UFC, and UFC events.
It’s certainly encouraging that, after such a poorly rated viewer experience with UFC 101, ESPN UK listened to the feedback and fixed some of the issues surrounding the event broadcasts. Actions speak louder than words, and more so than any lip service, fixing the problems related to the UFC 101 broadcast demonstrates a long term focus on becoming a legitimate sports programming authority in the UK.
If ESPN UK continues to grow through additional programming and a greater following, a leadership position in the UK sports television market would obviously be very beneficial for the UFC and UK MMA in general. There’s a lot of upside to this deal.
However, I find it interesting that Frank mentioned the singularity of British sports fans in her interview with BBC. The number of UK MMA people that I’ve talked to in recent weeks about this deal have indicated their skepticism lies in the ability of ESPN UK’s programming to generate cross-over interest in the UFC programming. The narrow focus of UK sports fans could make it much more difficult for ESPN UK and the UFC to grow MMA in the country.
All this really means is that the UFC and ESPN UK will have to get creative in trying to a.) either pry away some hardcore devoted football fans (unlikely), or b.) find a way to get them interested in more than just one sport. It’ll be a more difficult road than say locking up ESPN in the US and watching the sport explode almost overnight.
The ability of the sport to “transcend all barriers” because its “in our DNA” will really come into play here. So to will the power of the UFC brand; it’s a new stage for the company, and they’ll need to begin ramping up the UFC public relations team in order to really get the word out.
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