Dave Meltzer of Yahoo! Sports sat down with Scott Coker earlier this week to discuss the fast pace of development that Strikeforce has undertaken over the last year. It’s an article that fits well with the news that Strikeforce is planning a second show with CBS for April of next year.
“A year ago, we had 15 to 20 guys under contract,” said Coker, who promotes his final show of the year Saturday night on Showtime, in the first of what will no doubt be a number of head-to-head battles with UFC owner Zuffa, which has its sister World Extreme Cagefighting promotion running on Versus in a show from Las Vegas that night. “Now we’ve got … as many as 155 athletes under contract. Before we relied on Fedor and Gina, but now we have good fighters in all the weight classes.”
“Look at what we’ve accomplished in the last year,” he said. “We started on Showtime in April. We’ve signed a co-promotion deal with Fedor, signed Dan Henderson, promoted the Gina vs. Cyborg fight. We’ve gotten on CBS, the EA Sports deal. It’s been an intense schedule.”
And there’s no break in sight. Coker expects to run 20 shows during the next fiscal year (March 1, 2010-February 28, 2011) on Showtime, CBS and pay-per-view, the same number industry-leader UFC ran in 2009. The business models are different. Strikeforce went from live-events based to one whose top priority is television events. The UFC’s goal is to build fights for monthly pay-per-views. Strikeforce is looking at building television fights and if and when the right big fight falls into place (like a potential Emelianenko vs. Alistair Overeem fight) then going to pay-per-view.
Payout Perspective:
Definitely worth a full read – especially if you’re a little fuzzy on the Strikeforce come-up.
It’s difficult to deny that Scott Coker has done a superb job in running Strikeforce over the years, but even he would probably be the first to admit that it’s taken a lot longer than one year to build his organization. The company has been promoting kickboxing events in the San Jose area since the mid-90s, and slowly growing ever since. It’s been that slow, calculated growth that has also separated Strikeforce from the other MMA promotions of the last few years. Strikeforce been lauded for doing things the right way: avoiding gimmicks, promoting the sport, starting small, and being fiscally responsible.
Now, Strikeforce’s rather abrupt transition from a regional promoter to a major international player is begging the question: is all of this too much, too soon? After all, people have good reason to be skeptical. It wasn’t long ago that Affliction was touting Fedor and hoarding talent, or that EliteXC was tripping over the CBS ball it tried to run with. The MMA community has seen this all before.
There will be many factors that influence whether Strikeforce succeeds, but ultimately that success will depend upon its ability to create a plan, execute it, and then have the patience to wait for the results. Affliction didn’t have a plan, EliteXC’s wasn’t very good, and in both cases their financial backers didn’t have the patience to wait.
Meltzer points out that Strikeforce has a plan: its got a three-tiered event model designed to develop both an audience and fighter base with which to eventually launch a PPV platform. The past year is evidence that they’ve been able to execute that plan. Now, all that remains is the issue of time and patience.
Does Strikeforce have the patience and discipline to stick with and not deviate from the plan? Moreover, do its financial backers in the form of Showtime and CBS have the means and the motivation to continue supporting the organization (i.e., providing some of the working capital, picking up parts of these big fighter contracts, and investing promotional money to build the brand)?
MMA is a fickle business. Watching the sport since 94, I’ve seen a lot of organizations come and go (sometimes just fizzle to obscurity). Even the UFC was close to closing doors or becoming a barn feeder organization. Does Strikeforce have long term stability to garner its own survival? Time will tell.
Coker is a bit of an enigma; he seems to be a good promoter with a level business sense. His choices at times appear out of necessity or providence more than foresight (Fedor signing). 2010 will be an interesting year for MMA, possibly a decisive year with respect to the future path of the sport. If, and that’s a big “If”, Strikeforce can become a viable competitor to the UFC than we could see some big changes for the sport going forward.
It’s very hard to imagine a Strikeforce PPV being successful in the near future. Even with Fedor’s success over Brett Rogers, the casual fan won’t forget seeing Fedor bloodied and beaten on his back, if only for a few moments, during their fight on CBS. He didn’t look like an invincible world beater, and those who may have not been aware of his legacy could argue a lucky punch. The problem with establishing Fedor as the best heavyweight MMA fighter in the world is that the UFC owns nearly all his significant fight footage (unclear on the status of the Affliction footage, but since it was not used to promote his fight with Rogers, we should assume that M-1 Global/Strikeforce does not have access to it). Thus a fight with Overeem would not be the biggest draw in terms of fan awareness (it was the hardcore fans who tuned in for Fedor vs Tim Sylvia (most were skeptical of Sylvia as a legitimate threat), and Fedor vs Arlovski, but do even hardcore fans consider Overeem a credible threat to Fedor?) Bottom line is that Strikeforce has a long way to go with creating brand awareness before they should even think of putting on a PPV. CBS is a great platform for exposure, but the event was titled “CBS Saturday Night Fights” on people’s cable/satellite guides, making it a little difficult to make a direct brand association with the show. I even heard people at the bar wondering if the show was just a feeder to the UFC, much like Strikeforce’s own Challenger Series is to their big shows.
Machiel Van, I agree with most of what you wrote. However, CBS as a platform goes a long way for Strikeforce. Maybe if they build a PPV over a couple of CBS events it could do modestly well. Anything in the 200K PPV buy stratosphere would be an acceptable attempt.
Bottom line is that it is far too soon for Strikeforce to even begin considering using PPV as part of their business model. The big question: is there room for more than one MAJOR MMA organization, or rather, is the MMA market large enough to facilitate Strikeforce’s continued GROWTH along side that of the UFC? I hope so, but I’m skeptical. Perhaps Strikeforce should just forget about promoting the sport, and focus entirely on promoting their brand, as much as that will irk MMA fans. It is a business, after all.
If Strikeforce were smart in my opinion they would not forgo an attempt at PPV. CBS is there for the ride at the moment, but there is no guarantee of a long term commitment. That leaves Strikeforce with Showtime as a platform to make money and gain exposure. That’s fine, but it’s not going to support the big salaries they are taking on. PPV does seem like the best platform to make easy money. 100K buys is an extra 2.5 million in their coffers outside of ticket sales which probably bring in around 1million on average for their bigger events. Strikeforce is not Affliction/EXC by a long shot. Coker is not going to be paying fighters 500K to 800K to fight for them. If they can keep their salaries modest, they have a shot.
I sure would like to see the list of the 155 fighters under contract to Strikeforce. Coker claiming they have up to 155 fighters under contract is very hard to believe. Even using the phrase “as many as 155” makes me very skeptical about how he comes up with that number.
I’m guessing Strikeforce doesn’t even have 50 fighters under contract. They might reach 50 if they count all the fighters that fight in different weight divisions twice. I guess if Coker is doing fuzzy math and counting potential fighters based on supposed partnerships with M-1 and DREAM they could get to 155. Of course no significant DREAM/Strikeforce match-ups are yet to happen though. So for me I’ll have to see those DREAM/Strikeforce match-ups happening for more than a couple events before I believe they can actually share talent and make it work where everyone is happy.
Here is a somewhat complete list, not sure of the source and also not sure of embedding links so I removed the “tt” and replaced with “**”
h**p://www.sherdog.net/forums/f61/list-updated-strikeforce-roster-974236/
You can also get an official listing from their site:
h**p://www.strikeforce.com/fighters/
mma guru and matt c:
That link is to my Strikeforce updated roster and you can bet I keep it updated.
Here is a better list of Strikeforce’s top 10 fighters in each class:
http://strikeforce.com/forum/topic/strikeforce-roster-top-10-1209
I looked at Strikeforce’s website and if what they have listed is all the fighters they have under contract then my guess was exactly right.
Hi Matt,
I’d suggest going with the first link. That person seems to know whose with them. There website is missing a lot of guys that I can think of that are fighting under the Strikeforce banner. My guess is that Coker has about 80+ fighters under direct contract, and a few more shared with feeder orgs.
If they do have 150+ fighters, Dana is saying that Strikeforce won’t be able to keep the guys active. Say they do 20 shows next year with 10 fights on each, that’s 20 fighters per card and 400 fights in total for the year. Possibly they can handle the 150 fighter list.
Guru,
Just wanted to touch on the last point you made:
I’m not convinced that having 150 contracted fighters is as big of a deal for a company like Strikeforce as it is for the UFC.
The non-exclusive nature of Strikeforce contracts allows the lower tier fighters that need the money to go out and secure other fights in between their Strikeforce bouts. However, the lower tier guys that are signed with the UFC do not have this luxury, and thus it’s much more important for the UFC to provide an ample number of shows.
Four hundred fight spots is acceptable if the lower end guys can take fights elsewhere.
You’d think they would’ve been able to find a quick replacement opponent for Robbie Lawler out of their 1505 fighter roster…