The Staff at MMAJunkie are reporting that Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery drew 308,000 viewers on Showtime last Saturday, which marks a 40% drop from the last time the promotion ran a big show on the network (January 30th – Strikeforce: Miami).
This past weekend’s “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” event, which featured the long-awaited return of heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem to the U.S., drew an average of 308,000 viewers on Showtime.
While the premium cable network has yet to officially announce the ratings, MMAjunkie.com confirmed the figures with industry sources.
A two-and-a-half hour special, “UFC’s Ultimate Fights,” which aired on Spike TV to counter-program the Strikeforce event, drew 894,000 viewers.
Payout Perspective:
This show certainly lacked the star power of Strikeforce: Miami in January, but it was more or less on par with what the promotion did in December with Cung Le headlining a Strikeforce: Evolution card that drew 341,000 viewers.
It certainly hasn’t been a great month for Strikeforce. The CBS show ended badly and fared poorly in the ratings. It’s likely to lose its middleweight champion, Jake Shields, to the UFC; the same man smothered its prized acquisition, Dan Henderson, in his debut. The company was also forced to renegotiate with Fedor Emelianenko and M-1, which forced him off the CBS card that fared so poorly.
But if you’re a cup’s half-full type, there are some big and relevant fights on the horizon:
- Fedor vs. Werdum on June 26th. This card could very well be Strikeforce’s highest rated Showtime card yet, especially considering the amount of promotional muscle the organization and network are bound to throw behind the fight.
- Overeem vs. Fedor later in the year.
- Melendez vs. Alvarez as a potential co-promoted bout.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Melendez vs Alvarez is likely to happen, but is far from a done deal. Coker may have been soured on co-promotion due to M-1’s trademark ridiculousness, and may be hesitant to commit to another deal until ALL the terms are clearly hammered out. Then you have the problem of how to sell and what network to show the fight on. Melendez vs Alvarez is one of many “hardcore fan’s dream fights,” but casual fans probably weren’t at all impressed with Melendez when he fought on CBS, and almost certainly have never heard of Alvarez. Combine this with the proven trend that lightweight MMA fights tend to not sell as well, the questionable marketing and promotional strategies of Strikeforce, and the need to work out a deal between Bellator, Strikeforce, the fighters, and the TV networks (which would it be, Showtime or CSN/FSN?) and we’re probably in for quite a wait before that fight takes place. Let’s also not forget that Alvarez will have to face the winner of Bellator’s lightweight tournament, although this could be several months from now (probably around the the earliest time this fight could be scheduled for, given all the above mentioned factors). Let’s just say this isn’t going to do much for Strikeforce from a business point of view.
As for Overeem vs Fedor, first and foremost Fedor must get past Fabricio Werdum before this fight can even enter into the negotiation stages. Both M-1 Global and Overeem know that Strikeforce NEEDS this fight if they want to continue to grow and bring fresh eyes to their product, so that will likely factor into the negotiations. This is especially true for M-1, who… I guess that’s enough already. Add in the serious bad blood between the two fighters’ management teams, and this could also be a prolonged negotiation period, with “fight’s on, oh wait, it’s off again” garbage going on in the media. And finally, what network will the fight be shown on? Overeem vs Fedor is THE fight that Strikeforce can put on this year, and if CBS isn’t on board (they probably would sign on for another show if this bout could come to fruition. Otherwise…), it would be a travesty to show this fight on Showtime, so PPV would be the only option. I seem to remember that Fedor has headlined on PPV before, but I can’t seem to remember how that turned out…
Bottom line is that Strikeforce is in for another rough patch after the Fedor/Werdum fight and will really just be hoping that Fedor vs Overeem can be signed. However, I feel that during the inevitably lengthy amount of time that will pass between June 26 and whenever these issues are resolved, the spectacle of both men’s victories (if Fedor is even victorious. If not, I fear for Strikeforce as a prominent MMA organization) will have faded in people’s minds. Good luck Strikeforce, our hopes and prayers are with you.
wow what a joke 300K viewers. this whole mma thing what a sham, nobody cares about it i guess.
i guess you could say that a bunch of ex high school wrestlers and a bunch of tattooed guys got together to watch a freak show…
I think the Strikeforce Miami card was at a time when Showtime was running a promotion and showing for free, but I could be wrong about that. That’s probably why there is such a big drop. Without big names (or promotional weekends) SF seems to do just north of 300K. Considering that Showtime is only in 12 M homes, that’s about a 2.5+ rating. I’m not sure what ratings Showtime is looking for long term, but a 2.5 is not bad. Has Showtime gone on record saying anything about the ratings?
Everyone keeps throwing around that 894k figure for the counter programming on Spike, but Spike is available in almost 100M homes, which means their show actually garnered a rating of <1. I imagine that pretty much any show Spike puts on in that time slot probably does about the same rating (that's a guess, I haven't researched it). I think most people who tuned in for the counter programming probably didn't even know what program was being countered. I don't think the UFC stole any viewers from SF.
Diego, I agree that the Ultimate Fights probably didn’t take away from SF since the numbers it did didn’t show a bump in casual fans and all hardcore fans were likely watching the live MMA show. With that said, I’m sure Spike was fine with the numbers since it was on less than a week promotion and outside of some editing and Goldberg voice overs it was a dirt cheap show for them to run.
It will be interesting to see where Strikeforce goes from here. The 308k number IMO isn’t a disaster but it isn’t great either. They’ve had 2 shows on CBS and roughly a year on Showtime, it doesn’t seem like they are building a ton of stock in the brand. I guess a lot will have to do with what CBS does, I don’t think they’re ready for a PPV, even a Fedor/Overeem PPV, and not sure how basically a Showtime only TV deal would go for the long-term future.
I’ve mentioned it before, but they really need a presence off of Showtime or CBS on a basic cable network akin to what the UFC has for Spike. Showtime flat out doesn’t have enough households and the CBS shows were about 5-6 months apart with, if they get another, about 5-6 months apart. Casual fans is where the money in MMA growth is and to me they don’t have enough exposure to gain those fans.
Kasey, you mention that SF renegotiated with M-1 and Fedor… any details on that? I know they announced him fighting Werdum, but it wasn’t clear to me if it was just a fight under the existing contract they had (3 fights 1 year signed last Aug) or if they reupped with them. If they resigned it would be interesting to see what the deal was for.
Stan, you’re right on about Strikeforce needing to establish a non-premium cable television partner. Showtime has a very narrow reach, yet Strikeforce is very constrained by the Showtime/CBS umbrella. Many people forget that Showtime is owned by CBS, so they are really dealing with the same company on both fronts (this is also why they are forced to use the AWFUL commentary team that is Gus Johnson/Mauro Renallo. Utilizing Frank Shamrock, on the other hand, is Strikeforce’s own mistake). The scheduling of events largely depends on what Showtime/CBS wants, not what Strikeforce wants. The broadcast production is also handled by the Showtime/CBS team, instead of an internal Strikeforce team. This is why the production on the viewer end tends to be poor (ever seen Showtime boxing?) . Ex: the clock periodically entering/exiting the screen, the pace of the events (it is very tring to be at a live Strikeforce event. Be prepared to sit for unknown amounts of time watching no fights with no announcements in the arena – you have been warned). My point is that Showtime/CBS, while necessary for Strikeforce at the inception of their respective TV deals, is holding the organization back from CONSISTENT exposure. The production issue, however, is probably not going to be solved by a move to a non-premium cable network, as very few if any will hand over the broadcast production to an internal Strikeforce team. However, people need to realize that a lot of things that are criticized about the production of their shows are not under their control.
This situation really show us how good the Spike TV deal is for the UFC. Spike handles none of the production, so what you get are events with the exact same polished feel of a UFC PPV. Every aspect of the show is handled by the UFC, so there are no problems with coordination, timing, etc. The UFC puts on so many shows a year that the job of their production team becomes mechanical: they are so used to running shows on a consistent basis that they could almost run them in their sleep. Dana White has stated numerous times that the only reason the UFC isn’t on network TV is because of the issue of control over the production. This puzzles me, as it’s hard to imagine a network that REALLY thinks they could do a better job at producing a UFC show than the actual UFC, but I digress. If a network would allow the UFC to run the show, I believe you would see UFC on CBS or another major network.
This dynamic also translates to the quality of the live show. Going to a Zuffa show, either UFC or WEC, is an entirely different experience than attending a live Strikeforce show. Believe me, I’ve been to multiple events from each company. None of the problems that occur during a Strikeforce event occur during a UFC event, one issue being control of the production, the other being experience. The UFC have perfected running an MMA show, balancing the live show with the cable/PPV experience almost seamlessly. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Strikeforce and hope they succeed, I just think the UFC is so far ahead in these areas that Strikeforce will have a long haul to catch up, and won’t be able to catch up at all if they remain hampered by the CBS/Showtime umbrella. They may be two MMA organizations, but they are operating with two entirely different business deals, one that grants lots of freedom and support (SPIKE needs UFC more than UFC needs SPIKE, because they could get a different partner), while the other is restrictive, controlling, and doesn;t need MMA at all (Strikeforce deal with CBS/Showtime)
I agree that in a perfect universe every promotion has it’s own “Spike” deal. But the reality is that there is only one Spike on TV. Even Versus, which is trying desperately to be an alternative to Spike, is finding it very difficult to get the same kind of viewership.
SF is going to have to live with the Showtime/CBS deal and try to get the best ratings it can while keeping it’s shows profitable. Perhaps they can start putting more shows on CBS and slowly raising their exposure that way, but their current deal is probably the best they can get at this time. They need to learn to work with Showtime to air more preliminary bouts so they can build the exposure of more of their up and coming fighters, and they have to do something about the commentating. At least get rid of Shamrock and put in Miletich. Lastly, they need to go viral with their advertising since Showtime is only going to advertise on Showtime. There are a lot of incremental improvements SF can make even within the confines of their current deal.
With that said, if they are in fact making money on every show, then I think they are on a good path. They seem to be getting some consistency in their numbers (yes they seem volatile, but they seem to score over 300k viewers without any big names and a bump above that for “special guests”) and as long as Showtime is happy, which they also seem to be (see link below) then SF have a decent platform to grow.
http://mmajunkie.com/news/19218/source-strikeforce-st-louis-peaked-with-448000-viewers-showtime-content-with-ratings.mma