Strikeforce held a Challengers Series show in Portland, Oregon over the weekend that featured some pretty good prospect talent in the likes of Tyron Woodley, Roger Bowling, and Tarec Saffiedine. The event managed to draw 249,000 average viewers on Showtime, which isn’t that far off what last weeks heavily promoted Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery card.
MMAJunkie, also provided the payouts for the event:
Matt Lindland: $1,000 (no win bonus)
def. Kevin Casey: $10,000Tyron Woodley: $9,000 (includes $4,500 win bonus)
def. Nate Coy: $3,000Roger Bowling: $6,000 (includes $3,000 win bonus)
def. Bobby Voelker: $3,500Tarec Saffiedine: $8,000 (includes $4,000 win bonus)
def. Nate Moore: $4,000Pat Healy: $6,000 (includes $3,000 win bonus)
def Bryan Travers: $3,000Pro Escobedo: $2,000 (includes $1,000 win bonus)
def. Jason Sharp: $1,000
Payout Perspective:
The organization has drawn anywhere from 100,000 to 315,000 with these Challengers cards in the past, but the high end of that scale came as the result of a free preview that significantly expanded Showtime beyond its 18 million subscribers. The average draw for these Challengers events seems to be a little below 200,000, which suggests that the Heavy Artillery card, while maligned for itself being average, actually boosted the short-term interest in Strikeforce to benefit this Challengers’ card.
This really speaks to the need for Strikeforce to develop a consistent media and communications strategy. If the brand is going to grow, the organization must be in constant contact with the fans and media to produce content every week – these intermittent flurries of information every couple weeks just won’t cut it.
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Matt Lindland was not paid $1,000 for his fight with Casey. He’s a local product and undoubtedly received bonuses for his participation in the event (perhaps even related to the gate itself and how much business he was able to bring the event).
Pretty interesting to note:
SF Challengers 8:
Avg Viewers: 250K
Peak Viewers: 300K (Lindland vs Casey)
SF Heavy Artillery:
Avg Viewers: 310K
Peak Viewers: 448K (Overeem vs Rogers)
I agree that it may have something to do with staying in the fans’ minds. Coming right after Heavy Artillery helped a Challengers card that if it had come a few weeks later may have been lost in the shuffle. Just look at the ratings growth of the Bellator series. By putting on a show week after week they are able to increase their momentum as the weeks go on even though any given card isn’t necessarily stacked.
If you are on a cable channel (not PPV) and you have 20 good fights, it seems that it’s better to put on 5 fights each week for a month rather than all 20 in one night. It’s different for PPV where you need to stack cards (or have a very strong main event) in order to get fans to pay.
I wonder if there was a boost in the live attendance as well.
I can’t help thinking of Dream and their sporadic marathon 5 hour shows with 12+ fights. They might improve their ratings if they split up some of those cards and put on shows more consistently. But then Japan is a “unique” market.
good to see it did OK, I’m sure HA the week before helped it out, but that’s exactly the type of synergy SF needs… too bad that Lashley is off their first June card, will probably lose some casual viewers to pimp Fedor/Werdum to.