Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be taking a look at Bellator 35, which was the promotional debut with it’s new TV partner – MTV 2 – this past Saturday night. The event featured the first leg of the Welterweight tournament along with some fun non-televised fights which included the always exciting Waachiim Spiritwolf and 115 lbs tournament champion Zoila Frausto.
The event took place at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino in Lemoore, California and featured 4 Welterweight tournament fights: Brent Weedman vs. Dan Hornbuckle, Rick Hawn vs. Jim Wallhead, Jay Heiron vs. Anthony Lapsely, and former Bellator WW champ Lyman Good vs. Chris Lozano.
Payouts
Note: that the money reported below is only the money required to be reported by the commission.
Courtesy of MMAJunkie:
The total disclosed payroll for the event was $142,000.
Lyman Good: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus)
def. Chris Lozano $10,000
Jay Hieron: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus)
def. Anthony Lapsley: $10,000
Rick Hawn: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus)
def. Jim Wallhead: $10,000
Brent Weedman: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus)
def. Dan Hornbuckle: $10,000
Joachiim Spiritwolf: $2,000 (includes $1,000 win bonus)
def. Jamie Jara: $1,000
Brandon Bender: $3,000 (includes $1,500 win bonus)
def. Josh Herrick: $1,000
Champ Zoila Frausto: $12,000 (includes $6,000 win bonus)
def. Karina Halinan: $1,500
Paul Ruiz: $1,000 (includes $500 win bonus)
def. Jesus Castro: $500
Gate and Attendance
Bellator reported during the broadcast that the Tachi Palace venue was sold out, which was scaled for about 1,700 attendees. We must note that Bellator receive’s a site fee for their events and therefore attendance does not impact their bottom line, as the site fee becomes the gate and Tachi Palace pays Bellator to draw more guests to their casino and hotels. With that said, Josh Gross of ESPN informs MMAPayout that the site fee is said to have been $100,000 for Saturday nights event.
Ratings
MMAJunkie also reports that Bellator 35 ratings averaged 200,000 (0.2 rating) viewers and peaked with 231,000 (0.3 rating) MTV 2 viewers. The immediate replay of the event maintained 63.5 percent of the original audience (127,000) . More importantly to Bellator and MTV 2, the ratings all showed a great increase in the key demographics, which showed an 83% increase in 18-49 males, 80% increase in 18-34 males, and a 133% increase in 25-34 males.
This event gave MTV 2 the best time-period performance among 25-34 males in a year and largest viewership in 18-49 males since October of 2010. MTV 2 had tried to reach this demo before by showing pro-wrestling, which was only able to get a 0.1 rating, so Bellator is off to a good start, though it is too soon to tell. The typical MTV 2 viewership is said to be around 120,000 viewers on average, and MTV 2 is said to be in nearly 80 million households, so we will keep a close eye on what type of numbers the next few Bellator shows do.
Dave Meltzer of Yahoo Sports writes the following regarding the Bellator ratings on MTV 2:
The number was higher than some weeks and lower than others on the group’s previous home, Fox Sports Net, where in theory it ran its fall season live in prime time on Thursdays. The reality was somewhat different, as FSN affiliates regularly preempted the shows for local sports, and it took a concerted effort to find time slots each week for shows to air in different markets.
But Bellator has moved to a station that is not as familiar to sports fans and to a night when fewer people watch television. But it is on the traditional night people are conditioned to watch fights, and the show will be available in about 65 percent of U.S. homes and have the regular time slot it lacked in the past. The downside is that there will be competition nearly every week from either UFC, Strikeforce or boxing.
…
The history of MMA programming in a regular weekly time slot, aside from Spike’s “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show, has not sustained an audience or long-lasting appeal.
The International Fight League got a strong Monday prime time slot on MyNetwork TV, opened to 1.2 million viewers, but fell each subsequent week and was off the network by the end of the year. The “Iron Ring,” a more feature-oriented show on BET that was built around the idea of major celebrities putting together fight teams, opened to outstanding ratings and strong young demographics, but also steadily fell as the weeks went on. After being touted strongly by the network in its early weeks, it wasn’t renewed for a second season. A pro-wrestling show on MTV2 that debuted last summer opened to only slightly lower numbers than Bellator, with 178,000 viewers, but by its fourth week was down to 102,000 viewers and a few weeks later vanished from the schedule.
Sponsors
Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney revealed probably one of their biggest sponsors before the show aired on TV, Playstation. Along with Tachi Palace, Everlast, Playstation, PSP, Playstation Network, and The Lincoln Lawyer appeared on the Bellator mat as sponsors. Being on MTV 2 looks to be opening up some sponsorship opportunities for Bellator, and Playstation and The Lincoln Lawyer are good mainstream sponsors which they can use to garner more in the future.
Bjorn Rebney: “Laying down the mat for Saturdays show on MTV2. Welcome PSP”
It seems there was one other major change regarding sponsors after Belaltor made the move from FSN to MTV 2, according to a report from Jon Luther of MMAFA.TV:
MMAFA.tv has learned from sources close to Bellator Fighting Championship that the promotion is no longer allowing its fighters to receive sponsorship from poker sites and Condom Depot. Sources indicated that the move was requested, if not necessitated, by the MTV2 network in an effort to keep their station more suitable for teenagers and young adults.
Trends
For the first time in the promotion’s history, Bellator had two of its fighter trend in the first hour of the program. Rick “Hawn” and Dan “Hornbuckle” both were top trending topics on Saturday night. It is also key to note that the first our of Bellator did not go up against Strikeforce Henderson vs Feijao, and is when “Hawn” and “Hornbuckle” trended, no other Bellator fighter was a trend for the last hour.
Event Key Notes
* Because Spike TV is part of the MTV family of networks, the Bellator shows was heavily promoted on Spike TV leading up to the show on Saturday night. Bellator’s featherweight champion Joe Warren even made a guest appearance on Spike’s TNA pro-wrestling show to push the event. The cross-promotion between Spike and MTV 2 only adds more fuel to the idea that Bellator is Viacom’s insurance policy in case the UFC and Spike TV are not able to come to an agreement, since their current TV deals runs out at the end of the year. Bellator has always made TV deals with the bigger picture in mind. They signed with ESPN Deportes hoping to eventually move to ESPN 2, signed with FSN and paid NBC for a late time slot hoping to put them in a position to sign with Fuel TV, FX, or Fox, and it looks now they are with MTV 2 hoping they could eventually land on Spike TV or any other network under Viacom’s wings.
* The TNA show that Joe Warren was on to promote Bellator on Spike TV went head-to-head against the live UFC on Versus show. To add insult to injury, TNA did a 1.36 rating and 1.85 million viewers while UFC on Versus drew it’s lowest ratings in the history of the company with a 0.67 rating and 681,000 average viewers.
* Bellator was featured on WSJ.com and had a billboard on Times Square leading up to the debut this past Saturday night, which along with the promotion on Spike TV, shows that they had a strong synergy with its partners to promote the upcoming season on MTV 2. Next week’s show will be an important one for the promotion as they will air without any competition from the UFC or Strikeforce, so getting a good number is crucial. After next weekend, there will be a great number of UFC, Strikeforce, and March Madness events that will take eyeballs away from the promotion.
* As a kickoff event, Bellator 35 did was not a great show to kickoff the new season and the debut on MTV 2. Most of the fights were not very memorable and the Hieron vs Lapsley fight, which got the biggest crowd reaction, was due to the bad stoppage by referee Josh Rosenthal. No real stars were made on Saturday nights show, and many fans complained about how bad the show looks without an HD option since the majority of MTV 2 owners do not get the channel in HD. It was a slow paced event filled with decisions, so it will be interesting to see how many viewers outside of the hardcore MMA fan-base they can keep next week. One of the funner fights of the night, Spiritwolf vs Jara, was not shown on MTV 2 due to all the decisions and even Spiritwolk himself said the fight may have been to bloody to show on the channel, via MiddleEasy.
* Bellator has appeared to keep much of it’s production values exactly the same as they did on Fox Sports Net, which they promised they would when moving to MTV 2, though it was noticeable that the production and graphic packages were a bit down, perhaps due to cutting costs or just the lack of having HD available this season.
* Moving from Thusday night to Saturday night comes with a price for Bellator but also with some benefits. Hosting shows on the weekends is more beneficial to Casinos and events that pay a site-fee to the promotion, which also means that more fans will be able to make the events and make the attendance figures a bit more appealing. On the other hand, they will now be going up against Saturday sports programming, UFC, and Strikeforce events, which will take a huge deal of attention and media coverage away from the promotion.
* MTV 2 did a fairly good job at promoting the Bellator event via social media. The MTV 2 Twitter handle (MTV_2) along with the MTV Clutch (MTVClutch) did a good job at promoting the event and telling it’s followers when to tune in. MTV Clutch even offered a Bellator 35 Recap write-up on the website.
* 200k viewers is a number that is seen as good by both MTV 2 and Bellator, but to put in in perspective, Bellator on NBC (which aired on 2/5) did a 0.60 rating and 894,000 viewers (a time-buy TV deal which they no longer have). In terms of total viewership, it is more than 4x’s what MTV 2 got, though the quality of viewership at that time-slot is questionable.
They did better than I thought they would for their first show. But until they run a show some where that has an AC that reports the gate and we see numbers around what they are making from the TV deal I will remain sceptical about their long term prospects.
It should be noted that Bellator has a constant channel and day but not a constant time.
jv:
Gate and attendance numbers won’t mean much for Bellator since they get a site-fee. What they make comes from sponsorships, site-fee, and TV deal pretty much, which neither is expected to be very high.
Jose:
If Bjorn approached me about buying his shows I would be asking what kind of numbers were the previous shows drawing? If they were garbage, which they had to be then I wouldn’t be coughing up much money for the site fee. The numbers they are able to turn this season at the gate will have an effect on what they are able to do for site fees next season. Assuming there is a next season.
jv:
Yes, you have a point there, but they did terrible drawing fans last year on their Thursday slots and somehow are still going this year, so we will see. Tachi is a place that typically draws well. We have to see how the other venues also do.
Let’s say
Sponsors = 30K
TV Deal = 80K
Site-fee = 100K (according to Gross)
It is possible that they may be getting a bit more this year due to MTV 2 and already having Playstation on board. It was rumored that they made around 20K from sponsors last season on FSN.
Updated with sponsorship report from:
http://www.mmafa.tv/home/blogs/kicking-vice-bellator-prohibits-sponsorship-from-poker-sites-and-condom-depot.html
Considering all the promotion, that they and MTV2 did
Isn’T MTV2 losing money, when they run lots of spots on Spike etc. just to get a mere 80 K more viewers compared to a free rerun on Sat night?
Do you think, Bellator has to increase their viewership?
Also do you know, who pays for the TV production of the show? MTV2 or Bellator?
Cool2010:
Last season, I believe Bellator was in charge and responsible for the production costs.
A couple of notes:
-MTV2 is likely paying a minimal rights fees.
-Bellator produces their own shows.
-the dismal attendance last year should improve dramatically this year with the move from Thursday to Saturday.
-I would be surprised if the total sponsorship take isn’t closer to $50-100k per show.
With $142,000 in fighters salaries, plus probably at a bare minimum $75,000 in production costs I still think its a stretch that they’re at break even, but its closer to the realm of possibility than most people think as far as event by event.
Production costs for TV and costs to set up the events are easily a couple of hundred thousand dollars
You also have to bear in mind, that they travel around the country, which makes it even more expensive.
If you look at Ticketmaster (I know it is not scientific evidence), it seems that they can’t even sell out 1000 seat arenas with the highest priced ticket at 50 $.
Also keep in mind that they are in the first rounds of the tournaments. Each round the payout goes up. They also have an office staff that is arranging this stuff, scouting, match making etc and I highly doubt it is just two guys in a closet. Linkedin has them listed as 50-200 employee’s but I don’t know if that is accurate.
On top of that there is medical insurance, payments to the AC, they are waging war in the courtroom with Zuffa, flying athletes and a corner man in, hotel rooms etc.
Great input by everyone! Adam, thanks for your expertise as well. It’s definitely around the ballpark.
>”-the dismal attendance last year should improve dramatically this year with the move from Thursday to Saturday.”
I have been trying to wrap my head around this. In theory Saturday would seem to be the best night of the week. But they are running up against the UFC and SF on Saturday night. Are the uber hard core going to pass up on Jones vs Shogun to go catch Bellator? Of course they can see Bellator live and then run to the nearest bar if you don’t have a PVR and the desire to buy the PPV. But that is a whole lot of MMA in a day.
jv:
The live attendance should improve, but the TV ratings will suffer throughout time is my initial theory.
I liked having Bellator mid-week. My weekends are generally full of fight sports already. This past weekend I watched Friday Night Fights, Strikeforce, Boxing After Dark on HBO and Bellator. I missed Boxeo Top Rank on Fox Deportes because I had too many things to DVR that Saturday night. Having something mid-week made it easier to watch everything.
Jose
What was the MTV deal worth to Bellator and what do you think organizations like Titan and MFC get from HDNET to televise their events.
Ron Rio:
From MTV’s history, they typically don’t pay high license fees for content, so I am not expecting too much here. In terms of HDNet and what they pay Titan and MFC, I know HDNet covers the production costs because they do it all themselves but they also hold rights to the content as part of the deal.
Adam Swift should have great insight here 😉