Bellator will be moving to Friday nights for its sixth season scheduled for March 2, 2012 on MTV2 and Epix according to a Bellator press release.
Via Bellator Press Release:
The premiere will mark the first time Bellator has aired on Friday nights. “Our focus was to find the right night, where the largest number of MMA fans could enjoy the show,” Bellator Chairman & CEO Bjorn Rebney said. “We’ve been discussing this move with our partners at Viacom for months. When we looked at the alternatives, we agreed that Fridays provided a great night for us to reach MMA fans with our live, real sport, tournament events every week.”
Bellator’s Season 6 will feature five tournaments, each loaded with world-class talent from across the globe as well the potential for six World Title fights.”
Payout Perspective:
A very smart move by Bellator to move off of Saturday night’s so it would not go up against the UFC. We will see if the possibility of a Strikeforce/Showtime deal will mean Strikeforce as opposition for Bellator on Friday nights. Still, at this point, the move allows Bellator to own Friday night and have more viewers tune in rather than having them make a choice.
“A very smart move by Bellator to move off of Saturday night’s so it would not go up against the UFC”
They’ll still have to go up against the UFC since the UFC is also moving to Friday nights once the FX deal starts. It would actually be better to stay on Saturday and do free events vs PPVs instead of free events vs free events.
UFC rarely has shows on Friday, this is an overall good move for Bellator. It will be even better when they’re on Spike. Sucks that they have to wait in this limbo until all the deals are done.
I favored mid weeks, or even Sunday nights. There was a longer article somewhere recently, the key point being the needed to maintain enough ticket sale capacity which meant stating on Friday or Saturday night for the casinos and such. I was hoping Viacom would take a longer term view, almost like the old Tuesday night fights on USA (I think, it was a long time ago) for boxing which really helped people notice up and coming fighters.
Either way, getting off Saturdays was an important step. I will still likely end up taping Bellator most weeks and watching later that weekend (on the treadmill sometimes)