MMA Payout has learned that the rerun of Bellator 106’s Michael Chandler-Eddie Alvarez main event scored an average of 560,000 viewers on Friday night. The fight, in which Alvarez won by decision was shown on Spike TV in its entirety prior to Bellator 107 in the 5pmPT/8pmET time slot.
Bellator 106 scored an organization high of 1.1 million viewers on Saturday, November 2nd. However, the 5 round main event featuring Chandler’s title defense did not start until after 9pmPT/12amET which may have foreclosed the opportunity for some that DVR’d the event. Bellator 106 ran for approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes.
Payout Perspective:
A no-brainer to run this fight again. I originally thought a good slot for this would be after TNA Wrestling on Thursday but with two big college football games that night (OU/Baylor, OU/Stanford) and the fact that Bellator 107 was on Friday it made sense to run it on Friday before the live event. The rerun gave people the chance to tune in to see what they may have missed. It also served as a lead-in for the live event.
SPIKE programming is delayed on the west coast, so it’s all in the same time slot.
It’s maddening for people like me who would rather watch live, but SPIKE execs claim it’s been proven to optimize west coast ratings.
Bellator 106 was awesome! Great night of fights. And both Chandler and Alvarez are beasts!
Pretty much the same as UFCs live programming. The shift is happening
Sampson, for someone who consistently touts the international success of boxing, it’s odd (not really odd I guess, do you have an agenda other than to mindlessly bash the UFC?) that you solely focus on stateside TV ratings when it comes to MMA. Did you know the UFC is now getting around $50 million per year from Globo in Brazil alone? Also, FOX is happy about what the UFC is doing for FS1 and FS2. Not sure about Viacom when a lot of cheaper programming on SPIKE draws better ratings. Relativity is relevant in the TV industry.
AGAIN, for the millionth time, comparing stateside TV ratings on networks that are in no way on equal footing is only a tiny part of the picture. If you only want to focus on numbers that serve your agenda, be my guest. It’s comical. No one is arguing that stateside TV ratings for MMA in the US have declined as the market has been flooded and marketing resources have become stretched too thin, leading to a perceived lack of bankable stars. However, the UFC is on track for the biggest year in their history in terms of total revenue, so the asinine line of “UFC is failing, just a matter of time” is demonstrably false.
This doesn’t apply solely to you on this forum, but I will ask you this question again, to both yourself and others who feel the need to visit an MMA-centric website and root for the failure of the sport’s largest and most successful organization: do you enjoy MMA? Do you appreciate the sport and the athletes who take part in it? If the answer is yes, then I fail to see the point of your nonsensical rants. If the point is to get attention, then bravo, and I hope that the negativity you feel the need to put out somehow lessens whatever burdens you feel in life. I hope you respond to this question directly.
@Machiel Van
We already had a discussion a while back about the intentions of Sampson and others and it was shown overwhelmingly that they and others ARE NOT anti-MMA or anti-UFC. You were mysteriously very quiet during that discussion but now you want to make a big write-up, especially now that everyone who normally posts is quiet?
Are you another UFC shill like BrainSmasher?
She is a shill… and I read nothing of her post.
@ Random Dude
I must’ve missed all that; apologies. Curious: how was this shown?
Sampson,
Do you assume that all those who don’t agree with your points of view to be women? That seems bizarre and somewhat sexist, but I’d like to hear the reason if you have one.
I certainly wouldn’t call myself a UFC shill, but I suppose that that’s ultimately a subjective opinion. The Zuffa brass has made several decisions that I have found to be deplorable over the years, such as the likeness rights issue, completely uneven distribution of revenue between talent and management, trashing of fighters, childish rebuking and suspiciously selective distribution of media credentials, decreasing sponsorship opportunities for fighters, the Strikeforce debacle, Dana’s public and hypocritical attitude towards PED use, his hand wringing in regards to regulatory issues, the joke of a Hall of Fame, implementation of stale production formats, etc. That said, I also recognize that they’re the undisputed market leader, and what’s good for them often translates into what’s good for the sport as a whole. I was a much bigger fan of PRIDE, and lament the loss of it to this day, along with the rest of the Japanese MMA scene (save for Shooto, which just keeps chugging along).
I’ve also been pretty critical of Bellator in the way they’ve handled their contracts, their rigid adherence to the tournament format (which is slowly eroding), and more recently the direction that Viacom seems to be steering the ship. However, I really enjoy the product and recognize that competition is exactly what the MMA landscape needs. I root for all the promotions whose content I enjoy to succeed. I really have no stake in any of them, and can appreciate each for what they bring to the table.
However, I do tire of people who relentlessly root for the UFC to fail. It makes no sense to me because I can’t understand the motivation behind it. What bothers me more is wild predictions that the organization is falling apart that are only backed up by per-event ratings, with no consideration of the greater TV landscape, aggregate financials, etc. Arguments that aren’t based in fact or even a solid understanding of the factors at play are tiresome, childish, and ultimately serve no purpose. I’ll waste some time confronting those arguments as sensibly as I can; it’s starting to become a bit of fun. I would like to know the motivations of some of the people who frequent this site and choose to try and spread a message of negativity, so I’ll keep asking. I wish I had been reading when it was allegedly explained.
When I have a bit of free time and literally have nothing else to do, I’ll engage with people here. This used to be an excellent website that hosted well thought out and constructive discourse, but eventually devolved in tandem with the increasing prevalence of internet posters and ironically, the spread of the sport of MMA itself. I still have hope that that dynamic can be restored one day. Until then, I’m your huckleberry. Bash away.
Agree with Mr Van. The UFC is making as much money off TV deals as they are off PPV’s. PPV numbers that are blowing away what boxing and WWE are doing. Their total views for their events per year are up to an all time high. They are demanding higher sponsorships than ever before and im sure merchandise is at an all tie high for them also. Only to a fool would this be looked at as failing.
Even if the worst thing possible happens and the UFC tanks in the US. Basically no one is watching it. The UFC would still be making so much money from the ground work they put in outside the US. That they would easily have the resources to re-launch the UFC in the US. Seeing as the US is still and always will be the most lucrative market. The incentive will always be there to keep putting money into making it work. Basically, the UFC isn’t going anywhere. EVER!
Hold on BS, let’s not lose our heads here.
It would be disastrous if the UFC tanked stateside. The US is still the organization’s primary source of revenue via the FOX tv deal, PPV buys, and live gate revenue. I’ve never seen any figures related to merchandising, but I would suspect the majority of revenue drawn from that comes from the US as well.
It’s not a matter of cash reserves; in reality, Zuffa is carrying a lot of debt, which is normal for large companies these days, but let’s not pretend that the Fertittas or Dana would sink much of their personal money into it if it was no longer a money making property.
However, you are correct in that fans who are overly concerned about the decline in TV ratings and PPV buys on a per event basis should try to step back and consider all the factors at play. I’ve said it before: the stratification of the UFC’s content across 3 different TV platforms (one of which is not available in the majority of US households and seems to now host foreign cards that will start in the early afternoon), compounded by the fact the UFC has jumped from SPIKE to FX to FS1 in the space of 20 months, after being on the same platform for 7 years, was bound to confuse viewers and lead to a drop in ratings. Whether or not those ratings improve over time will be interesting to see, but as long as their partners at FOX are pleased with the UFC bringing more viewers to their fledgling networks than anything else, the relationship is safe. It’s unfortunate that they’ve had to jump around the dial so much, but it now seems that their staple home will be FS1 for the long term.
The flooding of the market with content also causes casual viewers to be far more selective about which cards they tune in for. It’s hard to say what the motivation for running so many cards a year is, and it can be argued (and often is in the MMA media) that they are fundamentally running too many shows, but I think that the glut of content is necessitated by their international aspirations and a possible desire to steal the market share of attention from the competition (which web traffic metrics indicate is working). You were correct to point out that from a revenue perspective, they are doing better than ever, and if you look at aggregate viewership across the 30+ events they now run per year, they’re technically getting their product in front of more viewers than ever.
In my opinion, the greatest challenge that the UFC faces moving forward relates solely to marketing: with their resources stretched razor thin, they may want to consider drawing on the talents of an outside marketing firm so that they can better promote the majority of their athletes. They aren’t succeeding in creating many new stars, and it’s not for lack of compelling personalities and storylines, it’s because they don’t have the time and resources to figure out how to get fans interested in many of their potential stars. “Two guys are fighting in the UFC because they’re great fighters!” is not compelling marketing, yet this is what a lot of pre-fight hype amounts to. I think they’ll eventually adjust; they’ve vastly increased the amount of yearly events and are struggling to keep up, but as they continue to build the company’s infrastructure they’ll increase their ability to try and expose audiences to the unique qualities of each individual fighter.
Good post MV
”but let’s not pretend that the Fertittas or Dana would sink much of their personal money into it if it was no longer a money making property. ” ….really the Fertitta’s never sank money into the UFC without the certainty of it being a money making property?