MMA Fighting reports that Eddie Alvarez vs. Mike Chandler III will happen on PPV. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Alvarez broke the news that he will be in the main event of Bellator’s first PPV sometime this year.
In the interview, Alvarez tells Helwani that he does not know what will happen if he wins. Thus, Alvarez’s contract status is still a big unknown after settling with Bellator late last year.
Alvarez also had some choice words for Ben Askren after his comments on Alvarez’s legal contract battle with the company.
Payout Perspective:
Does an Alvarez-Chandler III PPV excite you? Their fight at Bellator 106 on Spike TV received the highest viewership for the organization. The two have had two great battles but the PPV success will depend on what other fights will support the main event (e.g. Rampage). The other factor is price. Bellator had tossed around $35-$45 for its initial PPV. We will see how Bellator will market the PPV and whether it will create enough buzz for people to purchase it.
Hopefully they will have Bellator Network up and running by then!
As it should.
Bellator and Spike need to hype the Hell out of this match up to casuals who watch Spike tv.
With good marketing they should be able to get 250K buys.
Casuals will make or break this PPV.
If Bellator’s future is dependent on establishing a PPV presence than the future is very dim. MMA is not popular enough to support even more PPV events. More PPV events also kills any chance at growing the MMA audience.
250k buys? Lmao!!!!!!!!
Depending on the rest of the card this will peak at 80,000-100,000. There is a good chance it doesn’t break 50,000.
Let’s say it gets 100k buys. That’s like 2.5M tops (at $27 a PPV for Viacom). Let’s say the payroll is canceled out by the gate and sponsorships… with all the marketing costs, how the heck are they going to make money here?
Oops, bad math… 2.2M at $22 a PPV.
Given the exposure the second fight received, It will easily break 100k in PPV. Bellator has an arsenal of highlights given the first fight was absolutely amazing and the second one was great and received a ton of exposure. Plus you have to take into account that these two are legitimately some of the best lightweights in the world going into a trilogy, one win a piece and you have the perfect recipe for a great marketing campaign, if Bellator plays its cards right it is not crazy to think it can go as high as 200 – 250k in PPV.
You guys are crazy. BFC was lucky to get 1 million viewers for their last fight with the hype of a failed PPV promoting the fight. That isn’t house holds that is people. Assuming 4 people per home watched. That is 250,000 possible buys. That means every single home that watched the first fight would be willing to pay for it. There is no chance in hell they get a 100% cross over rate from free to paying $35.
Also it doesn’t matter how good the fighters are. They are not in the UFC. Which means they have little effect on the big picture. People follow the UFC like a league. Watch as guys jocky for position, rank, and titles. These guys have no part in that. It is a random meaningless fight outside the match up itself.
It reminds me of Nascar drivers who drive other cars and race on other circuits. They do not get the 100K plus fans at the track. Few people know or care that many of the drivers are racing at small tracks around the country. It has nothing to do with the greater nascar picture. Doesn’t matter how skilled there are. Outside of Nascar it has little meaning. Most people are not going to care about this fight. Who does the winner fight? No one! The winner still has the lack of UFC competition hanging over his head. Without the UFC brand its facing a huge up hill battle. Nothing with out that brand has broke 100K buys with MUCH better fighters and match ups!
The fact BFC is known as a free product effects the perceived quality and value of their events. Its hard to get people to pay for what they have always got for free. Especially for a fight they got free 2 times before! I would call 100K buys a big success for them. But I expect 50-60 range.
http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2014/1/12/5300468/ufc-nate-diaz-says-dana-white-full-of-nurmgomedov
Good for fighters!!
http://www.mmamania.com/2014/1/12/5299996/happy-georges-st-pierre-no-regrets-retire-return-ufc-upcoming-projects-mma
According to Wikipedia, the two Affliction shows (with Fedor and all its crazy, craaazy asinine salaries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affliction:_Day_of_Reckoning#Fighter_salaries) did about 100k each. The big Bellator show did 1.1M with a relatively staacked card. 150k tops (very tops).
BTW, aside from the Curran-Strauss rematch (I assume) what the heck is the rest of the card going to consist of? Joe Warren, Joe Riggs, Attila Vegh? Oooh man, doesn’t your mouth just water at the thought?
I don’t think I would pay $50+ for this PPV. $30 is about as high as I would go, and I would prefer something with a “2” in front of it. So even if they can break 6 figures in PPVs, I don’t know how much revenue they will realistically generate.
I want Bellator to succeed, I just don’t think the PPV model will work for them. We’ve seen good matchups in boxing (Broner-Maidana) go from PPV to cable, most likely because they were not generating sufficient interest, so I don’t think Alvarez-Chandler III will move the needle enough to convince me that Bellator has a PPV future.
Yes $30-35 would be about the smart price point. And I, on the other hand, will fully admit that I am rooting against Bellator, for the reasons JKT discuss here http://mmapayout.com/2014/01/titan-fc-signs-with-cbs-sports-network/. I fully believe they are just delaying the inevitable in preventing the UFC from becoming the one and only game in town (a la MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) and truly reaching its yet-established ceiling. One day (hopefully soon) we will be looking back at these years and think about how silly it was with all these different, little orgs in existence in the sport (Bellator, Titan, MFC, Tachi, WFC, PFC, etc. etc. etc.).
Brain Smasher-As always excellent beakdown n insight,..also can someone give any insight on how Bellator international tv/distributions deal effects their ppv buys?? Id like to think that Bellator wouldn’t put on a ppv unless they would make money and from I remember,..they have a pretty good international tv distribution
set up…any comments??
AK,
The issue I have with JKT’s post is that he’s confounding promotions with sports leagues. In boxing you have a variety of promoters, and the sport – though it has it’s issues – is still kicking. Sports leagues are different because the teams within that league all compete for the talent (albeit with a great deal of collusion) like promoters do in boxing.
Having only one promotion in boxing or MMA will hurt salaries in a way that having one league composed of various competing teams does not. I’m a believer that you have to pay for quality, and if the sport is to reach it’s ceiling, more money for fighters will be part of the equation.
Sergio, I believe PPV buys are based on just North America and wouldn’t be effected by international tv deals.
Diego, the sport doesn’t need competition to. The UFC needs stars and will always pay them. Ask yourself why they give Overeem PPV points when their salary already beat strikeforce? Who pushed Silva and GSP’s pay into millions per fight? The answer is no one. Also if the UFC ever didn’t pay their talent what they were worth. It would leave the door open for someone else to come out and steal them and run their own show. This is why the UFC doesn’t lose many fighters. No one can match the salary and still turn a profit. The nature of the business polices itself becuase it is star driven rather than team or city driven like sports leagues. Leagues can screw players because people would follow the team with them or without the player. So the team doesn’t need to pay for stars.
Good points, Diego. Food for thought. And, well, no there won’t be Curran-Straus on the PPV I guess http://network.yardbarker.com/mma/article_external/pat_curran_vs_daniel_straus_iii_headlines_bellator_112/15532040?linksrc=story_sport_mma_auto_module_head_15532040
“Ask yourself why they give Overeem PPV points when their salary already beat strikeforce?”
QED. Overeem was hard to sign because he was bouncing around a bunch of different promotions and he wanted to pursue both MMA and kickboxing. If the UFC had been the only game in town, they would have been able to pay him much less in salary, PPV points, signing bonus, etc. The fact that Overeem had opportunities with other promotions in both MMA and kickboxing is what lead to his fat UFC contract.
I don’t believe that Zuffa gave him a nice contract just because they’re nice guys and wanted Overeem to be a millionaire.
Of course they didn’t do it to be nice. They also didn’t pay him that because K-1 or other MMA promotions. They paid him that because they needed him for the division. They knew a fight with Brock was going to be big money(wasn’t as big as they thought it would be). So they paid him a ton knowing they were going to make more. Leaving it on the table just to lowball someone is never a good business decision!
Again you didn’t address the pay of the other guys. IF the UFC never paid GSP more than 1 million. Where would he go? No one could ever match that and get a return. But yet they pay him many millions. I feel Chuck Liddell was a guy who would have fought for almost nothing. The UFC made him very wealthy at a time when there was no other promotion signing fighters. MMA is a star driven model and the profit the UFC makes assures they will pay what it takes to get that money. Also the sport is way to easy to start a promotion. The day the UFC low balls people compared to what the fighters can draw. Another company will see that money to be made and jump in and out bid the UFC for those fighters. That is the beauty of the sport and capitalism!
IF GSP can sell 1 million PPVs with out the UFC brand because he is a big name. And someone finds out the UFC is only paying him 500K for a $50,000,000 event. Every millionaire will be jumping into the MMA business!