Glory Sports International announced that it has appointed Jon J. Franklin as Global Chief Executive via company press release. It also announced that it has extended its agreement with Spike TV to provide original kickboxing programming through 2015.
Via Glory press release:
GLORY Sports International and its board of directors today [August 19, 2014] appointed Jon J. Franklin as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. In this role, Franklin will oversee management of the world’s premier kickboxing league, with coverage in over 170 global territories.
Since 2002, Franklin has been President of The Sports and Entertainment Company (Sports-EntCo), a sports and entertainment marketing firm that assisted with production, programming, sponsorship, and logistics for GLORY events in the United States.
“I look forward to working with Jon in this new capacity. He has been a big part of our incredible success thus far and is uniquely suited to lead GLORY into the next phase of development,” said Pierre Andurand, GLORY Chairman and Co-Founder. “With Jon at the helm, we are confident that 2015 will be a banner year in the evolution of our brand as a leading combat sports league in the United States and abroad”.
Previously, Franklin spent 15 years in senior roles at IMG-Media and has also served as President of Golden Gloves Boxing LLC and AP-X, a division of America Presents Boxing.
“I’m honored to have been a part of GLORY’s growth into one of the top fight promotions worldwide, but the work is not done,” said Franklin. “I truly believe that we have the best athletes in the world, with production for both live audiences and home viewers that is second to none. As we move into the new year, I can’t wait to share GLORY’s global vision for kickboxing with our fans.”
Andrew Whitaker, who served as CEO previously, will assume an advisory role withGLORY as a consultant for business development.
Payout Perspective:
The big news for kickboxing fans is that Glory will be returning to Spike TV in 2015. We will see if there will be a new direction for the company in 2015 with the appointment of Franklin. It will be interesting to see how it intends to increase the brand and whether it will make another attempt at a PPV or focus on events on Spike.
TOPS where is a stupid comment?
Glory can be very successful. I just wished they werent barefoot it looks goofy and is a health risk (toe in eye) they should have kickboxing shoes and allow some clinching.
I wonder if anyone even misses this kickboxing bore considering they haven’t had an even since that disaster PPV. UFC/Bellator/WSOF/hell, even Lion Fights are eating their lunch and kicking their ass. Good try GLORY, see you with K1.
Greg- what do you mean? sometimes their ratings have peaked with 865k viewers. for the first year thats respectable. They had no business doing a PPV. I think they will get bigger. Americans love striking.
FightBusiness are you serious? You think barefoot looks goofy and kickboxing shoes are the solution? WTF?
Uh? Back on Spike in 2015? Their upcoming show is at the end of October 2014 (some say Chicago)
Please correct your text MMAPayout
@Hugenholz
By stating back in 2015, Glory had an agreement with Spike TV through 2014. So, we knew that there was a show this fall, but it was not known if they would be back on Spike in 2015. Thus, they are back in 2015.