Bjorn Rebney talks about the end of Bellator’s first season
Published by Zach Arnold on July 1st, 2009 in Current Events

 Print |  Email |  RSS

As the late Billy Mays used to say, “Life is a pitch and then you buy it.”

We all know that Dana White is MMA’s master pitchman, but he has a lot of weaknesses to go along with his strengths in this department. Bjorn Rebney, the boss of Bellator FC, goes about business a little differently.

While the two men may end up using similar business tactics and acumen, Rebney is the complete opposite of White. He’s an excellent speaker with a sports marketing background. At times, Bjorn sounds like he came from the casting call of Jerry Maguire, but don’t be fooled — he may use marketing clichés such as Q score, pieces of the puzzle, and growth curves, but Rebney’s message is starting to resonate with the general public and fight fans across the States.

Bellator recently finished up their first season of fights for ESPN Deportes, ESPN’s Spanish-language channel seen around the world. Ratings for Bellator on ESPN-D were excellent for the channel, mostly ranging in the 1’s. On Discovery Channel, drawing a 1.5 rating is a minor success (like Billy Mays did with Pitchmen). Drawing a 1.5 on ESPN Deportes, however, is pretty impressive no matter how you slice it.

“Our show is going on ESPN Desportes to a spanish-language audience,” Rebney said recently in an interview with TheFightNerd.com (Matthew Kaplowitz) after a Bellator show in Connecticut. “The Spanish-language audience until Bellator hit on Deportes had never had a show produced for a spanish-language audience in real time that had Spanish-language announcers. It was being broadcast week to week. So, we’re hitting real virgin territory. If we’re able to do numbers that are better than in many instances the top dogs in the game and comparable to hitting an audience that knows nothing about this great game.”

“I think that we’re poised to do some really great numbers when we change over to English language and I think that going into the second season, we will do consistently stronger numbers in Spanish language because the fan base will know it I mean you know you can’t believe how many people came to us in terms of Spanish-language media saying, “Well explain this to us. Is it real? Are those real fights?’ There was a complete lack of understanding of this great game so, it’s gotten… it’s strong and I look at it from that perspective, I love it to be you know north of 1’s but it’ll get there.”

Bellator, during season one, crowned new champions — Lyman Good, Eddie Alvarez, Hector Lombard, Joe Soto, and Toby Imada are the names that most hardcore MMA fans recognize as being pushed by the organization. Now that season one is over, how will Bellator create new stars and challengers for their new crop of aces? Rebney told Kaplowitz that the matchmaking formula won’t change all that much.

“What you’ll see is much of the same, you’ll see Challenger series, 8 guys fighting to become the #1 challenger to challenge Lyman Good, to challenge Joe Soto, to challenge Eddie Alvarez or Toby Imada and to challenge Hector Lombard or Jared Hess. You’ll see guys fight for the right to fight for our championship. So, we’re not going to change the format. We didn’t do the format and say, “Oh, this is a great tournament and then we’re going to switch it on its head and go to old-school matchmaking formula.” It’s not going to happen.”

Being on free/cable TV or premium pay-to-watch TV like Showtime has been a primary method for a lot of MMA groups so far, since most have failed on PPV. Rebney says that the economics of MMA determine that Bellator will need to make the move to PPV in the near future.

“Happy right now on TV, but obviously the dynamics in this business require that you get to PPV. So, my hope and the vision was you’ve got four tournaments running simultaneously. Who knows if at the end of that all four of those guys are A-level guys? I think we have some guys right now with the ‘it factor’ I think the guy you saw win a title here tonight has the it factor. You look for all of those different parts of the ingredients. He can fight inside the cage, he’s got great talent, amazing drive, he looks like belongs on the cover of GQ, you know, he could be the evil or the good character in a Conan the Barbarian movie, he’s got all those kind of unique factors working together. And you want to take a person like a Lyman and he keeps working the way he’s working and create somebody that can fight him that becomes the A- or B- to his A and then you’ve got the ability to conceivably to move onto PPV.

Bellator second season will kick off in the Fall. And what I can say is that you will see Bellator in both English-language and Spanish-language. That’s as much specificity as I can give.”

While Eddie Alvarez is the name that the hardcores know the most about in Bellator and care the most about, the name Lyman Good is one that should be on your radar screen. In addition to his charisma, looks, and ability to fight, he potentially makes a very good candidate to become the poster boy for Bellator. Will Bellator go with one primary ace or will they use the ‘deck of cards’ theory that has been used in other fighting genres?

“I think Lyman has done an amazing job. Like I said he’s got an awful lot of pieces to the equation. We took him to what is called a Car Wash at ESPN where he went through literally about 9 or 10 interviews in one day. He was the consummate professional, started at 6 o’clock and done about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. But there are a lot of … we’ve been very lucky. Eddie Alvarez, whose fighting for our Lightweight title is another guy who generates a huge amount of buzz wherever he goes. He’s got an electrifying personality and a beautiful wife and great kids. Jared Hess, whose fighting Hector Lombard, is this magical kind down home Americana Oklahoma boy who’s a world class wrestler and strong as an ox and Mom travels with him and Mom loves him and Dad… I mean there are a lot of guys in this organization that could conceivably elevate themselves to the next level. Joe Soto who fought last week, who’s soft spoken and as kind as can be, walks up and is just like the most pleasant understanding guy. We got a lot of guys who’ve really stepped out of the box. Um, and it’s… I mean, Wilson Reis who Joe Soto beat has got this gregarious kind of over-the-top personality with huge big smiles and he loses and all he wants to do is give the guy that just beat him a hug and you know what I mean, he’s just… you got a lot of guys who we can get traction with, so I wouldn’t want to classify anybody as the poster boy but if there was going to be um we could a heck of a lot worse than Lyman Good as the face of this organization. He is a very high quality individual outside the cage and a very, very talented fighter inside.”

If you notice, Bjorn Rebney makes sure to always stay positive and praise his fighters. With Dana White, he’ll praise someone if they are on his good side but when the fighter is on his or Lorenzo Fertitta’s bad side, UFC management is not afraid to criticize or raise their volume when talking about said person in the media. It’s fair to say that UFC management can be very combative at times when talking about talent under contract (and even fighters who are not under contract to them).

One of the recent interviews Lyman did at ESPN was an interview segment for MMA Live. He came across as a star during the interview with Jon Anik. If the way to succeed in MMA is to build new, fresh stars, how does Rebney see Bellator’s role in the process and how does it impact the company’s marketing & booking philosophy?

“From my personal perspective, seeing a guy like a Lyman Good who I met three months who nobody knew who he was, he had no Q score, he really was an unknown fighter but for a small contingent and niche group in the Northeast and now to know that we’re getting blogs and people logging in, people coming to our site, people talking to us from California, Minnesota, you know, New Mexico and on, talking about Lyman Good, that’s very cool. It’s very cool to know that we kinda criss-crossed the nation, it’s very cool that 3-4,000 people come to our site every week, are looking at these fighters and going ‘Wow he’s an A-level guy, I want to see him, I want to learn more about him’, and people start to talk when people when to start talk about Lyman Good versus this guy or that guy and for to mention top guys in the UFC at 70 or start to mention top fighters from Japan at 70, very cool, it’s very cool for us. I don’t think that’s a defining moment, but it’s a real good growth curve moment.”

“What I preach about fighters controlling their own destiny, they can do it and they can do it here. So, that is very cool for me for a personal defining moment about what we’ve done.”