Will Bellator make a big splash on NBC or Fox Sports Net?
Published by Zach Arnold on October 30th, 2009 in Current Events

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Bjorn Rebney, the man behind Bellator FC, recently sat down and did an interview with Mike Straka of Fox News Fight Game in New York City. Rebney recently inked new television deals for Bellator. Bellator had been on ESPN Deportes for the first season, drawing strong ratings numbers. There was talk that Bellator would hit ESPN2. Instead, Bellator will now air Thursday fight cards on the fledgling Fox Sports Net channel, with edited shows on both NBC (taking over Strikeforce’s Saturday night time slot) and Telemundo.

Here are some comments Rebney made during his interview with Fox News.

On Bellator taking such a big step and on how fast the transition happened from ESPN Deportes to FSN/NBC/Telemundo: “Um, I appreciate you saying so fast because it seems like it lasted forever. You know, we had a great season in season number one with ESPN. The traction was good, the fan response was good, the format worked, the tournament format worked, and we had some options, we had some opportunities which is unique in the television game, unique in the fight business, but we had to match two different um two different concepts at once. One, we wanted to reach a huge universe, we wanted to make it available to the English language audience. Two, it had to be a deal structure that worked for us. It had to be a deal structure so you and I could be sitting here two years or three years or five years down the road and still be talking about Bellator Fighting Championships, so when can marry those two the Fox Sports Network distribution alliance with NBC and Telemundo, it made a ton of sense. A lot of work, lots of flights, but we got it done.”

On Bjorn Rebney’s business background: “Well, I came from um agency, representatng athletes, I was working with Leigh Steinberg for a number of years and then I had a boxing promotion company with Sugar Ray Leonard called Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing that we had on ESPN, it was the highest rated fight show on the network for four years. Um, and I was an MMA fan, I was an MMA purist, I loved that I used to get the DVDs and I used to get the VHS’s back when there were VHS’s from Japan. Um, and I just watched it. It was what I would do with my own money, I would buy the tickets, I would watch the shows, I would buy the PPVs, I was just a fan of the game. I got one of those great opportunities where you have the chance to actually go into business in something that you love, that you would do for free or pay to do.”

On what Bjorn learned from Leigh Steinberg: “Yeah, I think um to think through everything in terms of when you’re really angry or when you’re really upset to take a step backm to never respond to anything just immediatelym and to give everything a lot of thought because what seems to be too good typically is too good and what seems to be too bad typically is not as bas as you think it is and to just analyze and to know everything, to get research and know everything that you can possibly know about whether it’s the athlete or the promotion or the city or the marketing or whatever it is, to understand the dynamics behind it. Understand the business drivers behind it, just information being key.”

On what Bellator’s standards are for bringing in fighters: “Guys that obviously have that Lyman Good back story or the Eddie Alvarez back story but more importantly obviously than the back story is the ability to fight at a world-class level, elite world-class athletes and of course with this new alliance, 82 million homes on FSN and 112 on NBC and another 62 on Telemundo, it’s about the best athletes from every corner of the globe. Guys who want to control their own destiny, guys who ultimately want the determination of them becoming champion in their own hands, in their own elbows, their own knees, those are the guys we want. Guys like Eddie Alvarez who want to fight 3 times in 3 months to make that determination to become the champion of Bellator. You know, driven.”

On using a tournament structure vs. arbitrary matchmaking structure: “Well, I mean it’s, it is a singular thing that makes Bellator Fighting Championships different from the UFC and WEC and Strikeforce, all of whom do a magical job and I watch their shows and I buy the PPVs of the UFC but ours is a place that is more analagous to real sport. It’s like football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, golf, you name it, and the best play the best and those who win make it to a final or a championship and if you win, you’re the winner, you’re the champion and that’s what I thought was missing from the fight game, I thought that objecivity where fighters could ultimately just control how much they make, how often they fight, and if they become champion. I thought was a huge thing that was missing from boxing and MMA, just as a fan! As a guy watching with a bunch of other guys drinking beer and eating pizza, that’s what I looked at and thought, well how did that guy get a shot at the title? Or why is that guy positioned as the number one guy to potentially x or y or z?”

“I happen to believe that it’s the greatest sport in the world today. It is the greatest combination of speed and power and technique, I mean the evolution of this sport over the last you know 10-15 years that I’ve been watching it has just been unreal. I mean if you look at clips from a decade ago in the NBA, it looks similar. You look at clips of a decade ago in MMA, it’s a totally different game. I think it’s the greatest sport on earth but when I say real, I mean competition where ultimately the athlete determines if he becomes champion as opposed to a shiny suit sitting behind a desk saying, ‘hey, Hernandez vs. Johnson, yeah let’s make that our title fight.’ That just is a disconnect for me as a sports fan, as a huge fan of MMA, I mean and I watch everything, I watch Versus, I watch Spike, I watch HDNet Fights, I watch Showtime, I watch everything that I can watch in MMA but that’s what I thought was missing.”

On what Bellator’s strategy has been to get television deals so quickly: “Well, you know, um, I appreciate you saying so quickly. At the same time, many many years ago I was doing television, I was doing television production, I was doing agency work and it was all centered around the fight game. So, you know, you’re talking about back into the 90s that I started pitching ESPN in terms of boxing and in terms of drawing boxing shows so I understood that you had to have television, you had to have a weekly driver, same time, same place, same channel, you had to have venue alliances, you had to know how to work with commissions, you had to bring sponsors onboard that would promote your brand and what you were doing outside of the scope of just putting a sticker on the mat. I understood the drivers, so it’s really been you know 20 years in the making to get to this point and like I said I was just blessed that I had the opportunity to do for a living something that I would pay to do for free, you know but it was just getting all those different skill sets.”

On how CBS is promoting Strikeforce in a similar fashion to Elite XC: “You know, it’s an interesting question. I think um the way that you can build a brand in this space is to create stars who are world-class fighters and who have some semblance of a back story and to allow fans like myself or yourself to see them week in and week out, same time, same place, same channel. The special events as a stand-off, one time where you don’t get to see them week after week and you don’t get to track them or learn about them is a disconnect to me as a fan and I know what you’re saying, I mean the Elite XC model was a failure. Um, Scott Coker’s got a get tremendous track record in terms of promoting events and putting butts in seats and he’s had a great promotion for a number of years. Um, it’s not our model, it’s different than our model on many fronts. I mean, you know, we’re looking for the Joe Sotos of the world, the Lyman Goods of the world, fighters who are just on the cusp and if you give the exposure and you give them that shot and that brass ring is sitting out there, they will grab it, they will give it everything they got. Joe Soto was unknown last year at this time, he’s one of the Top 10 ranked Featherweights in the world today. Lyman Good was known in the Northeast, you and I knew about him, but cross the country you’d ask guys on the West Coast at gyms, they’d never heard of Lyman Good but now they know. Those are the kind of guys that we want to build up and those are the kind of guys that are true athletes but happen to have great personality, great back stories, so it’s just a different model and who knows if it will work. I hope as a fan of MMA that the CBS show does ratings that just pop out of the roof, I mean I pray that it does well because if it does well, the execs at CBS are going to look at it, our execs at NBC are going to look at it and they’re going to go, ‘This is awesome.’ I mean the Elite XC shows did unbelievable numbers, those were freak of nature ratings, and yet it failed miserably because they put their money in an area in terms of fight promotion that wouldn’t work.”

On the idea of pushing guys like Jake Shields and Scott Smith instead of gimmicks and ‘big name stars’: “You’re telling me? You’re speaking, you’re preaching to the choir. Jake Shields is a world-class fighter. If you got a fighter of that ability at 185 or 170, you take him, you promote him, you tell his back story, he speaks well, he’s a good-looking guy and he can beat anybody in the world on any given night, that’s the guy you put your money behind. God bless Kimbo Slice, I applaud him for trying and he seems like a great guy but he surely is not a world-class heavyweight fighter nor may he ever be and you can’t, that’s not the model, that’s not what’s going to work.”