Spike TV president: Bellator's future not hanging in balance on pay-per-view

But the president of the promotion’s regular television partner didn’t believe Bellator’s future was hanging in the balance before this week’s card lost the trilogy rematch between Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler. So while the loss of that lightweight title fight hurt, in the grand scheme of things, Kevin Kay, president of Spike TV, believes it was a survivable loss.

“We’re all going to look at the pay-per-view and say, ‘Was it a success or was it not a success? What can we learn from it? What can we do better next time?’” Kay told MMAjunkie. “But whether or not it’s a huge success – and I believe it will be successful because we’ve done a tremendous amount of promotion and we’ve got a great card – but if it doesn’t live up to everybody’s expectations, Bellator is not going anywhere. Bellator is on Spike. It’s doing fine. It’s doing great. We’re happy.”

On Saturday, lightweight champion Alvarez (25-3 MMA, 9-1 BMMA) pulled out of his fight with former champ Chandler (12-1 MMA, 9-1 BMMA), citing a head injury during a training session more than two weeks ago. Chandler instead will meet Will Brooks (13-1 MMA, 5-1 BMMA) for an interim lightweight title in the Bellator 120 co-main event. A light heavyweight tournament final between Quinton Jackson (34-11 MMA, 2-0 BMMA) and Muhammed Lawal (12-3 MMA, 4-2 BMMA) was elevated to the main event.

Bellator 120 takes place at Landers Center in Southaven, Miss., not far from Jackson’s Memphis home city. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims that air on Spike TV and Spike.com.

Because Bellator’s business model has not been one based on pay-per-views, Kay isn’t as concerned about the potential success of Bellator 120 on pay-per-view. The company previously attempted a pay-per-view this past November, but when Tito Ortiz fell out of a fight against Jackson with an injury, Bellator 106 was shifted to Spike TV – headlined by Alvarez-Chandler 2.

“We’ve been in this business now for a bunch of years,” Kay said. “Bellator was on MTV2. Viacom got invested, and now it’s on Spike. Ratings are growing. You’re seeing week in and week out a very conscious effort by the promotion to put championship fights on Spike, to put guys in main events that people know. You’re seeing, not every week, but many weeks this season have over 1 million viewers watching these main events – 700,000 or 800,000 watching on a weekly basis on a Friday night. Those are strong ratings for Spike. So with Bellator, we continue to grow the promotion and grow the business.”

That relationship with Spike is what Kay is most concerned with. And while success in the pay-per-view arena potentially a few times a year would be a nice bonus, Kay doesn’t believe that’s make-or-break territory.

“The business model for Bellator is not dependent on pay-per-view success,” he said. “The business model for Bellator is it’s on Spike 25 weeks a year. It’s got a great advertising base. It’s continuing to build ratings, and so I think it can be successful with or without pay-per-view.*** Would pay-per-view success be nice? Does it benefit everybody? Of course. That’s sort of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“But we can take our time to get there, and we don’t have to take all the great fights that are on Spike and throw them onto pay-per-view every month because we’re not doing a pay-per-view every month. We’ll probably do one or two or maybe three year at most a year for the immediate future.”

Kay said the WWE’s recent departure from the pay-per-view space might help Bellator down the road. The WWE moved its pay-per-views to a subscription-based online network, which Kay said caused some concerns among pay-per-view providers who may be looking to fill that void – potentially with Bellator.

“We learned a lot from the last experience,” he said. “The pay-per-view world is changing with everything that’s going on with the WWE. We have much more willing partners in our pay-per-view providers who understand that we are in this business with them as partners to stay because they are our partners on our cable distribution side, too. So there’s a big willingness from them to see what Bellator can do on the pay-per-view side. I think the stars kind of aligned for this, and I’m excited for it.”

The Bellator 120 card includes:

MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)

Quinton Jackson vs. Muhammed Lawal – light heavyweight tournament final
Will Brooks vs. Michael Chandler – for interim lightweight title
Tito Ortiz vs. Alexander Shlemenko – non-title fight
Michael Page vs. Ricky Rainey
Blagoi Ivanov vs. Alexander Volkov – heavyweight tournament final
PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike TV, 8 p.m. ET)

Cheick Kongo vs. Eric Smith
Fabricio Guerreiro vs. Shahbulat Shamhalaev
Mike Richman vs. Goiti Yamauchi
PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike.com, 6 p.m. ET)

Austin Lyons vs. Zach Underwood
Justin Frazier vs. Mike Wessel
Ben Brewer vs. Andy Uhrich
Anthony Lemon vs. Codie Shuffield
Brian Hall vs. Cortez Phelia
Mmajunkie.com

Nice to see they moved Ivanov/Volkov to the ppv portion of the card.

I know WILLIE is going to buy the PPV now that Ivanov is on the main card!   

AudaxSmoke wrote:I know WILLIE is going to buy the PPV now that Ivanov is on the main card!   

Lol! I think the last Ppv I bought for mma was affliction events! I would have love to see Ivanov in spike for free lol, Ivanov vs volkov is a nice hw fight, but overall loosing Eddie will hurt buys for sure

^That was a big hit to the card