AS WITH UFC, SPIKE TV PREDICTING BIG SUCCESS FOR NEW PARTNER BELLATOR...

The way Spike TV President Kevin Kay described it, Bellator MMA has spent the past year "off-Broadway," which might have been a good thing.

While the ratings for the tournament-based MMA promotion weren't exactly spectacular on MTV2, neither were the expectations. If you don't count the Lingerie Football League (and you probably shouldn't), it's not a network known for its sports programming. It's definitely not a network known for MMA programming. It's not Spike TV, in other words, which meant that it was fine for Bellator to do meager ratings there while it prepared for what it hopes will be a breakthrough year in 2013. This gave Bellator, as founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney put it, "a very long runway" to prepare for its big opportunity.

Now, with Bellator's Spike TV premiere tonight (10 pm ET/PT), it's time for takeoff.

That's what both Kay and Rebney are hoping for, anyway, and their chances for success all rest on a pretty simple theory: Fight fans are so accustomed to getting their MMA from Spike TV that they won't care which brand name is on the mats. Not as long as the fights are good, and not as long as the quality of the broadcasts remains as high as it was during the UFC era on Spike TV.

As Rebney explained, it's a theory that is not without some statistical support.

"When you look at the tremendous ratings success that Spike had with MMA content in the past, and you look at what happened from a ratings perspective since the UFC went to their new home, I think it paints a pretty clear picture," Rebney told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "MMA fans like myself, along with millions of MMA fans across the country, associate Spike TV with MMA."

And, true, there are some figures to back up that claim. For instance, just look at the strong ratings Spike TV managed to pull by re-airing old UFC fights throughout 2012. Even when those taped fights aired on Spike TV opposite live UFC events on FOX or FX, Spike TV regularly drew audiences in the hundreds of thousands. Nearly a million people were reportedly at home watching old UFC fights on Spike TV even as Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez fought live and for free on FOX in November 2011.

What does that tell us, aside from suggesting that maybe some MMA fans have a pretty poor grasp of how to use the "guide" function on their remotes? According to Kay, it's proof that "Spike and MMA are synonymous in a lot of viewers' brains."

Then again, maybe it's just proof that Spike TV and the UFC are synonymous in viewers' brains. Just because people showed up to watch old UFC fights, how do we know they'll be as excited about watching another fight promotion, especially a lesser-known one like Bellator?

That's the part of the theory that's still largely untested because, up until this year, Spike TV was contractually prohibited from broadcasting any other MMA promotions. Even after Viacom bought a controlling stake in Bellator, it had to wait until 2013 before it could air it – unless, that is, the UFC bought back its video library, which Spike TV retained the rights to until the end of 2012.

The UFC chose not to do that – though, according to Kay, "At one point Dana [White] said to me, 'Why don't you pay me to take it back?'" That prompted Kay to applaud the UFC president's comedic talents – and both sides have paid a price for it. The UFC had to suffer through the same counter-programming on Spike TV that it used to gleefully subject competitors to, while Spike TV had to find a way to wait out the year without losing its association with big-time MMA. That meant promoting, via reruns, the company that would soon become a competitor. It also meant turning an old partner into a new enemy.

The way Kay saw it, Spike TV never had a choice in the matter.

"We had the library, and we had to use it," he said. "We were paying for it, so we had no choice but to use it because it was on our books, and you have to air the things that are on your books."

You could argue that Spike TV didn't have to twist the knife by counter-programming live Velasquez fights with taped Velasquez fights, but, as Kay pointed out, "When's the best time to use the library that you're paying for in order to get the best value out of it? Well, when there's a lot of talk about particular fighters who are about to fight. Why wouldn't you run it then?"

The response from White was predictable enough. The network that had only recently been the UFC's greatest ally was quickly renamed "Spuke" when the UFC president spoke if it. He compared its programming – unfavorably, of course – to that of his new partners at FOX and FX, and offered a revisionist history of the UFC's run on Spike TV that made it seem as if his fight promotion had dragged the network kicking and screaming to success.

For the most part, Kay has shrugged off those barbs as nothing more than Dana being Dana.

"I have a very clear sense of Dana and who he is," Kay said. "I was in business with him for a long time, and I have nothing but respect."

At the same time, he doesn't think the UFC can take all the credit for the success of MMA on Spike TV, and he insists that the UFC's recent pay-per-view numbers demonstrate as much.

"The UFC had tremendous success on Spike, and tremendous success with Spike helping to drive their pay-per-view business," Kay said. "That's not contestable. They peaked in their pay-per-view business when they were on Spike. We think we can do the same thing for Bellator."

Again, though, this is where we drift into the realm of untested hypothesis. Tonight's Bellator event is Spike TV's first chance to prove that it's not just the UFC its viewers loved, but MMA in general. In order to help that along, Spike TV is giving Bellator every advantage it can. On Thursday nights at 10 p.m., Bellator will have "TNA Impact" as a pro-wrestling lead-in. It will also have the full weight of a partner that has literally bought in to the product, which, according to Rebney, means Bellator doesn't have to worry about getting canceled if its initial ratings aren't outstanding.

"When you've got a partner like that, you've got one who's in it for the long haul," Rebney said. "We're all truly invested in building this brand. I don't think it's like launching a sitcom, where you're going to see how the numbers are and decide where to go next."

A less obvious benefit might be Spike TV's experience in the MMA space. Years of working with the UFC turned his staff into "pretty good marketers of MMA," Kay said.

According to Rebney, the people at Spike TV "wrote the book" for live MMA events on cable TV. Even now, Rebney said, "There's not a person at Spike who I'm working with on this show who's not a hardcore fan of MMA. That's the connectivity. It's like going to play a pickup basketball game and having Michael Jordan on your team. They know the space so well."

Do they know it well enough to fill a UFC-shaped hole in the roster with a Bellator substitute? Is that possible, or even necessary? That part is tough to say. Bellator's relationship with Spike TV and Viacom is already so different from the UFC's, and if and when it does decide to promote PPV events, according to Rebney, "unlike what the UFC relationship was like with Spike, I'll sit down with Kevin and with Spike, and we'll determine the correct time to jump into pay-per-view."

For now, all Spike TV and Bellator can hope for is a smooth beginning, not to mention some entertaining fights to kick off things. That's the part it can't control. It's also the part that could make all the difference as fight fans tune in to find out whether a difference in brand name makes a difference in overall quality.

As Kay put it, "I think it all comes back to great fights." After all, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar weren't household names in the MMA world before their legendary fight at the first finale for "The Ultimate Fighter."

Then again, you never know when you're going to get a fight like that. All you can do is put your best fighters out front and hope for the best, which is exactly what Spike TV and Bellator will be doing every Thursday night for the next couple months. One way or another, the hypothesis must eventually give way to a conclusion.




http://www.mmajunkie.com/news/2013/01/as-with-ufc-spike-tv-predicting-big-success-for-new-partner-bellator

BELLATOR RISES!

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