Pillole Bellator MMA

23/10/2011, 14:41

Ivanov si è infortunato anche lui ed è fuori dal torneo.

Blagoi Ivanov Injured, Out Of Bellator 56, Replaced By Neil Grove

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23/10/2011, 17:31

peccato.
poteva essere una bella occasione per lui

26/10/2011, 13:26

Report: Viacom buys Bellator, promotion moving to Spike TV in 2013

Siamo pronti alla guerra!!!

26/10/2011, 13:37

ZioDanilo ha scritto:

Siamo pronti alla guerra!!!

26/10/2011, 21:29

Bellator Gains Sustainability With Viacom, But Skepticism Still Prevalent on Future

Viacom Buying Bellator Is Good For MMA

28/10/2011, 12:09

Dana White ha scritto:"I love when you guys say a legitimate threat. A threat to what? Like they're gonna kill us? In what way? We're the 'mom and pops' now. Viacom's sitting on five billion in cash so they're not hurting for any money. It's good for them. Good for them. I'm not looking at them like, 'Oh my god, they're a huge threat!' You guys are so out of your minds. You, all them out here and then some of these fans are nuts. You guys get all nutty like, 'Oh, this is the next thing.' These companies that folded? They went out of business. They went out of business and lost millions and millions and millions of dollars. And when you're losing that kind of money in this economy, you want to get out of this business as fast as you can and that's what happened to all these other organizations. And when you look at somebody getting on television, they were all on television. All those guy had television deals. Even if you look at these guys now that just did the deal, they were on FOX, they were on ESPN, they were NBC, they were on everywhere. Just because you get on TV doesn't mean it's gonna make you successful. These guys gotta get in there and run their business. It doesn't mean that they're not gonna be successful either."

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28/10/2011, 12:15

With Viacom Deal, Bellator Plans to Increase Number of Tournaments

Rebney on who controls Bellator now: “Viacom has acquired a majority share, a majority stake in Bellator. The controlling position in the company remains with me. We’re in a great spot.”

On how long the deal was in the works: “When you’re dealing with a group as large as Viacom, it takes time to put these kinds of things together. It takes a lot of discussions with a lot of really smart people. We’ve been working on it and talking about it for a long time. We signed our deal with MTV networks back in last October, over a year ago, and we’ve been talking about it with them for a long time in terms of what everything could look like and how it could come together.”

On what the deal means: “It means good things for the company. It means good things for the sport of MMA. You’ve got one of the most powerful, innovative, forward-thinking entertainment companies on the face of the earth that’s made a long-term commitment to what you and I agree is the greatest sport … . You’ve got a company that reaches 600 million people around the world. They’re available in virtually every country on earth. They control brands like Paramount, MTV and Spike and Comedy Central and Nickelodeon and others, [and they] have said, ‘Hey, we believe in mixed martial arts. We think this sport is the future and we think this sport has an amazing connection to fans.’ It’s a good day for Bellator.”

On whether Bellator could move to Spike TV before 2013: “Everything that we’re planning, everything that we’re structuring, everything that we’re developing from a production perspective is going to be geared toward a 2013 launch on Spike. In TV time, 2013 is coming up very quickly. The planning process starts literally nine months out for programming, nine months out for all of the shoulder programming and all of the highlight shows and best-of and behind-the-scenes shows and features on fighters and all that kind of stuff. We’re kind of in a good spot right now in terms of that planning process, but it could conceptually happen earlier.”

On how Bellator could change its format: “I’m not a big fan of the super fight. Never have been. I didn’t create them out of a desire to say, ‘Hey, I love super fights. I’d love to have our champions fighting when the belt isn’t on the line.’ … But the only way a guy gets to that shot at a title in Bellator is by winning a tournament. You can do the math. The easy way to fix that situation is to do more tournaments more quickly, thereby getting more challengers for the title.”

On whether shrinking the tournaments is a possibility: “It isn’t really an option. We have thought about a lot of different things, and of course … from a women’s tournament perspective, that might be a viable alternative because of the depth and the quality of women’s fighters across multiple weight categories. That might be a way to go, but eight has worked pretty well for us. I don’t know that it would be reducing the number of participants in the tournament. It would be more so taking on more tournaments and expanding the breadth of our distribution platform, expanding conceivably even in the times of shows such that you can get more tournaments done.”

On whether Bellator will push women’s MMA more: “I don’t know that we will push it more, but I think we will stay devoted to the women’s game and that we will stay focused on building out the women’s game. But the difference in Bellator, as we know, is we’re not going to pick someone to promote. The promotable fighter is going to be the fighter who wins … . In our format, there isn’t a way to pick a specific female fighter and to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to really build around this person,’ because sooner rather than later, they’re going to have to step up and fight in a tournament, and then it’s win and go on, lose and go home.”

28/10/2011, 21:40

Bjorn Rebney: Viacom buying Bellator is a major statement about MMA’s future

02/11/2011, 0:51

Bellator signs UFC vet Brian Foster for welterweight division

03/11/2011, 23:34

Bellator deal could reshape MMA landscape

Eddie Alvarez: 'With Spike TV behind Bellator, watch how good we become'

04/11/2011, 18:00

Now that Viacom has dived into MMA promotion with both feet by buying Bellator, is that a good or bad thing for Zuffa?

Fertitta: I look at from the standpoint that when we started this thing, we were massive underdogs. Everybody from the boxing guys to the Hollywood guys, everybody laughed us. They said this is going to be another failure. We had to work hard. We had to use some good old American ingenuity and figure this thing out.

The way I look at the Viacom thing, it's massive competition for us. We're in a situation now where it's literally David vs. Goliath. We're David and Viacom is Goliath. They have $5 billion on their balance sheet. They own as many networks as any other media company, and they can use those networks to promote Bellator and plug them now that they own them.

We've just got to wake up every day and compete as hard as we can. They're going to be a significant competitor. That's fine. We kind of thrive on that.

They say they're not competition because they use a different format and different business model.

Fertitta: That's smart, because the whole thing about competition to gain a foothold in a marketplace is, you have to come up with a different idea. You have to differentiate yourself. If I just do the same thing as a restaurant next door, what's the point? So I give them credit that they have been smart as far as coming up with a different format.

It may take, it may not, but I can tell you this: They definitely have the resources to get behind it. Whether or not it's a good idea, I don't know. But they have resource to do it, and once again, it's David vs. Goliath. We're the little guy.

You think they're eventually going to pay-per-view? Right now they're strictly doing free TV.

Fertitta: I'm sure they're in this to make money, and if you want to make a little side bet, I'll bet you that they're on pay-per-view in the next couple of years.

If you can draw big-enough TV ratings, do you need pay-per-view?

Fertitta: It's different. The thing that's different about that, culturally here in America and in a lot of countries, people are used to paying for fights. It's something that's been around since the 1970s, even when the only way to see a fight would be to go buy a ticket to go to a movie theater to watch it on closed circuit. This whole generation has grown up saying, "If I want to watch that, I've got to pay for it."

Whereas, you start trying to pay-per-view a football game or something like that, culturally, we're not ready for that. That would be like hearings in Congress and stuff like that.

They will definitely make the move to pay-per-view. That's fine. We'll compete.

How much does the purchase of Bellator counter the accusation that you're not a monopoly?

Fertitta: We're not a monopoly. There's no way that you could ever say UFC is a monopoly when exactly this happens. There's no barriers to entry. There might be a point in time where our other competitors, their businesses fail or whatever, but that doesn't prevent somebody from coming back in. Literally anyone can go to the commission offices downtown and file for a promoter's license and go on put on a fight card and go get a television deal.

There's never been a time when more media outlets are looking for mixed martial arts. There's no question that Comcast is interested in MMA because of the interest they showed us. Obviously you've got Spike being opened up now with Viacom. You have CBS, which at one point wanted to get into mixed martial arts and they did, so they're sitting out there. You have the guy that brought mixed martial arts to Showtime now over at HBO. And ESPN can do whatever they want because they have more money than all of us put together.

Listen, the landscape is completely wide open. There's no barrier to entry. Anybody that says that we're a monopoly just doesn't understand what that even means.