Originally posted by: thedoop
Date: June 15, 2014 at 01:04 PM
Source: https://forum.mmajunkie.com/threads/alvarez-chandler-next.62812/
abc0331 said:
I do not think it is Bellator that sucks, it is Viacom.
I mean sure we can blame Bjorn for losing autonomy over his company and allowing Spike executives to take too much control over the product.
That was something that the UFC fought for years, and was the biggest reason why so many deals fell through before the Fox deal. For years there were talks about the UFC going on HBO or CBS, but Dana White always talked about losing control of his company in those deals. The reason why they signed with Spike is because at the time the UFC was allowed to do what they wanted to do with there company. TUF was the lone exception to the influence that Spike had on the over scope of the company. Slowly more cards developed on Spike because the UFC proved to be a large role in ratings for Spike.
When Viacom bought in to Bellator, they did it with the intentions of "getting in to the MMA promoting game". They did not want to just carry a company, let them build there brand, and just jump to the next network, they wanted to put there finger print on the market, and make the MMA market, their market.
Spike has turned Bellator into what they saw was successful with the UFC in 2006-2007.
That is when all kinds of changes to the product began to occur, the floor mats even changed to look more like the UFC's. Viacom basically started mimicking the same formula that made the UFC popular almost a decade ago.
The problem with this is that the UFC already fulfills that role, and if just watch the UFC, there are more than plenty of mma events each month.
The different selling point that Bellator had for people that watched mma regularly was the tournament, and how it played an integral role in the entire schedule of the organization.
It was a great idea and a decent execution of a very difficult concept to properly pull off in modern combat sports, the tournament.
Now still having the tournament is still a great way for Bellator to display young fighters. But it does pretty much making the final results less valued by making so many changes for the sake of trying to sell fights with headliners for PPVs because viacom wants to compete with the UFC.
Bellator was doing a great job building there brand and roster, but since Viacom bought in, there has been a change in the type of fighter valued at Bellator. Older, more bloated contracts are now on there roster, and those top heavy contracts kill organizations faster than Josh Barnett.
I'm just not a fan of how Viacom took a really interesting concept and business plan for a company and just threw it away in there grudge match with Zuffa.
So that was a long winded way for me to respond;
"Viacom sucks."
Click to expand...
good read, and more importantly good points.
It really is Viacom...they're gonna kill Bellator which is beyond horrible for fighters no matter which organization they fight for currently.
