So all my Sunday Junkie-ing and listening to the radio show got me writing more and I started my own blog. That got me hooked up with some local newspapers which got me press credentials to Bellator XV in Connecticut which then got me an interview with CEO Bjorn Rebney that I just finished and put on my site. I thought I'd throw it up here too and share it with the Junkies, since this place is where I got into writing and articulating my thoughts about mma. It's kind of a long read but anyways hope you guys enjoy it. I have a few more interviews lined up which is exciting and hopefully I keep getting better at it.
CTMMANews.com got to talk with Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney this evening to discuss Bellator's success and the upcoming Boston show as well as other aspects of their Tournament format and super fights.
CTMMANews: Bjorn, big event for Massachusetts and while there's other MMA promotions claiming to be putting on the first major MMA event Bellator will definitely be able to claim that with your upcoming card featuring Eddie Alvarez vs Josh Neer, Roger Huerta vs Pat Curran, a really great night of lightweight fights. I understand it was due to your relationship with Madison Square Garden that you were able to secure the venue in Boston is that correct?
Bjorn Rebney: Yes that's absolutely correct. The folks at MSG reached out to us and were interested in forming an alliance with a Mixed Martial Arts organization and at the time and still to this day New York has not yet given MMA the green light and MSG had total ownership of a spectacular theatre in Chicago called the Chicago Theater and a fairly deeply entrenched strategic alliance with the Wang Theatre in Boston and said "Lets do two events in Boston and two events in Chicago and really kick this thing off". We were coming off the heels of the announcement of our Fox Sports Network deal and our NBC deal and our Telemundo deal and the synergies with there but if it hadn't been for Madison Square Garden this event wouldn't be going on.
CTMMANews: You mentioned your network deal, how many homes does that bring you into?
Bjorn Rebney: It's if not the largest it's close to the largest distribution deal in fighting sports history. We've got 92 million homes that we reach every Thursday night from 8 to 10 pm EST on FSN. We've got another 112 million homes that we reach late night Saturdays with our NBC highlight show. Then we've got another 62 million homes we reach with our Spanish language one hour highlight show on Saturday nights with Telemundo and then another 36 million homes we reach on Saturday nights in prime time at 10 pm with Mundoz which is an English language Latino themed network that is under the NBC umbrella. So cumulatively in terms of available universe we're reaching about 304 million homes in terms of available universe.
CTMMANews: That's incredible and I know on FSN you've increased their ratings on Thursday nights in certain demographics by up to 180%
Bjorn Rebney: It's funny because in all the years I've sat and made presentations to different television networks I've said that good solid MMA programming at a high quality level will really dramatically impact your 18-34 male demo, all the way from 18 to 50 male demo. Until now until we got the numbers back from FSN and NBC we didn't have the hard data to support it but we've really impacted. We're the top rated program on FSN on Thursday nights, we're the top rated program on FSN on Sunday nights, we won the timeslot with our late night NBC shows. It's nice to occasionally be right because I knew that this kind of MMA programming would impact numbers and fortunately we have which is great because numbers don't lie.
CTMMANews: What went into the decision to have your fights Thursday nights? Do you feel like there's a trade-off with not interfering with other MMA shows and while it may hurt your live gate a little it would help your ratings?
Bjorn Rebney: That's a great question. That was absolutely the balance we went through as a team. Fortunately FSN was really excited about the programming and liked what we were bringing with the tournament format and the two full seasons back to back. So the issue was, just what you said, balancing the live gate and what we might lose by being on a Thursday night vs a Friday or Saturday vs the increased ratings of going on a Thursday night. Of course you have The Ultimate Fighter on Wednesday nights and then Friday nights are typically a very difficult night to generate ratings on television and of course Saturday nights you have all the big boxing events and big pay per view etc. So we were trying to find that happy medium where we could still be close enough to the weekend where you could do good gates and get people excited and yet really maximize your numbers. After a lot of different analysis and going back and forth we decided Thursday night and FSN wanted Thursday night as well and thought we could do really well. It's done really well in terms of ratings and as the shows have progressed and as more people are watching we've gradually seen our numbers grow at our live events as well. It will be interesting to see, we've increased week 2 off of week 1, we've increased week 3 off of week 2 so it will be interesting to see how we do in Kansas City on Thursday night. My hope is that we turn our Thursday night into a great live event as well as a great tv night in terms of household ratings across the country but it was a balance, you hit it right on the head.
CTMMANews: Definitely the product you've been producing has a lot to do with your ratings. You've had some of the most exciting fights on generating online videos which has created a lot of hype which is a credit to the fighters for sure.
Bjorn Rebney: I've believed since the day we kicked this off last April when we were on the smallest member of the ESPN family networks I always believed with as much as we had at stake and what was on the line in terms of a single elimination tournament where fighters had a chance across all 4 weight divisions to make a six figure pay day for winning a tournament over 3 months I always felt like we would get great performances. First we got the Toby Imada inverted Triangle then we got the Yahir Reyes spinning backfist and the moments just kept coming. Then this season kicked off and we got the unbelievable Muay Thai knees from Georgi Karkhanyan in the first fight. Then we got Pat Curran's amazing knock out of Mike Ricci in the second fight then three quick stoppages with great highlights off of them in the most recent show we did at Mohegan with the welterweights. The fighters are giving it everything they've got and the level of talent is very high so we've been fortunate and it's been going really well.
CTMMANews: And Pat Curran's knockout has hyped the coming fight with Roger Huerta to a level where maybe based on simply his record and name alone it wouldn't have been before but because of that tournament format these guys get to hype their next fights themselves based on their performances.
Bjorn Rebney: Isn't that the coolest thing in the world? Here you have a guy who's claim to fame was that he was Jeff Curan's cousin. Then he comes in, cool as can be, facing a guy in Mike Ricci, who a lot of people were calling the next GSP out of Canada, and literally in 52 seconds completely eliminates anything other than a connection to Pat Curran because of Pat Curran. He used that national tv platform and amazing overhand right to establish himself as a guy who a lot of people are now suddenly going, "Whoa, I can't wait to see that Roger Huerta fight". Before they may have been like, "Well Roger Huerta's gonna have an easy road."... The tournament format and the frequency of national television exposure for fighters allows guys like Pat Curran to literally control their own destiny with their own hands. They can establish themselves from a brand perspective very quickly. 90 days you can be on national television 3 times on a huge distribution platform. Now I'm excited to watch the Roger Huerta v Pat Curran fight. I'm excited to watch Toby Imada come back against a very good submission wrestler in Carey Vanier and of course Eddie Alvarez vs Josh Neer has fireworks written all over it so it should be a good night.
CTMMANews: Let's talk about the Eddie Alvarez vs Josh Neer fight. Josh Neer obviously a UFC veteran and a big, tough guy against Eddie Alvarez and as highly ranked as Eddie is not an easy fight for him. What do you do in a situation if Josh Neer beats Eddie Alvarez? Eddie is obviously the favorite given the competition he's faced in the past but what do you do in that situation?
Bjorn Rebney: Well you know, that's one of those situations Ralph where I kind of take my CEO hat off and put on the fan hat. The easy road would have been for Bellator to take Hector Lombard and Soto and Lyman Good and Eddie and just kind of put them on ice until the tournament ended and let them wait 5 or 6 months until the guys won the tournament and were the number one ranked challenger and just set them up for their world title fights but then you have a scenario where the champions were fighting literally a couple of times a year. I sat down with Eddie and I sat down even with Roger when we were recruiting him and with Hector and Joe and everybody and said look you guys will fight. They said, "How will we fight regularly if it's all tournament format?" and I said I'll create superfig
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