Originally posted by: Mas-
Date: March 03, 2009 at 12:46 AM
Source: https://forum.mmajunkie.com/threads/tom-atencio-%E2%80%98i%E2%80%99m-kind-of-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place%E2%80%99.11087/
-Hammer- said:
This pretty much highlights the problems with Affliction in my opinion. Yes, Affliction does put on good cards, but the cost of doing so is bankrupting them. The problem here, and I've said it before, is Affliction immediately started big, signed big names, costing big money and looked to compete/draw away from the UFC without understanding the different costs of operating/avenues for profit and most of all, how to market a MMA event, and now it's coming back to haunt him.
What Affliction should have done, was look at the only other truly successful promotion outside the UFC, that being Strikeforce. First off, Strikeforce only has a very small number of high income fighters, and the promotion knows you only really need 2 or 4 to sell a card. Lets list which Strikeforce fighters are making six figures a fight (and all of them are on the lower end). Frank Shamrock, Cung Le and maybe Babalu and that's it. All of their other names make 5 figure salaries with their total payroll never exceeding $1,000,000.
Now lets do the same for Affliction. Fedor (although likely got seven figures), Arlovski (seven figures), Barnett, Sylvia, Rothwell, Belfort, Lindland, MiniNog and Buentello and Bablu making $90,000. This type of overhead on your fighters is ridiculous, and almost every card, at least 75% of those guys are fighting! Yes it makes for a good evening of fights, but it's does nothing to build appeal for your mid-card talent and doesn't attract that many more additional buys when your promotion is in it's infancy and you haven't marketed it. Fedor vs Arlovski and Vladamir vs Nog would have sold that card to the hardcore MMA fanbase. Even Zuffa who is the king of MMA seldom spends that much cash on fighters for a single a card.
This brings me to the next tip they should have taken from Strikeforce and that is you have to start small. Running a smaller scale promotion to work out the bugs and then building upon that success slowly is needed. They've built a strong local fanbase, who make their events pull in a solid live-gate. From that, they've expanded to TV and web broadcasts for ad revenue and somewhat expanded their marketing. They continue to push that envelope slowly. Affliction however, never had a show and broke the bank on the first one frankly. They've made many mistakes that if they had started off small, would not have costed them as much.
The third piece of advice they should have looked at, was the importance of television exposure if you are running a big promotion. Strikeforce is just now getting big and people already know who they are and what they are offering because they exposed themselves on TV for so long before they got big. Small time slot television ad revenue makes much more reliable, predictable and consistent income then PPV. Granted not as much, but it's still there. Now, if you are going to televise and event on PPV, you had better have hooked a huge following already before you decide you are going to charge people to watch it. Not only do you need to market it on TV, but you need to expose people to it. The co-promotion with EliteXC was a good idea, but it build more on MMA in general then their brand specifically. What else did they do to expose people to their product, except try to drag hardcore fans who already knew the fighters from other promotion and were likely going to buy the card anyways if only four of them were on it. The answer is nothing, and they paid for it. Even the professional wrestling promotions didn't even consider stepping into the PPV world until they had nearly weekly TV-show offerings.
Now, I will admit, Affliction has put on some damn good cards thus far, but at what cost? They fall further into bankruptcy with every event which no doubt angers their backers. They have unreasonably raised the standard of pay for fighters. They've made enemies with Zuffa with their attitudes and hiring practices and is now getting perpetually counter-programed every event they hold and may have burned the best bridge they had to promote their clothing line. They've done little to advance reasonable middlecard fighters or the sport as a whole and really haven't exposed their other enterprises (specfically their clothing line) any more then had they stuck with simply sponsoring UFC fighters.
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Wall of text lol. Mid putting sub topics or foot notes so i don't have to read all that?
I don't care how big the rock is, and how hard the place your in is. You started this thing, now stop whinning like a little girl and do your job.