MMA Universe

This weekend’s Zuffa-Strikeforce purchase announcement shook up the MMA landscape in such a way, that many fans, fighters, and sponsors were left in limbo as to what the future will hold for the sport and business of MMA.  The announcement also created a huge void for a number 2 promotion in the market, an opportunity which some MMA investors are already analyzing and moving some money around.

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Why would investors be interested in MMA at this point after Strikeforce was just purchased by Zuffa? Well, lets take a look at the events that lead to Strikeforce’s sale to understand why.

Showtime, which was a part owner of ProElite, spent a good amount of resources and budget to build up and kick-off MMA on the network. They were fairly successful in making stars within the promotion, such as Kimbo Slice, Gina Carano, Robbie Lawler and Nick Diaz, though they spent way too much money and accumulated debt of around $55 million, which lead the company to to almost file for bankruptcy, but instead chose to sell off it’s assets to recuperate some of the losses for Showtime.

Strikeforce and CEO Scott Coker were in the kickboxing promotion business all the way up to 2006, when they promoted their first MMA event in California, which was hugely successful and still holds the U.S. paid attendance record for MMA.  Before their first MMA event, they had a strong regional fanbase and following in San Jose.  SVSE along with Scott Coker struck a deal and created a partnership which slowly built up the company to the point where they were well positioned enough that when the Showtime was looking for a new MMA promoter, they were able to strike a deal with Showtime and Pro Elite to acquire their assets. Sherdog had the details back in February 12, 2009.

Strikeforce parent company Explosion Entertainment LLC purchased selected assets of Pro Elite Inc. for $3 million, according to a United States Securities and Exchange Commission report released Wednesday.
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As part of the multi-million dollar purchase announced last week, Strikeforce acquired valuable fighter contracts, media assets that include the ProElite fight library and inventories that include all EliteXC-related DVDs. Various promotional and marketing materials were also part of the deal.

The asset purchase also lead Strikeforce to signing a TV deal with Showtime/CBS, a deal which was estimated to pay Strikeforce $25 million dollars in license fees over the course of the three-year deal.

In October of 2009, the Stratus Media Group acquired a 95% stake in ProElite for $2 million after the companyalmost filed for bankruptcy earlier in the year.  Although they sold most of their valuable assets to Strikeforce, they still maintained rights to the brand name ProElite (ProElite.com), Cage Rage, Spirit MC, and most importantly the EliteXC brand. The ProElite group, who put a bid for Strikeforce back in December of 2010, was composed of some original ProElite members such as Doug De Luca, William Kelly, Glenn Golenberg, along witch newly appointed Chairman of the board Paul Feller from the Stratus Media group.  It was said they raised enough capital to place a bid for $40 million dollars, though it wasn’t enough and was eventually outbid by Zuffa.

The other bidder for Strikeforce was from a group headed by Shelly Finkel, who is Mike Tyson’s manager and has been one of the most powerful managers in boxing for the past 30-plus years.  Finkel officially announced that he was leaving the sport of boxing back in June of 2010, citing politics of the sport as the reason he was driven away to where he got his start, music promotion under Empire Sports and Entertainment.  Although Finkel left boxing, he continued to act as an advisor to heavyweight champions Wladimir Klitschko and Vitali Klitschko, with whom he has worked for several years.  Empire Sports and Entertainment’s mission was said to become a leading media and entertainment company known for promoting the best events in concerts, music festivals, pay-per-view specials and sporting events around the world.

If we look back at some of those figures, it took an investment of $3 million dollars from SVSE and Explosion entertainment back in February of 2009 to cash out on March of 2011, span of 2 years, to be bought by Zuffa for above $40 million dollars. Being the #2 promotion or the “next competitor to the UFC” paid off for Strikeforce, and I think many other promotion are looking at their model to try and accomplish the same.

On Monday, just a couple of days after the Zuffa-Strikeforce purchase was announced, ProElite stock (one of the bidders for Strikeforce) opened at less than $0.01/share and closed at a 52 week high of $0.06 /share with a volume of just under 1 million. The average volume over the past 3 months had been around 14,000.  On Tuesday (the following day March 15, 2011), ProElite stock closed at $0.19 /share and had a day high of $0.24 /share.  What the numbers are saying is that investors and MMA fans have already started looking for a viable competitor for the UFC in the MMA market, and as Strikeforce proved in the span of 2 years, money can still be made in the market without being the #1 promotion as long as you have a platform for your product (Showtime) and a unique selling point you offer to fans.

If Zuffa ends up deciding that they do not want female MMA in the UFC, another promotion could build a solid stable of female fighters and scoop whatever talent is left out there not under the UFC umbrella (see Bellator) to start the process all over again.  FX, Fuel TV, G4, FSN, and other networks have shown recent interest in MMA programming, and all it takes is the right deal to present itself to a promotion for a shot at the #2 spot.  With that being said, the risk in the market has grown exponentially high this time around, as UFC has taken a dominant share of the market and has the majority of the top fighters in MMA.

Strikeforce is said to have roughly 140 fighters under contract in addition to UFC’s current 260 fighters, which is a whopping 400 fighters under the Zuffa banner at the moment.  It is expected that a good portion of those fighters will be cut and out of the UFC by 2012, since Zuffa has said before that they feel comfortable with a roster of around 200-220 fighters.  The UFC will also have to sign many foreign fighters as they keep reaching new international markets (trying to find the GSP of each country they visit), which only guarantees that many domestic fighters will be getting cut in the next 12 months.  This bodes well for the promotions such as Bellator, MFC, Shark Fights, Titan FC, & Tachi Palace Fights in the States,  BAMMA, and Cage Warriors in the UK, and KSW in Poland to name a few. It also bodes well for a station like HDNet who has TV contracts with MFC, Shark Fights, and Titan FC. These promotions have shown a great deal of potential in the last couple of years and the talent pool quality of MMA fighters should be increasing in the next year.  One of those could make the next step up or it could be an investment group, like the ones behind ProElite to assume the #2 spot in the market. It will definitely be a risk for any investor to jump into the current state of the market, but fans and investors seem eager to give it another go.

This weekend’s Zuffa-Strikeforce purchase announcement shook up the MMA landscape in such a way, that many fans, fighters, and sponsors were left in limbo as to what the future will hold for the sport and business of MMA.  The announcement also created a huge void for a number 2 promotion in the market, an opportunity which some MMA investors are already analyzing and moving some money around.

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Why would investors be interested in MMA at this point after Strikeforce was just purchased by Zuffa? Well, lets take a look at the events that lead to Strikeforce’s sale to understand why.

Showtime, which was a part owner of ProElite, spent a good amount of resources and budget to build up and kick-off MMA on the network. They were fairly successful in making stars within the promotion, such as Kimbo Slice, Gina Carano, Robbie Lawler and Nick Diaz, though they spent way too much money and accumulated debt of around $55 million, which lead the company to to file for bankruptcy and sell it’s assets to recuperate some of the losses for Showtime.

Strikeforce and CEO Scott Coker were in the kickboxing promotion business all the way up to 2006, when they promoted their first MMA event in California, which was hugely successful and still holds the U.S. paid attendance record for MMA.  Before their first MMA event, they had a strong regional fanbase and following in San Jose.  SVSE along with Scott Coker struck a deal and created a partnership which slowly built up the company to the point where they were well positioned enough that when the Showtime was looking for a new MMA promoter, they were able to strike a deal with Showtime and Pro Elite to acquire their assets in bankruptcy court. Sherdog had the details back in February 12, 2009.

Strikeforce parent company Explosion Entertainment LLC purchased selected assets of Pro Elite Inc. for $3 million, according to a United States Securities and Exchange Commission report released Wednesday.
…
As part of the multi-million dollar purchase announced last week, Strikeforce acquired valuable fighter contracts, media assets that include the ProElite fight library and inventories that include all EliteXC-related DVDs. Various promotional and marketing materials were also part of the deal.

The asset purchase also lead Strikeforce to signing a TV deal with Showtime/CBS, a deal which was estimated to pay Strikeforce $25 million dollars in license fees over the course of the three-year deal.

In October of 2009, the Stratus Media Group acquired a 95% stake in ProElite for $2 million after the company filed for bankruptcy earlier in the year.  Although they sold most of their valuable assets to Strikeforce, they still maintained rights to the brand name ProElite (ProElite.com), Cage Rage, Spirit MC, and most importantly the EliteXC brand. The ProElite group, who put a bid for Strikeforce back in December of 2010, was composed of some original ProElite members such as Doug De Luca, William Kelly, Glenn Golenberg, along witch newly appointed Chairman of the board Paul Feller from the Stratus Media group.  It was said they raised enough capital to place a bid for $40 million dollars, though it wasn’t enough and was eventually outbid by Zuffa.

The other bidder for Strikeforce was from a group headed by Shelly Finkel, who is Mike Tyson’s manager and has been one of the most powerful managers in boxing for the past 30-plus years.  Finkel officially announced that he was leaving the sport of boxing back in June of 2010, citing politics of the sport as the reason he was driven away to where he got his start, music promotion under Empire Sports and Entertainment.  Although Finkel left boxing, he continued to act as an advisor to heavyweight champions Wladimir Klitschko and Vitali Klitschko, with whom he has worked for several years.  Empire Sports and Entertainment’s mission was said to become a leading media and entertainment company known for promoting the best events in concerts, music festivals, pay-per-view specials and sporting events around the world.

If we look back at some of those figures, it took an investment of $3 million dollars from SVSE and Explosion entertainment back in February of 2009 to cash out on March of 2011, span of 2 years, to be bought by Zuffa for above $40 million dollars. Being the #2 promotion or the “next competitor to the UFC” paid off for Strikeforce, and I think many other promotion are looking at their model to try and accomplish the same.

On Monday, just a couple of days after the Zuffa-Strikeforce purchase was announced, ProElite stock (one of the bidders for Strikeforce) opened at less than $0.01/share and closed at a 52 week high of $0.06 /share with a volume of just under 1 million. The average volume over the past 3 months had been around 14,000.  On Tuesday (the following day March 15, 2011), ProElite stock closed at $0.19 /share and had a day high of $0.24 /share.  What the numbers are saying is that investors and MMA fans have already started looking for a viable competitor for the UFC in the MMA market, and as Strikeforce proved in the span of 2 years, money can still be made in the market without being the #1 promotion as long as you have a platform for your product (Showtime) and a unique selling point you offer to fans.

If Zuffa ends up deciding that they do not want female MMA in the UFC, another promotion could build a solid stable of female fighters and scoop whatever talent is left out there not under the UFC umbrella (see Bellator) to start the process all over again.  FX, Fuel TV, G4, FSN, and other networks have shown recent interest in MMA programming, and all it takes is the right deal to present itself to a promotion for a shot at the #2 spot.  With that being said, the risk in the market has grown exponentially high this time around, as UFC has taken a dominant share of the market and has the majority of the top fighters in MMA.

Strikeforce is said to have roughly 140 fighters under contract in addition to UFC’s current 260 fighters, which is a whopping 400 fighters under the Zuffa banner at the moment.  It is expected that a good portion of those fighters will be cut and out of the UFC by 2012, since Zuffa has said before that they feel comfortable with a roster of around 200-220 fighters.  The UFC will also have to sign many foreign fighters as they keep reaching new international markets (trying to find the GSP of each country they visit), which only guarantees that many domestic fighters will be getting cut in the next 12 months.  This bodes well for the promotions such as Bellator, MFC, Shark Fights, Titan FC, & Tachi Palace Fights in the States,  BAMMA, and Cage Warriors in the UK, and KSW in Poland to name a few. It also bodes well for a station like HDNet who has TV contracts with MFC, Shark Fights, and Titan FC. These promotions have shown a great deal of potential in the last couple of years and the talent pool quality of MMA fighters should be increasing in the next year.  One of those could make the next step up or it could be an investment group, like the ones behind ProElite to assume the #2 spot in the market. It will definitely be a risk for any investor to jump into the current state of the market, but fans and investors seem eager to give it another go.

There were two other bidders in the running to acquire Strikeforce MMA from Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment (SVSE) and Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker. In the end, both suitors were unable to match the bids put by Zuffa LLC, owners of the UFC, as the ante was raised several times until an agreement was reached.

According to Dave Meltzer of Yahoo:

Coker wouldn’t say who else was bidding to buy the company, but Pro Elite, Inc., which had the Showtime deal in 2007 and 2008 before going belly-up and having its assets purchased by Strikeforce in early 2009, had raised new capital and had reportedly made a $40 million offer.

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Other names, including Shelly Finkel, Mike Tyson’s manager, were reportedly interested. While Fertitta said he was not aware of other offers while negotiating this deal, insiders with knowledge of the negotiations said the UFC deal was more lucrative and they kept raising the ante until the deal was agreed upon.

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As for the reason for the the sale, Scott Coker shared his side during Monday’s press conference:

“Silicon Valley Sports and us were great partners,” Coker said. “They wanted to get back to their core business, the hockey business and expansion of their other sports businesses. We had a long conversation and started taking different offers and then we started talking to Lorenzo. They had a really good time in this business, but they wanted to get back to their core business. I wanted to stay in this business and this is how we hooked up.”

Now, while this announcement was a shock to many, there were some signs and discussions that hinted at the notion in the last 6 months.  Folks within knowledge of how Strikeforce worked said it was tough to do everything they wanted to do given the budget and constraints they were given.  There seemed to have been some tug-of-war game between Coker and SVSE, who grew inpatient his year with Strikeforce’s returns.  According to Loretta Hunt of LA Times, Strikeforce had incurred debt, though they were slowly headed in the right direction as the early success of 2011 showed with record ratings and buzz for the promotion.  Insiders say that Strikeforce grew too big for SVSE to want to further commit any more resources, since it would eventually lead into a war with UFC, which were brought up by three key events: the Showtime deal, the Fedor deal, and talk of heading into the PPV market.

Back in September of 2010, talks of a Strikeforce sale surfaced within the MMA world, and MMAPayout contacted both SVSE and Scott Coker to get their take on the matter. Scott Coker said the rumor was untrue, while SVSE (who was involved due to the news that CEO Greg Jamison was stepping down as of October last year) made the following statement:

As is the case with all properties owned and operated by Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment, Strikeforce [a joint venture between SVS&E and WCP] is not for sale and the day-to-day operations of Strikeforce will continue under the direction of President Scott Coker.

Only a few months after this statement was issued, talks between SVSE, Scott Coker, and Zuffa (among other bidders) commenced as both SVSE and Scott Coker began to part ways.  Was SVSE already heading in a different direction last year and could it have possibly triggered the sale?

As for the bidders, Pro Elite was bought by the Stratus Media Group back in October of 2009, after the company filed for bankruptcy and who’s key assets were purchased by Strikeforce and SVSE to strike the Showtime deal.  Stratus Media is an owner, producer, promoter and operator of live entertainment events that generate revenue through corporate sponsorships, ticket sales, corporate hospitality, event merchandise and concessions, who also provide athlete management, representation and endorsements. The ProElite group, who was heading this venture in bidding for Strikeforce, were original PE members Doug De Luca, William Kelly, Glenn Golenberg, along witch newly appointed Chairman of the board Paul Feller from Stratus Media.  It was said they raised enough capital to place a bid for $40 million dollars, though was eventually outbid by Zuffa.

The other bidder was from a group headed by Shelly Finkel, who is Mike Tyson’s manager and has been one of the most powerful managers in boxing for the past 30-plus years.  Finkel officially announced that he was leaving the sport of boxing back in June of 2010, citing politics of the sport as the reason he was driven away to where he got his start, music promotion under Empire Sports and Entertainment.  Although Finkel left boxing, he continued to act as an advisor to heavyweight champions Wladimir Klitschko and Vitali Klitschko, with whom he has worked for several years.  Empire Sports and Entertainment’s mission was said to become a leading media and entertainment company known for promoting the best events in concerts, music festivals, pay-per-view specials and sporting events around the world.

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UFC/STRIKEFORCE PRESSER NOTES:

- Business will stay as usual for Strikeforce according to Dana White, although most believe it will stay as usual until the Showtime TV deal runs its course in Feb/March of 2012, which at that time may merge Strikeforce into the UFC like it did PRIDE, WFA, and the WEC. They will stay as separate entities until then.

- The Fertitta’s and Dana White made it very clear to steer away from any monopoly talk brought up by reporters, citing that there are thousands of promotions all over the world and there is nothing that is stopping anyone with backers to get into the market and compete. They also made it a point to state that any sort of fighter union would be up to the fighters.

- As part of the sale, Scott Coker got a long-term contract to work for Zuffa, but NO ownership stake in the company.

- Zuffa cited that there is a big demand for their product in Canada, Australia, and the UK (global expansion).  The addition of Strikeforce and Scott Coker would help aid that demand.

- The heavyweight GP will continue as planned, and the finals may be held as a PPV event.

- Strikeforce will now abide by the Unified Rules, which means elbows to a grounded opponent will be allowed.  Strikeforce will continue to use its six-sided cage and production and commentary team from Showtime.

- Talks between Showtime and Zuffa have yet to take place.

- Zuffa was in the San Jose today to pay a visit to Strikeforce offices, which met with the staff.  Strikeforce will be sending some of their personnel to Las Vegas later this week to meet and get acclimated with Zuffa staff and culture.

Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be taking a look at the Strikeforce Feijao vs Henderson event televised on Showtime and headlined by Strikeforce LHW champ Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante, as he made his first title defense against MMA legend Dan Henderson.

The event took place at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio coinciding with the annual Arnold Sports Festival and featured the Lightheavyweight title fight between Rafael Cavalcante vs. Dan Henderson, the womens Welterweight title fight between Marloes Coenen vs. Liz Carmouche, Tim Kennedy vs. Melvin Manhoef, and Billy Evangelista vs. Jorge Masvidal. The prelims – which were later streamed on Strikeforce.com -  were headlined by Jorge Gurgel vs Bily Vaughn and Welterweight prospect Roger Bowling vs Josh Thornburg.

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Fighter Disclosed Payouts

Note: that the money reported below is only the money required to be reported by the commission, which does not take into account undisclosed bonuses or “locker room” bonuses, as they are referred to in MMA.

Courtesy of MMAJunkie:

The total disclosed payroll for the event was $439,500.

Champ Dan Henderson: $250,000 (no win bonus)
def. Rafael Cavalcante $28,000

Champ Marloes Coenen: $10,000 (no win bonus)
def. Liz Carmouche: $5,000

Tim Kennedy: $50,000 (no win bonus)
def. Melvin Manhoef: $10,000

Jorge Masvidal: $30,000 (includes $15,000 win bonus)
def. Billy Evangelista: $20,000

Roger Bowling: $7,000 (includes $3,500 win bonus)
def. Josh Thornburg: $2,000

Jorge Gurgel: $8,000 ($4,000 win bonus)
def. Billy Vaughn: $1,500

Jason Freeman: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Jason Riley: $1,500

Brian Rogers: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Ian Rammel: $1,500

Mitch Whitesel: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Marc Cofer: $1,500

John Kuhner: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. J.P. Feity: $1,500

Attendance and Gate

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Feijao vs Henderson achieved an attendance of 7,123. The number stands as the 8th most attended event for Strikeforce in all of 2010 and so far in 2011, only doing better than the Miami and Los Angeles events, noting here that the Los Angeles event was a special Wednesday show coinciding with E3 . It would have to be considered a disappointing number considering that the WEC last year drew 8,345 fans.  The UFC set the U.S. attendance record in the same venue back in 2007, but saw declining figures ever since.  In 2009, UFC 96 drew 17,033 attendees but was only able to get 13,470 paid.  This year, the UFC skipped Ohio altogether choosing to go to Australia instead and the WEC is no longer around, which gave Strikeforce the chance to step in this year.

MMAPayout has not been able to get a gate figure for the event at press time.

- 11,757 spectators, “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June, 2010)
- 11,287 spectators, “Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva” (February, 2011)
- 9,059 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg” (January, 2011)
- 8,635 spectators, “Strikeforce: Houston” (August, 2010)
- 8,196 spectators, “Strikeforce: Nashville (April, 2010)
- 8,136 spectators, “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May, 2010)
- 7,559 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October, 2010)
- 7,146 spectators, “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December, 2010)
- 7,123 spectators, “Strikeforce: Feijao vs Henderson” (March, 2011)
- 7,010 spectators, “Strikeforce: Miami” (January, 2010)
- 5,259 spectators, “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June, 2010)

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Ratings

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva averaged 412,000 viewers (1.8 rating) and MMAPayout has exclusively learned from sources that the main event between Henderson and Feijao gained an additional 100K viewers, creating a peak of around 520,000. The average number was good enough to rival the Strikeforce Fedor vs Werdum event which received 412k average viewers and peaked at around 700K viewers back in June 2010.  It ties the Fedor vs Werdum event as the 5th most watched MMA event for Showtime in terms of average viewership.

Though this rating is a drop-off from the previous two shows which did excellent numbers, Henderson vs Babalu II – just a few months back in December – did 341k average viewers with a peak of 465K, so the average viewership for a card which was headlined by Dan Henderson in the span of about 3 months increased by about 70k viewers, which shows what type of momentum Strikeforce is currently riding in 2011. It is also key to note that the 3 big Strikeforce events in 2011 have placed in 1st, 3d, and 6th in terms of most average viewership for an MMA event on Showtime ever.

- 741,000 viewers (1.1 million peak), “Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva” (February, 2011)
- 576,000 viewers (856,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Carano vs Cyborg” (August, 2009)
- 561,000 viewers (853,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg” (January, 2011)
- 517,000 viewers (peak not available), “Strikeforce: Miami” (January, 2010)
- 412,000 viewers (700,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June, 2010)
- 412,000 viewers (520,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Feijao vs Henderson” (March, 2011)
- 367,000 viewers (470,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Houston” (August, 2010)
- 350,000 viewers (509,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October, 2010)
- 341,000 viewers (465,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December, 2010)
- 308,000 viewers (448,000 peak), “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May, 2010)
- 164,000 viewers (197,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June, 2010) [Special Wednesday Show]

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Storylines

Strikeforce Fills MMA Void In Arnold Sports Festival

- After the UFC decided it would be heading to Australia this year instead of the Arnold, a great opportunity came knocking for Strikeforce.  Not only would the Arnolds be full of sports and fitness enthusiasts, but also a good amount of businesses within the industry.  It created an opportunity for Strikeforce to spread the brand, convert new fans, and build some relationships within the industry.

Duane Finley of BloodyElbow was there and shares some of his experiences and observations from the show:

In addition to the event at the Nationwide Arena, Strikeforce looked to capitalize on the opportunity to connect with their fan base as they set up a large booth at the Fitness Expo which ran from Friday to Saturday at the Columbus Convention Center. As one of 700 vendors on display Strikeforce made sure their booth was visible as they pulled out all the stops to create one of the most visually appealing and visitor friendly stands. The entire booth was designed using the official Strikeforce cage where fans could filter through to meet the fighters or stop and have their pictures taken with the Rockstar/Strikeforce ring girls on the outer perimeters. At the entrance, Strikeforce set up a box office where tickets could be purchased for Saturday’s show in addition to signing up for raffle drawings that were held throughout the course of the weekend.

Once inside the cage fans and visitors could play EA Sports MMA on several monitors in addition to signing official Strikeforce placards that were being sent, along with the cages used for the weekend’s events, overseas to the U.S. Military. Strikeforce also gave visitors a chance to interact with their All-Star roster as the organization scheduled appearances and presentations allowing fans, new and old, to meet some of the top fighters and personalities on their roster. Josh Thomson and Frank Shamrock held meet and greet sessions during the opening portion of the Expo on Friday while current welterweight champion and one of the world’s pound for pound best Nick Diaz held court on both Friday and Saturday afternoons. Also making appearances were MMA legend Pat Miletich, Antonio “Big Foot” Silva and recent Strikeforce signee Josh Barnett, who is preparing to make his official Strikeforce debut when he faces Brett Rogers on June 18th in the opening round of the heavyweight tournament. The convention center was jammed packed from the time the doors opened until they closed and Barnett, who had a massive turnout, had this to say in regards to the insanity.

It’s huge,” Barnett exclaimed. “It’s busy as hell. This is a great venue for Strikeforce to be in. New fans…in addition to us getting a chance to make an impression on them and get them to follow what we are doing. So I think it’s a necessity. Plus, I like the fact that they have all the events for the kids to keep them entertained.

Strikeforce was in a position where they could attract many new fans not only to the promotion, but to the sport of MMA.  In preparation, they created a educational material, had a playable gaming station of EA Sports MMA and gave the fans a full MMA experience with their meet-and-greet opportunities and the other numerous activities they provided to Arnold Classic attendees.

Strikeforce Fan Guide Pamphlet:

Arnold Classic Fan Experience:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Makes a Stop at the Strikeforce Booth

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Post-Event Notes

- Strikeforce announced they have signed Japanese fighter and Beijing gold medalist in Judo Satoshi Ishii and will fight on the April 1st Challengers event on Showtime against K-1 veteran now turned MMA artist, Scott Lighty.  Here is the way that card is stacking up:

Strikeforce Challengers from Stockton, California (4/1/2011)

Justin Wilcox (10-3) vs Rodrigo Damm (9-4)
Satoshi Ishii (4-1) vs Scott Lighty (6-1)
David “Tarzan” Douglas (6-2) vs Caros Fodor (7-2)
James Terry (9-2) vs Conor Heun (8-4)
Damian Douglas (3-1) vs Wayne Phillips (5-3)

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- Strikeforce announces the 4/9 card to be held in San Diego, CA which bumps the Strikeforce HW Grand Prix to June 18 in Dallas, Texas.

Strikeforce Diaz vs Daley from San Diego, California (4/9/2011)

Nick Diaz (24-7) vs Paul Daley (27-9)
Gilbert Melendez (18-2) vs Tatsuya Kawajiri (27-6)
Gegard Mousasi (30-3) vs Mike Kyle (18-8)
Shinya Aoki (26-5) vs Lyle Beerbohm (15-1)

- Strikeforce introduces new designed belts at Strikeforce: Feijao vs Henderson.

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Twitter and Google Trends

Great news for Strikeforce here, as the key words “Hendo“, “Coenen“, “Carmouche“, “Tim Kennedy“, “Manhoef” , and “Masvidal” were all top twitter trends during the evening of the Strikeforce: Feijao vs Henderson event. That would make 6 out of the 8 fighters who fought on the Showtime televised portion of the event top twitter trends for the evening.

Also, “Dan Henderson” and “Strikeforce” were top searches for the evening on Google. They were among the top 10 Google Trends in the U.S. for that evening, with “Strikeforce” reaching the #3  spot behind HBO boxing’s event headlined by Saul Alvarez.

That would make it 8 out of the last 10 events that have trended on Twitter for Strikeforce, with the previous being the last show which was the first round of the HW Grand Prix which was headlined by Fedor Emelianenko and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva.

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Sponsor, Promotion and Marketing Watch

- All the usual sponsors where there for this event: FullTilt Poker, Rockstar, GoDaddy, Clinch Gear, EA Sports MMA, etc. As we like to point out here on MMAPayout, we always like to see more synergy between big sponsors and the promotions. Ranger Up had a nice presence in the event as well, sponsoring Tim Kennedy and Liz Carmouche, both who are enrolled in the U.S. Armed Forces. MicroTech was also a welcomed sponsor for Strikeforce.

MicroTech CEO Tony Jimenez attended the event and sponsored Rafael Feijao, Marloes Coenen, and Tim Kennedy.

MicroTechCEO : At @Strikeforce Columbus in @Fahrenheitnutri Suite watching preliminary fights! Thx 4 the invite! http://yfrog.com/h6ik8gj

Intimidation MMA also played a big role in sponsoring fighters for the prelim portion of the event, which included Roger Bowling, Brian Rogers, Jason Freeman, Billy Vaughn and Mitch Whitesel.

IntimidationMMA Update: Bowling, Rogers, Freeman & Whitesel all victorious at Strikeforce http://fb.me/M61WvdzD

- Strikeforce had a promo to Tweet where you were seated for a chance to win floor seats again, dubbed #sfpickme. Again, a great way to utilize the social media tools that they have. Also. hosting a Ring Girl Contest on their Facebook page as well to keep the motto going.

- Strikeforce is slowly integrating the fighters and their brands with the promotion. If we take a look at the Strikeforce Store, we see Dan Henderson advertised on the front page with his own signature shirts for the Columbus event on March 5th. We will keep a look out and see if they will keep this strategy for future big show headliners. They have recently added new Fedor, King Mo, and Jason “Mayhem” Miller signature shirts as well.

Strikeforce confirmed this week what Sherdog reported a week ago,which was the postponement to the second leg of the Heavyweight Grand Prix, which was originally scheduled to take place on April 9. A few days ago, Josh Gross of ESPN then confirmed that the HW GP would indeed be postponed and continue in Dallas, TX on June 18.

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As a result of the move, the April 9th HW GP bouts were replaced by Nick Diaz vs Paul Daley and Gilbert Melendez vs Tatsuya Kawajiri. The Strikeforce press release states the following:

NEW YORK (March 2, 2011) – The STRIKEFORCE World Grand Prix — Heavyweight Tournament will continue on Saturday, June 18 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, LIVE on SHOWTIME® (10 p.m. ET/PT, delayed on the West Coast).

The date originally reserved for continuation of the three-stage, single-elimination tournament comprised of eight of the world’s top heavyweights, April 9, will now feature a terrific STRIKEFORCE World Championship Doubleheader from Valley View Casino Center in San Diego, Calif., formerly the San Diego Sports Arena.

In the second event of the tournament, STRIKEFORCE Heavyweight World Champion Alistair “The Demolition Man” Overeem (34-11, 1 NC) will face the only man to tap out MMA legend Fedor “The Last Emperor” Emelianenko, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist Fabricio Werdum (14-4-1) and the heavy-handed Brett “The Grim” Rogers (11-2) will take on former UFC World Champion Josh Barnett (29-5).

“STRIKEFORCE is coming off a record presale and impressive attendance for the kickoff of the Grand Prix at IZOD Center in New Jersey that also drew a record viewership on SHOWTIME for live MMA,” said STRIKEFORCE CEO Scott Coker.  “To build on the tremendous momentum from New Jersey we needed the proper time to promote an event of this magnitude, which is why we have decided to continue the Tournament on June 18 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, a venue that has been identified as one of the premier sports and entertainment venues in the U.S.”

Coker continued: “We have a great relationship with the Texas State Athletic Commission, who, along with the American Airlines Center, is enthused to host the Grand Prix.”

STRIKEFORCE Welterweight World Champion Nick Diaz (24-1, 1 NC) will defend his title in a highly anticipated grudge match against the brawling Paul “Semtex” Daley (26-9-2) in the April 9 main event.  Gilbert Melendez (18-2) will make the second defense of his STRIKEFORCE Lightweight World Title against the powerful Tatsuya Kawajiri (27-6-2).  Also on the April 9 card is a bitter showdown between current DREAM Light Heavyweight Champion Gegard Mousasi and Mike Kyle.

“We are fortunate to replace the April 9 date with a tremendous World Championship Doubleheader featuring the eagerly awaited showdown between Nick and Paul and the sensational matchup between Gilbert and Tatsuya,” Coker said.  “This is a fight everyone has been waiting for and I’d like to thank DREAM for allowing Tatsuya to come to the U.S. to take on our Lightweight World Champion.”

PAYOUT PERSPECTIVE:

The news of the postponement has definitely raised a cloud of doubt among MMA fans in terms of Strikeforce’s ability to pull off the HW Grand Prix without any further hiccups.  We will take a look at what delaying the second leg of the HW GP means, the reasoning behind the move, and how they are trying to capitalize from the event.

- Reasons Behind Delay:

* Talks to host the event in Japan did not materialize. Booking a venue (Saitama Super Arena) for the April 9 date was a big issue, as well as locking down logistics, gaining sponsors, promoting the event, and finding supporters in Japan in such a short amount of time after the 2/12 event.

* Once the April 9 date could not be booked in Japan, Strikeforce began to look for major markets in the U.S. that could possibly host the event. A problem encountered was that many of the states and venues they were looking into were booked on Saturday night, either by NBA or NHL.  Only a few were found that worked with all the parties involved, but they also happened to be in California. The Oracle Arena in Oakland and the San Diego Sports Arena were the two leading venues, though both were out of the question to host the HW GP second leg due to the Josh Barnett licensing issues with the California State Athletic Commission, which Strikeforce want’s Josh Barnett to resolve in case he advances to the semi-finals and final rounds of the GP.

* Finding enough time to promote and capitalize on the HW GP.  With the limited resources Strikeforce has in hand, concentrating on the HW GP while also having to plan for Challenger events and the big Columbus event which coincides with the Arnold Sports Festival provided logistics hurdles. They are looking into properly promoting not only the second leg of the HW GP, but also all the shows in between.  They won’t be able to free resources up until May as  Showtime and CBS will be heavily involved in promoting the Manny Pacquiao vs Shane Mosley fight, so May will be a chance for Strikeforce to catch their breath.  On the positive end, all signs point to Strikeforce being promoted on the huge platform, so it could pay off big for them heading into the latter half of the year.

* There was a rumor floating around that Alistair Overeem wanted to fight in May or June, and that April 9th was too soon to put up a full training camp.  He has fought frequently for FEG in the past 5 months, taking home the belt in the K-1 World Grand Prix as well as defeating Todd Duffee in the NYE card to become the DREAM Interim HW Champion.  Overeem made the following statements to MMAFightingt back in November of last year:

“I will be ready for Strikeforce as soon as I would say April, May, June,” Overeem said Monday on MMAFighting.com’s The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani.

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After his December fight(s) in Japan, Overeem says he will take a vacation in January and would need two to four months after to properly prepare for his return.

MMAPayout was able to reach both parties, who subsequently denied the rumors.  Golden Glory team stated the following  “Alistair has been training hard lately and is always ready to fight! Doesn’t matter if it was April or June, he will be ready as ever…”

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- The Cons:

* Long layoff hurts momentum created by the hugely successful first leg of the HW GP held in February 12  and headlined with Fedor Emelianenko vs Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva.

* Fighters who fought on the 2/12 event will go 7 months without a fight, fighters who were told they were fighting on 4/9 have a 2 month delay in the middle of training camps. There are already rumbles that Antonio Silva does not want to wait around that long and that his management want’s a fight in between. Alex Davis told ESPN.com “For us it sucks. I gotta keep him in action. What I’ll try to see if they’ll let him fight in Japan. He’s in the tournament so it wouldn’t make any sense to have him fight in Strikeforce. We can’t just wait this long.” The obvious issue here is that if you let Silva or any other fighter fight outside of the promotion and they lose or get injured, it would not be very good for the tournament, which is not a very good position for either side.

* Jeopardizes the scheduling of the entire tournament to conclude in 2011, since the margin of error (bad luck/injuries) is now slim, as the semifinals are tentatively scheduled for September and the finals around early December. Strikeforce did previously mention that if there was an injury, they were willing to give the fighter a 2 month window to see if he could heal to avoid using a replacement for minor injuries.  If any of those situations occur, the event may have slipped into 2011 regardless of this 2 month delay.

* As a promotion who is still working out the kinks in transitioning into a worldwide promotion, having these scheduling issues and hiccups only fuel those within the MMA community who already think Strikeforce is not yet capable of properly handling hurdles that are presented to them.  The two month delay has raised concerns from a number of fans, but if the rest of the GP can go smoothly, I think it will be easily forgotten, though smooth sailing is hardly a given when it comes to MMA or tournaments.

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- The Pros:

* The key here with the extra time is to use it wisely and promote the second leg of the HW GP. Alistair Overeem, Fabricio Werdum, Brett Rogers, and Josh Barnett (making his Strikeforce debut) are all relatively unknown in the U.S. still, so using this time wisely to promote the fighters and the idea of a tournament is a must here.  Although it’s not a positive for the fighters, Strikeforce and Showtime now have more time to promote the next event and cash in on the extra attention from it.  It also doesn’t hurt that the event takes place in Texas, where Gina Carano is from and where big attractions like Herschel Walker can be used to gain publicity.

*April 9th was originally planned as a Japan show, which has now moved to San Diego in what appears to be a Strikeforce vs DREAM event, which should excite fans the closer we get to the event. The event is rumored to have Diaz vs Daley, Melendez vs Kawajiri, Mousasi vs Kyle, Aoki, and Takaya as possible participants.  In fact, it looks like many of the same fighters which were going to participate in the 4/9 event in Japan are still on the card in San Diego.  Sources say that Strikeforce pretty much had Strikeforce done, but due to lack of time and logistics (venue), were not able to pull it off, essentially moving the event to San Diego.  Not only is Strikeforce getting DREAM fighters for the event, but NightmareOfBattle is also reporting that DREAM will also support Strikeforce with the event in terms of “production”.   The event will be billed as a DREAM vs STRIKEFORCE event and DREAM is hoping that they can continue the relationship in 2011, having fighters from both promotions participating in Japan and the U.S. The report also states that DREAM will be focusing on the Bantamweight division and will look forward to crowning champs for each division.

* Although Overeem vs Werdum and Barnett vs Rogers was pushed out, Nick Diaz vs Paul Daley was pushed in to be the main event.  Paul Daley is coming off another impressive first round stoppage, this time over DEEP WW champ Yuya Shurai on BAMMA 5, an event held in the UK.  Daley’s popularity has grown so much as of late, that his fight against Shurai – which aired late Saturday night in the UK on Syfy and streamed live in the US in the afternoon -  resulted in Paul Daley being a top Twitter trend in both markets, which is remarkable. Capitalizing on the buzz Paul Daley has at the moment is key for Strikeforce, and they have done that with booking Diaz vs Daley as the main event of the 4/9 card.  The only worry now is that they have to sell that fight and promote it, which shouldn’t be too hard to do with those guys.  It will also be the date Strikeforce gets their LW champ, Gilbert Melendez, back from injury.

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- Aiming to Capitalize On the HW GP:

* In terms of business, sources within the industry have said that the Fedor vs Silva event has opened up financial opportunities for Strikeforce that were not there before, so stretching out the GP may not necessarily be such a bad thing for them business wise.  It also means more mainstream interest and coverage from otherwise unwilling outlets.  The key here is for Strikeforce to draw mainstream attention to the in between HW GP events and use the GP to boost up the brand.

* The HW GP has opened up PPV for Strikeforce in several non-domestic markets.  Sources within the industry have pointed out that sponsors and other groups are seeking to work with Strikeforce in part to the the HW GP, especially if it could mean a future spot on a PPV or CBS event for the final rounds.  According to NightmareOfBattle, the famous Japanese Magazine “Kamipro” is reporting PPV success for Strikeforce in Japan, to the point where the April 9 event will also be a highly anticipated event in Japan.

“According to authorized people it looks like the amount sold for the SKY PerfecTV! televised PPV of Fedor vs. Bigfoot was quite good. I’m anticipating a Kawajiri vs. Melendez PPV as well!!”

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In addition to Japan, Strikeforce has also partnered with UK PPV provider Primetime, which now appears to be a budding partnership.

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Looking at the April 9 card, the key participants are Paul Daley, Kawajiri, Aoki, and Takaya guys who will be used to bump the PPV sales both in the UK and in Japan.  Roger Gracie is also rumored to potentially land on the event, who lives in London.

Other countries with no TV deals (i.e. Australia) can also purchase Strikeforce HW GP events via PPV.  Latin America saw the Fedor vs Silva event via HBO Plus, which did extremely well and was a top Twitter trend for most of the day in Brazil due to the buzz the event created. The Latin American market has opened up for Strikeforce mainly due to the Canal Space TV deal, which has been vital in penetrating the market and exposing the brand to numerous countries in the region in the past year.

Though holding PPV’s is not ideal for a promotion who is still trying to grow the brand, slowly phasing it in when no other television options are available will give them some sort of non-domestic revenue and a good study in venturing into the sparingly used only for special events  PPV business.

* Ultimately, the goal for Strikeforce will be to hold an event on CBS and then plan a PPV around the HW GP finals or semi-finals.  At the time, they hope to cash in on what they are slowly building with the GP this year.  Ratings, attendance, gate, merchandising sales, and interest in the product are all significantly higher in 2011 in the first 3 months than what it was for the latter part of 2010 for the promotion.

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Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be taking a look at the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix first event televised on Showtime and headlined by Fedor Emelianenko, as he made his long awaited return to the cage against Brazilian giant Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva.

The event took place at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey and featured 5 Heavyweight fights: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva,  Andrei Arlovski vs.  Sergei Kharitonov, Shane Del Rosario vs. Lavar Johnson, and Chad Griggs vs. Gian Villante, and Valentijn Overeem vs. Ray Sefo.  The prelims were also televised by HDNet and were headlined by John Cholish vs Marc Stevens and Igor Gracie vs John Salgado.

Fighter Disclosed Payouts

Fighter payouts were not disclosed for the event.

Attendance and Gate

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva achieved an attendance of 11,287. The number stands as the second most attended event for Strikeforce in all of 2010 and so far in 2011, just trailing behind the Fedor vs Werdum event held at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, which drew 11,757 spectators. MMAPayout has learned that the gate for the event broke the $1 million dollar mark, last achieved by the Fedor vs Werdum event at the HP Pavilion. This is a nice trend being set by Strikeforce but it also shows how much of a draw Fedor is, having the last two million dollar gates and high attendance, and as you will read below, now owning the ratings record previously held by Gina Carano vs Cyborg Santos.

- 11,757 spectators, “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June, 2010)
- 11,287 spectators, “Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva” (February, 2011)
- 9,059 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg” (January, 2011)
- 8,635 spectators, “Strikeforce: Houston” (August, 2010)
- 8,196 spectators, “Strikeforce: Nashville (April, 2010)
- 8,136 spectators, “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May, 2010)
- 7,559 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October, 2010)
- 7,146 spectators, “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December, 2010)
- 7,010 spectators, “Strikeforce: Miami” (January, 2010)
- 5,259 spectators, “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June, 2010)

Ratings

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva averaged 741,000 viewers (2.13 rating) and peaked at 1.1 million viewers (3.2 rating) for the main event between Fedor and “Bigfoot” Silva on Showtime this past Saturday night . The average and peak numbers are the highest for any MMA event ever broadcasted on Showtime, topping the previous record held by Gina Carano vs Cris Cyborg, which averaged 576,000 viewers (2.2 rating, note that this rating is only higher because Showtime had less subscribers 18 months ago) and peaked at 856,000 (2.91).  Another eye popping stat is that this event drew a higher rating than any MMA broadcast on television since December 5, 2009, when Kimbo Slice fought on Spike against Houston Alexander, and the show drew a 2.38 rating (H/T F4Wonline). Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva also broke records with the key demographics, achieving a 2.35 rating in Males 18-34 and a 1.91 rating in Males 35-49, which is skewed more to the younger viewers, which is not typical for Showtime since a big portion of their subscriber base are older.  The main event between Fedor vs Silva did a 3.55 rating in Males 18-34 and 2.83 in Males 35-49. Kimbo Slice vs Roy Nelson on Spike TV hold the all time TV ratings record, achieving a 4.26 rating and 6.1 million viewers.

MMAPayout has learned that both Strikeforce and Showtime are “extremely happy” with the numbers as it builds momentum for the rest of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament, the next taking place on April 9th on Showtime featuring Alistair Overeem vs Fabricio Werdum and Josh Barnett vs Brett Rogers.

NOTE: A key number to observe here is the peak number, which means more for Showtime because of the correlation between how many current and new subscribers are watching Strikeforce, which differs from the UFC, WEC, Bellator, and other promotions with TV deals (with non-subscription channels) which are ad and rating dependent.

- 741,000 viewers (1.1 million peak), “Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva” (February, 2011)
- 576,000 viewers (856,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Carano vs Cyborg” (August, 2009)
- 561,000 viewers (853,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg” (January, 2011)
- 517,000 viewers (peak not available), “Strikeforce: Miami” (January, 2010)
- 412,000 viewers (700,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June, 2010)
- 367,000 viewers (470,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Houston” (August, 2010)
- 350,000 viewers (509,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October, 2010)
- 341,000 viewers (465,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December, 2010)
- 308,000 viewers (448,000 peak), “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May, 2010)
- 164,000 viewers (197,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June, 2010) [Special Wednesday Show]

Storylines Coming Out of Event

Strikeforce Gets Huge Buzz From Event, Smashes TV Records, and Provides Great First Round in the  Heavyweight Grand Prix

- Aside from the superb rating numbers, Strikeforce has to be thrilled how the event turned out for them this past weekend.  This is now their third big show in a row (Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II & Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg) which produced some really memorable fights and finishes . Strikeforce is riding the momentum in 2011, holding true to the perception that they put on quality and exciting fights for the fans.  Strikeforce and Showtime were thrilled with the card and the numbers it generated, and used the 1.1 million plus viewers who tuned in to effectively prop up and plug the next leg of the Heavyweight Grand Prix, which both Showtime and Strikeforce are fully supporting throughout 2011.  The HW GP Opening Ceremony and the production upgrades was great to see, and hopefully it’s something that we see on a  more consistent basis and will continue to improve. They are hopeful that Lenne Hardt, the original announcer from PRIDE Fighting Championship can also work some of the events in the future.

- After the event had finished, all anyone could talk about was Fedor’s shocking loss.  This event lacked the big names that typically get the mainstream media’s attention, but Fedor surrounded by the intrigue of the HW Grand Prix did more than enough to lure the hardcore and the casual fans.  In fact, Strikeforce Fedor vs Silva  ranked in the top 10 both in Google Trends and Twitter (in multiple countries as well as worldwide). Fedor’s loss caused a heated debate between the MMA media and MMA fans, where Fedor fans were quick to defend their fighter against those who came out after the event was over and claimed that Fedor is overrated.  Among those who caused controversy, UFC’s Dana White – who argued with Fedor fans throughout the night, and other famous sport personalities like Jim Rome, who both made negative statements towards Fedor.  All it did was cause Fedor fans, fighters, and MMA media personnel to challenge their views.  Among the notables, MMA fighters BJ Penn, Shane Carwin, Matt Mitrione, Phil Baroni, and MMA pioneer Pat Miletich were quick to defend Fedor and his status as one of he greatest champions our sport has ever had. Needless to say, the event and Fedor’s loss made this event one of those events you will remember for a very long time.

- HDNet aired the Strikeforce 2/12 New Jersey event undercard live.  The prelims announcers for the bouts were Mike Schiavello and Bas Rutten, who received a ton of compliments from MMA fans and were very please with HDNet’s presentation.  John Cholish and Igor Gracie made the most out of their match-ups, both looking impressive and Cholish looking like he may be ready to be featured on future Challenger events defeating his opponent by an impressive knee bar.

- Fedor was the number 1 searched item on Google for hours and Strikeforce and “Strikeforce Heavy Weight Tournament” was near the top as well.  It was near the top on Twitter, Google, and many other websites. The event was so popular in Brazil, that the top 3 trends there were “Strikeforce”, “Fedor”, and “Pezao” the entire evening on until the next day. Even the station that televised the event in Brazil and Latin America, “HBO Plus” was a top 10 trend.

- Strikeforce and CEO Scott Coker featured on Bloomberg – Scott Coker, chief executive officer of Strikeforce, talks about the mixed martial arts promoter’s revenue and profitability outlook. Coker speaks with Michele Steele on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.”

- HW fighters made it no secret they were pumped to see the HW Grand Prix: Shane Carwin: I am looking forward to the HWT Grand Prix tonight. Go Fedor! Roy Nelson: Getting ready to watch the Strikeforce Hwy tournament.

- After the event concluded, it was front-paged and made the lead-story on ESPN, now the second event in a row to do so, which is a first for Strikeforce. Showtime: Check out the main page of ESPN.com! This is becoming a regular thing for @Strikeforce… http://yfrog.com/gyhgyfrj

- Showtime Posts Strikeforce Fan Video, Making Strives At Connecting with Fans.

- MMAPayout reader, Diego, was on scene for the event and shared his thoughts and observations here on MMAPayout:

11k+ in attendance and Fedor was hugely popular. Of big events I’ve only been to UFC 111 and this one, but Fedor got a huge pop when he was introduced at the beginning and the place went ballistic when he got in the cage. He got a louder reaction, by far, than any other fighter (out of the two cards I’ve seen live).
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A lot of Fedor shirts were being worn, and a lot of Russian being spoken. (It was hilarious that when Silva was in half-guard and looking to pass about 20 Russian guys behind me were chanting “stand them up”.)… it seemed like half of Brighton beach showed up to watch him. I speak enough barroom Russian to know the ringside doctor who stopped the fight should avoid any Russian restaurants for the near future.

- One of the things that I have noticed as of late is the great job Strikeforce and Showtime are doing to convey a story within the fights.  Cris Cyborg did so a few weeks ago as she sat at cage-side watching her husband battle Nick Diaz for the belt.  This time around,  Fedor vs Silva produced such a great fight and story, that pro wrestling personalities analyzed the fight and are researching MMA events. Due to Bobby Lashley, Dave Batista, and big Pro Wrestling fan Mauro Ranallo’s association with Strikeforce, it has intrigued a new wave of Pro Wrestling fans who are crossing-over to MMA.  This was the case with Missy Hyatt as she watched Strikeforce & compared it to pro wrestling, in a wonderful must-read article on F4WOnline (subscription required) that details the emotional investments fans have while watching MMA:

Missy Hyatt: The last time I watched Strike Force was when Nick Diaz fought Evangelista Cyborg. I told a fellow old school wrestler to watch the fight for the wrestling psychology. You had a heel champion in Diaz that overlooked his underdog challenger. The underdog in Cyborg gave the champion a big beating only to lose cleanly by the champion. The end result was the baby face challenger raised his stock by coming very close to beating the champion. The heel champion got over by cleanly beating his opponent & flipped somebody off on camera to still gain the ire of the crowd…

The Fedor Emalienko VS. Antonio Silva fight told an amazing story from a wrestling stand point. Fedor was beyond over in the building based on his won-loss record & mystique. John Cena had nothing on Fedor in being a babyface last night in New Jersey. Antonio Silva came across almost like Andre The Giant as a heel in the manor that the fight played out. You had the baby face go toe to toe with his larger foe. Silva had the baby face reeling at times. Fedor would deliver flurries that had the crowd on their feet.

The idea that Fedor vs Siva could be compared to Hulk Hogan vs Andre The Giant is an interesting take that Hyatt has here.  You can really see where the pro wrestling mind differs from an MMA fans perspective, though ultimately, both fan bases yearn for the same thing.  Learning how to apply and better convey storylines to the fights definitely sells, though sometimes boxing and the UFC have had a tendency to manufacture them, only to see each guy hugging each other at the end of the fight and telling each other that they didn’t mean what they said and they were only trying to sell the fight.

Missy Hyatt: The second round had Antonio Silva gain the advantage & came close to choking out Fedor on several occasions. People were literally on their feet & going nuts for Fedor barely escaping every submission attempt. The crowd went nuts when Fedor reversed a knee bar in to an ankle lock. The best description I could think of would be a Dusty Rhodes or Hulk Hogan comeback in their prime. Silva came across as such a monster heel by waving his finger that the ankle lock was not hurting him to a round of boos at the end of the second round… People were hoping that Fedor would come out in the third round to finally make his comeback in beating Silva. When the doctors stopped the fight for Fedor’s swollen eye, the crowd was angry for a few seconds. When they saw the swollen eye & face of Fedor, they showed genuine empathy.

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When looking at this fight thru a wrestling perspective. I saw the biggest baby face sell for his opponent, have flurries of comebacks, come close to defeat, & then lose by a referee stoppage. The end result was Silva gained the respect of the crowd for beating Fedor cleanly. Fedor became even more over with fans by hoping that his hint at retirement will not happen until he avenges his loss… Everybody was leaving the building in a state of shock that Fedor lost two in a row. All they kept talking about was the possibility of Fedor coming back in to the tournament in an alternate spot. I was amazed on why wrestling can’t create a baby face that was as over as Fedor. I also realized that nobody in wrestling can understand the concept in which a baby face can lose & still get over. Plus Strike Force elevated the stock of Antonio Silva as a possible drawing card in the future. The chase for a rematch can possibly bring in even more interest & money for the future. There is even money on the table for a Fedor comeback.

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I’m a wrestling purist, but there were many lessons that people in creative could learn from MMA. Wins & losses do elevate stars. The chase for the title is a theme that never gets old in real sports, movies, & in wrestling.

Post-Event Notes

- Strikeforce announces and advertises the March 5th event in Columbus, Ohio.  It will be a part of the Arnold Classic and will be headlined by Strikeforce LHW Champion “Feijao” Cavalcante as he takes on MMA legend Dan Henderson. The co-main event will be Strikeforce 135 lbs champion Marloes Coenen, as she takes on title challengers Miesha Tate.  Time Kennedy vs Luke Rockhold and Jorge Masvidal vs Billy Evangelista will also be on the televised portion of the event. The rest of the cast and poster can be found here.

- MMAJunkie: Fedor Emelianenko wanted Strikeforce bout to continue, hints at future fights

- Josh Gross (ESPN): Strikeforce’s Gina Carano to end hiatus - Coker told ESPN.com the fight against a to-be-determined opponent would take place in San Jose, Calif., likely on a card [late June] that features a welterweight championship bout between Nick Diaz and Paul Daley.

- Loretta Hunt (LA Times): Strikeforce still gunning for April event in Japan – Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker has given himself one more week to secure a venue in Japan for a planned April event…Should the event be held stateside, Coker said he is considering Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, states whose athletic commissions have apparently agreed to license Josh Barnett…

- M-1 Global and Showtime: TV Deal to Broadcast the M-1 Challenge this year is in place. Deal is for 4 televised events, the first set to air on March 25th at 11 PM ET.

Twitter and Google Trends

Great news for Strikeforce here, as the key words “#Fedor“, “#Strikeforce“, “#HBO Plus“, “#IZOD“, “#Chad Griggs“, “#Del Rosario“, “#Lavar Johnson“, “#Arlovski“, “#Kharitonov“, “#Gina Caran0“, “#Pezao“, and “#Antonio Silva” were all top twitter trends during the evening of the Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva event. In fact,  “#Fedor” and “#Antonio Silva” were remarkably still top trends on Twitter hours after the event had finished. Another great stat here is that 7 out of 10 fighters who fought on the Showtime televised portion of the event were top twitter trends for the evening.

Also, “Fedor”, “Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix”, “Antonio Silva”, “Andrei Arlovski”, “Sergei Kharitonov”, and “Strikeforce”,  were all top searches. They were among the top 20 Google Trends in the U.S. on that evening, with “Fedor” reaching and staying at #1 for hours after the event ended.

This event was so popular in Brazil, that the top 3 trends for the evening were “#Strikeforce“, “#Fedor“, and “Pezao“.  “HBO Plus” was trending since that is the network that televised the event in Brazil and in the majority of Latin America.

That would make it 7 out of the last 9 events that have trended on Twitter for Strikeforce, with the previous being the highly entertaining match-up between Nick Diaz and Evangelista “Cyborg” just a few weeks before this event.

Sponsor, Promotion and Marketing Watch

- All the usual sponsors where there for this event: FullTilt Poker, Rockstar, GoDaddy, ClinchGear, EA Sports MMA, etc. As we like to point out here on MMAPayout, we always like to see more synergy between big sponsors and the promotions. Metal Mulisha and Cage Hero are steadily growing in their roles in fighter sponsorship throughout these events.

- Strikeforce had a promo to Tweet where you were seated for a chance to win floor seats again, dubbed #sfpickme. Again, a great way to utilize the social media tools that they have.  They are also hosting a Ring Girl Contest on their Facebook page as well to keep the motto going.

- Strikeforce is slowly integrating the fighters and their brands with the promotion.  If we take a look at the Strikeforce Store, we now see that Dan Henderson is now being advertised on the front page with his own signature shirts for the upcoming Columbus event on March 5th.  We will keep a look out and see if they will keep this strategy for future big show headliners.  They have recently added new Fedor, King Mo, and Jason “Mayhem” Miller signature shirts as well.

Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be taking a look at the Showtime event headlined by Strikeforce Welterweight champion Nick Diaz, as he made his return to the cage against Brazilian Chute Boxe member and challenger Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos.

The event took place at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California and featured 4 fights: Nick Diaz vs. Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos,  ”Jacare” Souza vs.  Robbie Lawler, Herschel Walker vs. Scott Carson, and Trevor Prangley vs. Roger Gracie.

Fighter Disclosed Payouts

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg had a disclosed fighter payroll of $463,500.

Champ Nick Diaz: $150,000 (no win bonus)
def. Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos: $20,000

Champ Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza: $85,000 ($15,000 win bonus)
def. Robbie Lawler : $65,000

Herschel Walker: $5,000 (no win bonus)
def. Scott Carson: $5,000

Roger Gracie: $75,000 (no win bonus)
def. Trevor Prangley: $30,000

Nate Moore: $4,000 ($2,000 win bonus)
def. Nathan Coy: $3,000

Isaiah Hill: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Bobby Stack: $1,500

Ron Keslar: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Eric Lawson: $1,500

Germaine de Randamie: $3,000 ($1,000 win bonus)
def. Stephanie Webber: $1,000

James Terry: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Lucas Gamaza: $1,500

Jenna Castillo: $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus)
def. Charlene Gellner: $1,000

DISCLAMER: These are the base salaries reported to the commission and do not reflect the total amount earned by each fighter.

Attendance and Gate

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg achieved an attendance of 9,059 (tickets sold: 8,817; tickets complimentary: 231, unsold: 11) with a gate of $533,214.50. The number stands as the second most attended event for Strikeforce in all of 2010 and so far in 2011, just trailing behind the Fedor vs Werdum event held in the same venue, which drew 11,757 spectators.

- 11,757 spectators, “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June, 2010)
- 9,059 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg” (January, 2011)
- 8,635 spectators, “Strikeforce: Houston” (August, 2010)
- 8,196 spectators, “Strikeforce: Nashville (April, 2010)
- 8,136 spectators, “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May, 2010)
- 7,559 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October, 2010)
- 7,146 spectators, “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December, 2010)
- 7,010 spectators, “Strikeforce: Miami” (January, 2010)
- 5,259 spectators, “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June, 2010)

Ratings

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg averaged 561,000 viewers (1.9 rating) and peaked at 853,000 viewers (2.8 rating) for the main event between Nick Diaz and “Cyborg” Santos on Showtime this past Saturday night . The average and peak numbers are the second highest for an MMA event ever on Showtime (topping previous events headlined by MMA ratings king Kimbo Slice and MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko), only trailing behind the Gina Carano vs Cris “Cyborg” event, which averaged 576,000 viewers (2.2 rating) and peaked at 856,000.  Another eye popping stat is that this event drew a higher rating than any MMA broadcast on television since December 5, 2009, when Kimbo Slice fought on Spike against Houston Alexander, and the show drew a 2.38 rating (H/T F4Wonline).

MMAPayout has learned that both Strikeforce and Showtime are “thrilled” with the numbers and it couldn’t have come at a better time as the event was used to heavily promote the upcoming Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix event, kicking off with Fedor vs Antonio Silva from New Jersey in just a couple of weeks.

NOTE: A key number to observe here is the peak number, which means more for Showtime because of the correlation between how many current and new subscribers are watching Strikeforce, which differs from the UFC, WEC, Bellator, and other promotions with TV deals (with non-subscription channels) which are ad and rating dependent.

- 561,000 viewers (853,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg” (January, 2011)
- 517,000 viewers (peak not available), “Strikeforce: Miami” (January, 2010)
- 412,000 viewers (700,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June, 2010)
- 367,000 viewers (470,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Houston” (August, 2010)
- 350,000 viewers (509,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October, 2010)
- 341,000 viewers (465,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December, 2010)
- 308,000 viewers (448,000 peak), “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May, 2010)
- 164,000 viewers (197,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June, 2010) [Special Wednesday Show]

Storylines Coming Out of Event

Strikeforce Gets Positive Buzz From Event, Great Jump-off for Heavyweight Grand Prix

- Aside from the great rating numbers, Strikeforce has to be thrilled how the event turned out for them this past weekend.  This is now their second big show in a row (Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II) which produced some really memorable fights and finishes . Strikeforce now has the perception of a promotion that puts on quality and exciting fights for the fans, slowly filling the void that the demise of the WEC left for MMA fans.  Strikeforce and Showtime were thrilled with the card and the numbers it generated, and used the 850K plus viewer platform who tuned in to effectively prop up and plug the upcoming Heavyweight Grand Prix, which both Showtime and Strikeforce are fully supporting throughout 2011.

- Herschel Walker was once again the difference maker for Strikeforce.  Walker is single handedly responsible for bringing a good amount of intrigue and interest not only to MMA, but specifically to Strikeforce.  Both events that Walker has participated in, Miami and San Jose, have resulted in some of the highest rated events for Strikeforce on Showtime.  Not only does he get the casual fans attention who are familiar withhim for his college and professional football careers, but he brings in the casual and mainstream media coverage as well. In fact, Strikeforce Diaz vs Cyborg  ranked in the top 10 both in Google Trends and Twitter.  After the event concluded, it was made the lead-story on ESPN and put on the front page.

- RJ Clifford, 710ESPN host of MMA Worldwide, also posted on Twitter that Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg was on the front page of the USA Today app.

- The Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg ESPN chat with Josh Gross was the frontpage headline on the ESPN’s mobile page.

- As the Strikeforce event was happening on Showtime, there was a boxing event on HBO between Devon Alexander vs. Timothy Bradley.  the consensus was that the Showtime Strikeforce event was much better television than the boxing bout. Eddie Goldman, of No Holds Barred Radio host and combat enthusiast Eddie Goldman posted on Twitter:  ”Showtime #MMA KOs HBO #boxing tonite. 3 sub wins vs. head butt-filled technical dec. Down goes boxing, again”…. as far as ratings go, Alexander vs Bradley peaked at 1.45 million viewers, but HBO is in more homes than Showtime and typically draws well for boxing events. Combined, there were over 2 million viewers watching boxing and MMA last night on the premium channels.

- Cris Cyborg and Fabricio Werdum received fan award trophies in the middle of the cage during the non-televised portion of the event.

- Cris Cyborg was said to be a big hit during the event.  Reports say that she was one of the most popular fighters on the scene, usually dealing with big lines from MMA fans waiting to take pictures and get autographs from the Strikeforce 145 lbs female champion.

- There were many memorable moments from Saturday night’s event, but one that stands out the most to many is the shot of Showtime focusing on Cris Cyborg crying as her husband tapped out due to an armbar executed by Nick Diaz.  Many from within the business stated that the shot of Cris Cyborg showing off the softer side outside of the ring not only created great drama for television, but will make her an even bigger star.  Saturday’s show produced great drama and action for the fans watching live and the fans watching from home.  Creating these storylines and humanizing the fighters to the level where viewers can relate will go along way for the promotion.

- After the Diaz victory over Cyborg, a couple of drunk fans were mouthing off at Diaz from their seats 20 feet away from the cage and eventually threw a drink at him after Diaz threw his mouth piece at them.  The drunk fans were quickly confronted and surrounded by Diaz supporters. Both men were escorted out of the building by security as Diaz supporters heckled both men and chanted “209″ as they exited the area.  Cesar Gracie pulled Diaz from the cage and told him to focus inside the ring and to let it go.  Some fans thought Diaz was directing his comments at Cris Cyborg after he defeated her husband, but that was not the case. Cesar Gracie tells the story on the UG: http://tinyurl.com/4bvf9nb.

- MMAPayout learned through sources that Strikeforce was already looking at the possibility of hosting future tournaments in other weight classes before Saturday nights event. During the telecast, Strikeforce and Showtime asked the fans which weight class they would like to see host a GP next.  The fans voted 1) MW 2) LHW 3) LW 4) WW.  The results are very interesting considering most hardcore MMA fans were looking at the Lightweight class as the next logical choice.  It seems that fans that tuned in on Saturday night were more interested in both the Middleweight and Light Heavyweight divisions.

- Before the event started, a number of fans pointed out that there was a Facebook add popping up [H/T to @Martinitus] stating the following “DANA WHITE fans! See Diaz vs. Cyborg Sat, Jan. 29 at 10 pm et/pt plus 3 more fights on SHOWTIME! “Like” us here!” … This is fascinating to point out considering the UFC just streamed the prelims to last weekends “Fight for the Troops” event on Facebook, which they gained over 60,000 “likes”  during that weekend.

Post-Event Notes

- Strikeforce announces the March 5th event in Columbus, Ohio.  It will be a part of the Arnold Classic and will be headlined by Strikeforce LHW Champion “Feijao” Cavalcante as he takes on MMA legend Dan Henderson. The co-main event will be Strikeforce 135 lbs champion Marloes Coenen, as she takes on title challengers Miesha Tate.  Time Kennedy vs Luke Rockhold and Jorge Masvidal vs Billy Evangelista will also be on the televised portion of the event. Jorge Gurgel vs Tyler Combs, Roger Bowling, and Jason Riley are all expected to participate in the event as well.

- HDNet is scheduled to air the Strikeforce 2/12 New Jersey event undercard live.  It will be the kick-off event to the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix.

- JoshGrossESPN : Hanging around hotel lobbies at 2 a.m. pays off sometimes. Coker and Shinoda negotiating for April in Japan. http://twitpic.com/3utaaz

- Loretta Hunt from LA Times: Watched Dream’s Shinoda and @cokersf negotiate at 2am in lobby – april 9 @strikeforce highly likely for japan

- Roy Nelson, Stephan Bonnar Tweet About Strikeforce Fights: Roy Nelson: “http://plixi.com/p/73465700 @andrewhdnet @SchiavelloVOICE here we eating bbq and watching strikeforce”; StephanBonnar: Damn…just watched the 1st rd of diaz vs cyborg…all I can say is “holy f*ckin sh*t!” Shhhhhhhhh!!!! Don’t tell me what happens.

- Josh Gross of ESPN reports that Real Entertainment/Dream plans to promote lightweight GP w/Strikeforce fighters in May: http://es.pn/fFdcc0

- Nick Diaz stated that under the new contract signed with Strikeforce, he is free to fight a professional boxing bout for Showtime. He has already called out Fernando Vargas and Ricardo Mayorga as potential opponents for him.  Strikeforce giving him the opportunity to pursue his boxing career, as well as compensating him fairly well were two factors for Nick to re-sign with the promotion.  He is also hesitant to go to the UFC since both his brother and his training partner Jake Shields are already fighting in the Welterweight division.  It will be interesting, now that Showtime has signed Manny Pacquiao vs Shane Mosely away from HBO to see how much cross-promotion they will do with both sports.  Showtime has both MMA fans and boxing fans tuning in for upcoming bouts in both sports, and it was a major coupe by Showtime and CBS.

Twitter and Google Trends

Great news for Strikeforce here, as the key words “#Nick Diaz“, “#Herschel Walker“, “#Cyborg“, “#Jacare“, “#Roger Gracie“, and “#Robbie Lawler” were all top twitter trends during the evening of the Strikeforce: Diaz vs Cyborg event. In fact, one hour after the event had already finished, “#Nick Diaz” and “#Herschel Walker” were remarkably still top trends on Twitter. Another great stat here is that 6 out of 8 fighters who fought on the televised portion of the event were top twitter trends for the evening.

Also, “Nick Diaz” and “Strikeforce Diaz vs Santos” were top searches. They were among the top 20 Google Trends in the U.S. on that evening, with “Nick Diaz” breaking the top 10.

That would make it 6 out of the last 8 events that have trended on Twitter for Strikeforce, with the previous being the highly entertaining rematch between Dan Henderson and Babalu Sobral back in December of last year.

Sponsor, Promotion and Marketing Watch

- All the usual sponsors where there for this event: FullTilt Poker, Rockstar, GoDaddy, ClinchGear, etc. As we like to point out here on MMAPayout, we always like to see more synergy between big sponsors and the promotions.

- Strikeforce had a promo to Tweet where you were seated and you had a chance to win floor seats, dubbed #sfpickme. Three luck fans won floor seat upgrades at the event.

#sfpickme congrats to @carmean83 @csmithmedia @doubledge007 you won floor seat upgrades!

- Verizon and Showtime team up to create an interactive experience for its subscribers. According to both parties “With SHOWTIME HD and FiOS, you can access interactive fight features right on your TV screen. Just click your remote during select live Boxing and Mixed Martial Arts events.” The cutting edge features the services provide on your TV screen include fighter stats and records, live polling with instant results, bios and quotes, updated fight calendar, and live trivia games.

- Strikeforce is slowly integrating the fighters and their brands with the promotion.  If we take a look at the Strikeforce Store, we see that Herschel Walker was advertised on the front page with his own signature shirts for the event with the Strikeforce brand also on the t-shirt.  We will keep a look out and see if they will keep this strategy for future big show headliners.  They have recently added new Fedor, King Mo, and Jason “Mayhem” Miller signature shirts as well.

After disappointing UFC 125 attendance, gate, and estimated PPV numbers were released, fans were left asking if it’s worth the UFC’s effort to keep hosting shows on NYE weekend, as they have done for the past two years.

In order to analyze and compare both NYE events from the last two years, we will first compare figures and numbers, which will then be followed up by factors which heavily impacted the bottom line of each event.

Attendance, Gate, and PPV Buys

UFC 108, which took place on January 2, 2010, drew an attendance of 13, 529, in which 8,004 tickets were purchased, 5,314 were complimentary (given away), and 599 tickets went unsold at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The event pulled a gate of $1,969,670. PPV buys for the event was estimated at doing around 300,000 buys.

UFC 125, which took place on Janary 1, 2011, drew an attendance of 12,874, in which 6,978 tickets were purchased, 5,896 were complimentary (given away), and 1,077 tickets went unsold at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The event pulled a gate of $2,174,780. PPV buys are currently estimating the event to be doing between 270,000 to 300,000 buys.

* The numbers are quite comparable here for both cards. Both events were headlined by what most would consider “weak draws” as headliners, although the one big difference being that UFC 108 had no title matches while UFC 125 had the LW title on the line.  UFC 125′s 270k-300k PPV buys ranks as the lowest in years for an event headlined by a title bout since the PPV boom took place for the UFC. Back in 2006, UFC 64 headlined by Rich Franklin vs Anderson Silva and Florian vs Sherk was an event headlined by two title bouts but only did 300k PPV buys, which was about 5 years ago .  UFC 80 Penn vs Stevenson only did about 225,000 buys, but that show was taped delayed from the Newcastle, England.

* In comparison to a non-NYE event held in the same venue, UFC 114 : Evans vs Rampage drew 14,996 fans, of which 13,294 were paid, 1,702 were complimentary, and 12 tickets went unsold for a gate of $3,730,125. UFC 116 also pulled a big number though that was headlined by Brock Lesnar, which always pulls in big numbers. On average, events held at the MGM grand tend to be big fights that average well above gates of $3 million .

NOTE: When talking about purchased tickets in Las Vegas, we have to take into account tickets sold to casinos, which are counted as purchased tickets, so there is no real way to know how many tickets the actual public purchased. Special thanks to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Key Factors:

Injuries and Drawing Power

It seems that every year around the holiday season, injuries always creep up, and it certainly had a big impact on both NYE cards.  UFC 108 had to be one of the most injury-riddled cards in MMA history. Where we saw the Anderson Silva vs Vitor Belfort and Brock Lesnar vs Shane Carwin fights moved due to injury/health issues. Velasquez vs Nogueira was then set to headline the event but Nogueira had to pull out due to a staph infection, which then followed up by Velasquez vs Carwin bout for an interim belt which didn’t take place due to Carwin undergoing knee surgery. Other fighters who pulled out of the event were Gabriel Gonzaga, pulling out of his fight against Dos Santos, Carlos Condit against Paul Daley due to injury. In addition, Tyson Griffin, Sean Seark, Vladimir Matyushenko, Steve Cantwell, and Rory Markham all had to pull out of their fights due to injury. In the end Rashad Evans vs Thiago Silva become the main event while Paul Daley vs Dustin Hazelett drew the co-main event.

UFC 125 was supposed to feature two title bouts highlighting the lightweight and Featherweight divisions as Jose Aldo from the WEC was going to make his UFC debut as the co-main event to Edgar vs Maynard.  Aldo had to pull out due to an injury which required surgery, which then placed his opponent Grispi in the undercard and in the non-PPV portion of the televised event, which saw him lose to Dustin Poirier.  Before Jose Aldo was moved to help headline the card, Shane Carwin vs Roy Nelson was set for the UFC 125 co-main event, that is before Shane Carwin had to pull out due to injury which required surgery. In the end, Chris Leben vs Brian Stann became the new co-main event.

* Analyzing the intended cards, it’s clear that the UFC is trying to stack these cards in order to give them a chance on NYE weekend, but injuries have heavily plagued both events and shattered any hopes they had of doing good numbers.

New Years Eve Holiday Events and Tradition

MMAPayout’s Kelsey Philpott spoke a bit about holding events on NYE weekend and what the typical consumer behavior is during the time-span.

1.) New Year’s Day: Consumers are hungover and unwilling to leave the couch.
2.) Sports competition: Winter Classic, Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl
3.) Few Draws: Edgar, Maynard, Leben, and Stann didn’t have too many big spenders excited.
4.) The UFC may have over-priced. It did $2.1 million on 7,000 tickets!

* Typically, PPV sporting events tend to stay away from holiday weekends with tons of sports and entertainment programming on TV, which NYE is definitely about. College Football is on all of Saturday and the Winter Classic draw very good ratings and there are also no shortages of other television programming and live events to get viewers easily distracted from staying at home and ordering a PPV.

MMAPayout’s Jason Cruz also put his two cents regarding the issue.

The New Year’s Day fight date may have contributed to the low gate. Also, preoccupation with other events such as festivities on New Year’s Eve, bowl games and NHL’s Winter Classic (which was delayed for weather and time slot competed with UFC 125) may have caused the downturn.

Another question that looms is the attraction of the lighter weight classes. Can they carry a main event PPV? Aside from BJ Penn at 155, will fans pay to watch a lightweight PPV. I think Jose Aldo and Urijah Faber are the only other fighters that could main event a PPV. Otherwise, main events featuring lighter weight classes may be better suited for Fight Nights. The lighter weight classes are quicker and appear more technical, but there seems to be something that attract fans to the heavier weight classes.

Payout Perspective

There is no denying how bad the NYE numbers have been for the past two years, but there are still quite a few unknowns here that would make any decision a bit brash.  What if injuries didn’t plague the events, how much would have Carwin vs Nelson helped UFC 125? How many PPV buys would Lesnar have garnered if he would have fought at UFC 108 against Carwin on NYE? Does it make more sense to put on a higher profile fight on another card rather than a NYE card which may not do the business it would somewhere else. What it all comes down to is a study on consumer behavior during NYE weekend, and whether fans can make a yearly tradition to watch MMA at home with their friends instead of going out an partying, watching Hockey or College Football, or attending other NYE events.

If the UFC is dedicated to making NYE weekend a key date in their future scheduling, they need to put on a event with big draws to see how much, if at all, the NYE festivities affect its numbers.  If anything can be said so far after analyzing the numbers, its that weak draws as headliners on NYE cards (regardless of being a championship bout or not) will only do sub-par numbers all around.  The question still remains, should the UFC avoid NYE’s weekend or will it eventually pay off in the future by cultivating a new traditional event amongst its fan-base.

Before we dive into 2011, we take a look back at buy rates for PPVs for the UFC. Dave Meltzer of  The Wrestling Observer  (subscription required) had an excellent analysis of the year in UFC PPVs.

According to the Wrestling Observer, the UFC did an estimated 8,970,000 buys for its 15 shows during the year for an average of 598,000. In comparison, 2009 did an estimated 7,755,000 buys for 13 shows for an average of 595,538. While 2010 has a higher average, 2010 had two more shows. Meltzer factors in Brock Lesnar at the top of the card in 2 shows in 2010 versus 1 in 2009. That one show in 2009 was UFC 100, which Metzler identifies as a special show which garnered an exceptional buy rate (1.6 million).

After looking at the anticipated schedule of fights for the year, Metzler does not believe that there is an 800K PPV buy card this year.

Meltzer adds:

That’s not a negative and this is a rebuilding year for the company, where the goal has to be in making new stars and in particular building the featherweight and bantamweight divisions up to where they can headline PPV shows and draw.

Payout Perspective:

With the WEC merger, expansion into new areas and hints of network exposure, one might expect that PPV buys would increase. However, Meltzer points out PPVs this year lack the huge event that would receive skyrocketing PPV buys. The Rogers Centre show could have been a big card if Cain Velasquez did not get hurt (a card featuring both Cain and GSP defending titles could be huge). This does not mean that the UFC will have a bad year; it just means that we should not expect a dramatic increase in buys.

2011 will be a year for the UFC to see how the new divisions will draw and for the UFC to examine the type of reception it will receive in new locations. Injuries, as always, will be an issue. Due to the injuries sustained by Cain Velasquez and Jose Aldo, the UFC will lack the draw of title fights in those divisions. The numbers show the drawing power of Brock Lesnar and the reason why the UFC would like to have him back. Any potential fight involving Lesnar: Mir, Carwin, dos Santos, would draw a big buy rate and a possibility to hit 800K buys. Meltzer brings up a potential GSP v. Anderson Silva fight that could be the type of fight that could surpass the 800K PPV plateau. Aside from those fights, I do not think any other fighter has the drawing power.

But, that does not mean the UFC could cultivate fighters into becoming big attractions. Prior to his suspension, Chael Sonnen had the talent, persona and self-promotion sense to sell fights to become a top-notch attraction. Jake Shields could be an up and coming star, but a so-so debut had many jump off Shields’ bandwagon. His title fight against GSP will be interesting. One fighter that should be a star in the UFC is Urijah Faber. He has a big fan base and is one of the few WEC fighters that could co-main event a PPV this year.

Before we dive into 2011, we take a look back at buy rates for PPVs for the UFC. Dave Metzler of  The Wrestling Observer  (subscription required) had an excellent analysis of the year in UFC PPVs.

According to the Wrestling Observer, the UFC did an estimated 8,970,000 buys for its 15 shows during the year for an average of 598,000. In comparison, 2009 did an estimated 7,755,000 buys for 13 shows for an average of 595,538. While 2010 has a higher average, 2010 had two more shows. Metzler factors in Brock Lesnar at the top of the card in 2 shows in 2010 versus 1 in 2009. That one show in 2009 was UFC 100, which Metzler identifies as a special show which garnered an exceptional buy rate (1.6 million).

After looking at the anticipated schedule of fights for the year, Metzler does not believe that there is an 800K PPV buy card this year.

Metzler adds:

That’s not a negative and this is a rebuilding year for the company, where the goal has to be in making new stars and in particular building the featherweight and bantamweight divisions up to where they can headline PPV shows and draw.

Payout Perspective:

With the WEC merger, expansion into new areas and hints of network exposure, one might expect that PPV buys would increase. However, Metzler points out PPVs this year lack the huge event that would receive skyrocketing PPV buys. The Rogers Centre show could have been a big card if Cain Velasquez did not get hurt (a card featuring both Cain and GSP defending titles could be huge). This does not mean that the UFC will have a bad year; it just means that we should not expect a dramatic increase in buys.

2011 will be a year for the UFC to see how the new divisions will draw and for the UFC to examine the type of reception it will receive in new locations. Injuries, as always, will be an issue. Due to the injuries sustained by Cain Velasquez and Jose Aldo, the UFC will lack the draw of title fights in those divisions. The numbers show the drawing power of Brock Lesnar and the reason why the UFC would like to have him back. Any potential fight involving Lesnar: Mir, Carwin, dos Santos, would draw a big buy rate and a possibility to hit 800K buys. Metzler brings up a potential GSP v. Anderson Silva fight that could be the type of fight that could surpass the 800K PPV plateau. Aside from those fights, I do not think any other fighter has the drawing power.

But, that does not mean the UFC could cultivate fighters into becoming big attractions. Prior to his suspension, Chael Sonnen had the talent, persona and self-promotion sense to sell fights to become a top-notch attraction. Jake Shields could be an up and coming star, but a so-so debut had many jump off Shields’ bandwagon. His title fight against GSP will be interesting. One fighter that should be a star in the UFC is Urijah Faber. He has a big fan base and is one of the few WEC fighters that could co-main event a PPV this year.

The trilogy beat out Showtime. After an outstanding match between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard ending in a draw at UFC 125, the UFC booked an immediate rematch between the two. The move contradicts the initial plans for the Edgar-Maynard winner face WEC lightweight champ, Anthony Pettis.

The move to switch course came after UFC Vice President Craig Borsari confirmed at the UFC 125 post-fight press conference that Pettis would get the next shot at the champ, Frankie Edgar.

Via MMA Junkie:

Borsari said UFC president Dana White, who did not attend the evening’s post-event press conference, informed him of the impending booking. Obviously, Maynard was dejected by the news. Maynard, who heard of the news as it was revealed to the media, immediately dropped his head and later admitted the revelation that he would not get a second crack at the belt was indeed painful.

Later that night, the UFC changed its plans. Instead of the promised title shot for Pettis, it decided that a third fight between Edgar and Maynard take place.

“We changed the plans. After Craig made the announcement, I had a lot of people talking to me, and the reality is, Gray Maynard deserves that fight. We had planned on doing Anthony Pettis next, but Gray went in there and fought his ass off and deserves another chance,” White added, “In the UFC, we do the right thing, and the right thing is to put on this rematch.” (via MMA Junkie, h/t Yahoo Sports)

Payout Perspective:

For all the planning the UFC could have done, it didn’t think that the Edgar-Maynard fight would end in a draw. Such a great fight needed a winner, and it didn’t, and Dana White and the UFC powers decided that it would be best to have a third fight before the promised fight for Anthony Pettis. Maybe White’s absence at the post-fight press conference was due to him deciding the next move for Edgar, Maynard and Pettis

This is a difficult decision and you could see arguments on both sides of the fence as to whether an immediate rematch was the correct choice. For Pettis. it stalls career momentum. Last month he was a media darling and his career was ascending. This month, he is old news. His Showtime kick will be shelved until his title shot…if he gets it. He was in attendance at the PPV and one has to wonder if the UFC planned for him to enter the Octagon to do a promo with the winner of the match. Since, it was a draw, any planned promo had to be scrapped. It’s unclear what’s next for Pettis. He joins Jon Fitch as a fighter promised a title shot only to have it pulled from him (With Chael Sonnen back, Yushin Okami will likely have this happen to him later this year).

Good news for Maynard. He gets another shot at Edgar. After the first round, the fight went back and forth and it was too close to call. It would be a shame for Maynard to put out such a great performance only to receive a draw. A third fight should get some interest and a good PPV number for fight number 3. 

There are many questions that come out of this change:

What happens if Maynard wins the third fight, or wins by just split decision? Does Edgar get a rematch since he was the champion?

When Pettis gets the shot, will the UFC bill the fight as unifying the UFC-WEC title? How long will Pettis have to wait for the shot? Will he be given a fight in the interim? Does the slight of Pettis say anything about the integration of the WEC into the UFC?

The trilogy beat out Showtime. After an outstanding match between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard ending in a draw at UFC 125, the UFC booked an immediate rematch between the two. The move contradicts the initial plans for the Edgar-Maynard winner face WEC lightweight champ, Anthony Pettis.

The move to switch course came after UFC Vice President Craig Borsari confirmed at the UFC 125 post-fight press conference that Pettis would get the next shot at the champ, Frankie Edgar.

Via MMA Junkie:

Borsari said UFC president Dana White, who did not attend the evening’s post-event press conference, informed him of the impending booking. Obviously, Maynard was dejected by the news. Maynard, who heard of the news as it was revealed to the media, immediately dropped his head and later admitted the revelation that he would not get a second crack at the belt was indeed painful.

Later that night, the UFC changed its plans. Instead of the promised title shot for Pettis, it decided that a third fight between Edgar and Maynard take place.

“We changed the plans. After Craig made the announcement, I had a lot of people talking to me, and the reality is, Gray Maynard deserves that fight. We had planned on doing Anthony Pettis next, but Gray went in there and fought his ass off and deserves another chance,” White added, “In the UFC, we do the right thing, and the right thing is to put on this rematch.” (via MMA Junkie, h/t Yahoo Sports)

Payout Perspective:

For all the planning the UFC could have done, it didn’t think that the Edgar-Maynard fight would end in a draw. Such a great fight needed a winner, and it didn’t, and Dana White and the UFC powers decided that it would be best to have a third fight before the promised fight for Anthony Pettis. Maybe White’s absence at the post-fight press conference was due to him deciding the next move for Edgar, Maynard and Pettis

This is a difficult decision and you could see arguments on both sides of the fence as to whether an immediate rematch was the correct choice. For Pettis. it stalls career momentum. Last month he was a media darling and his career was ascending. This month, he is old news. His Showtime kick will be shelved until his title shot…if he gets it. He was in attendance at the PPV and one has to wonder if the UFC planned for him to enter the Octagon to do a promo with the winner of the match. Since, it was a draw, any planned promo had to be scrapped. It’s unclear what’s next for Pettis. He joins Jon Fitch as a fighter promised a title shot only to have it pulled from him (With Chael Sonnen back, Yushin Okami will likely have this happen to him later this year).

Good news for Maynard. He gets another shot at Edgar. After the first round, the fight went back and forth and it was too close to call. It would be a shame for Maynard to put out such a great performance only to receive a draw. A third fight should get some interest and a good PPV number for fight number 3. 

There are many questions that come out of this change:

What happens if Maynard wins the third fight, or wins by just split decision? Does Edgar get a rematch since he was the champion?

When Pettis gets the shot, will the UFC bill the fight as unifying the UFC-WEC title? How long will Pettis have to wait for the shot? Will he be given a fight in the interim? Does the slight of Pettis say anything about the integration of the WEC into the UFC?

In a press release today, HDNet and Titan Fighting Championship announced a January 28, 2011 event taking place at the Memorial Hall in Kansas City, which will air live on HDNet and features ex-UFC HW prospect Todd Duffee as he takes on former TUF alumni Abe Wagner in the main event.

The Titan Fighting Championships (www.TitanEntertainment.com) announced today that it is scheduled to return on Friday, January 28, 2011. The event, which will be headlined by UFC veteran Todd Duffee, will emanate from its home base of Kansas City at the historic Memorial Hall and will be televised live nationally on HDNet (www.HDNetFights.com).

HDNet Fights CEO Andrew Simon first revealed that Titan Fighting Championships 16 will be airing LIVE on HDNet during an interview on MMAjunkie.com Radio this past Friday. News of Duffee’s return to action on HDNet quickly spread throughout the MMA community.

“MMA fans around the world know that HDNet is everyone’s home for MMA. We’re excited that the Titan Fighting Championships will look to build a home of its own with HDNet and HDNet Fights starting on Jan. 28,” said Titan Fighting Championships President and CEO Joe Kelly.”

Duffee, 6-1, will face Nebraska native Abe Wagner, 6-3, a veteran from the tenth season of The Ultimate Fighter.

The Titan Fighting Championships first began promoting MMA events in 2006. It has served as a launching pad for nationally recognized competitors such as current UFC fighters Mike Johnson, Rob Kimmons and Alan Belcher; former WEC veterans L.C. Davis and James Krause; current Strikeforce fighters Bobby Voelker and Rudy Bears; former Strikeforce veterans Zak Cummings and Lee Gibson; and current Bellator Fighting Championships fighters Jay Hieron, Danny Tims, Jose Vega, Eric Marriott and Tyler Stinson.

“Titan has worked with some of the best up and coming talent over the years and we are excited to continue that tradition with HDNet,” said Kelly. “Being able to feature Todd Duffee on our first televised event of 2011 is very exciting but I think fight fans will be surprised with some of the other names that have committed to this event. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be announcing some very exciting matchups.”

The live national televised broadcast of Titan Fighting Championships 16 on January 28 will begin at 10:00 p.m. ET/9:00 p.m. CT with the local undercard starting at 8:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. CT. Tickets for the event will go on sale today (Dec. 13) at 10 a.m. CT on Ticketmaster.com and the Memorial Hall box office.

ABOUT THE TITAN FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIPS (www.TitanEntertainment.com): The Titan Fighting Championships is a Kansas City-based full-time Mixed Martial Arts promotion headquartered out of the historic Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. Owned and operated by veteran fight promoter Joe Kelly, the Titan Fighting Championships has promoted events since 2006. The goal of TFC is to promote and develop the top up-and-coming fighters in the world and provide a platform allowing them to take their respective careers to the next level. Fighters who have gotten their start with Titan include Mike Johnson, Jay Hieron, L.C. Davis, Rob Kimmons, Lee Gibson, Alan Belcher, Bobby Voelker, Zak Cummings, Rudy Bears, and James Krause.

ABOUT TITAN ENTERTAINMENT: Titan Entertainment is a full-service entertainment company that holds an exclusive lease on the historic Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. The company promotes and produces events such as rock concerts, professional boxing, professional wrestling, and mixed martial arts. Titan has promoted sporting events that have been featured on ESPN, Fox Sports Net, SHOWTIME, and HDNet.

Payout Perspective:

Last we heard from Todd Duffee, after the UFC decided to cut one of its more promising HW’s on its roster, he was offered fights from both Strikeforce and Bellator, but turned them both down.  Titan Fighting Championship has since signed Duffee to headline their January 28th event which will air on HDNet against former TUF participant Abe Wagner, which oddly enough is the fighter that current UFC HW Travis Browne defeated to get a contract from the UFC.

It’s a great move by HDNet to televise the event.  Duffee  gained quite a few fans while in the UFC and many are curious to see how he will bounce back from his loss, a fight he was dominating until he got KO’d against Mike Russow at UFC 114.  You have to figure that a good showing here would draw a ton of interest from both Strikeforce and Bellator, who could use a fighter like Duffee to draw attention and intrigue to future HW tournaments.

Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we’ll be taking a look at the Showtime event headlined by MMA legend Dan Henderson, as he made his return after losing his Strikeforce debut on CBS back in March, against challenger and former Strikeforce LHW champ Renato “Babalu” Sobral.

The event took place at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri and featured 5 fights: Dan Henderson vs. Renato “Babalu” Sobral, Paul Daley vs Scott Smith, Robbie Lawler vs Matt Lindland, Antonio Silva vs Mike Kyle, and Ovince St. Preux vs Benji Radach.

Fighter Disclosed Payouts

Not available.

Attendance and Gate

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu achieved an attendance of 7,146 (the gate is not available). The attendance number stands as the 6th most attended event for Strikeforce this year.

- 11,757 spectators, “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June)
- 8,635 spectators, “Strikeforce: Houston” (August)
- 8,196 spectators, “Strikeforce: Nashville (April)
- 8,136 spectators, “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May)
- 7,559 spectators, “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October)
- 7,146 spectators, “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December)
- 7,010 spectators, “Strikeforce: Miami” (January)
- 5,259 spectators, “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June)

Ratings

MMAJunkie reports that Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II averaged 341,000 viewers for a 1.2 rating on Showtime this past Saturday night, but peaked at half a million viewers (465,000) for a 1.6 rating for the main event between Dan Henderson and Babalu. The average number is the third lowest rating for a major show this year but the peak number is very good for an event that didn’t feature any big names. A key number to observe here is the peak number, which means more for Showtime because of the correlation between how many current and new subscribers are watching Strikeforce, which differs from the UFC, WEC, Bellator, and other promotions with TV deals (with non-subscription channels) which are ad and rating dependent.

The average viewer numbers stands as the 5th most watched event for Strikeforce this year but the peak number is a good indicator that fans tuned in to see the main event between Henderson and Babalu.

- 517,000 viewers (peak not available), “Strikeforce: Miami” (January)
- 412,000 viewers (700,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum” (June)
- 367,000 viewers (470,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Houston” (August)
- 350,000 viewers (509,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Diaz vs Noons II (October
- 341,000 viewers (465,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II (December)
- 308,000 viewers (448,000 peak), “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” (May)
- 164,000 viewers (197,000 peak), “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” (June) [Special Wednesday Show]

Storylines Coming Out of Event

There were quite a number of major story lines coming out of the event this past weekend.

- Strikeforce Gets Positive Buzz From Event; Sparks a Strikeforce vs UFC Debate

Aside from the numbers, Strikeforce has to be thrilled on how great the event turned out for them this past weekend.  It was truly the first show where I witnessed fans telling other fans and friends to watch the show due to the quality of the event.  Coincidentally, the TUF 12 Finale was also televised that night on Spike TV, which was marred by a bad decision (a recent concern of MMA fans and bad judging) and decisions, a complete opposite of the Strikeforce event which saw 3 memorable KO’s and 1 TKO out of 5 fights.  Due to both events being hosted on the same night, fans were quick to point out that Strikeforce “beat” the UFC on that night.  Strikeforce and Showtime were thrilled with the card, and sent the following release citing the praise critics were giving the promotion:

ESPN.com – Dec. 6, 2010 – By Josh Gross:
“Strikeforce Exacts Its Pounds of Flesh From Fighters”

Head Kick Legend – Dec. 5, 2010 – By Dave Walsh:
“Strikeforce Knocks Out UFC”

Jersey City Examiner – Dec. 5, 2010 – By Chris Cella:
“Strikeforce a Clear-Cut Winner Over UFC On Saturday “

Fighters.com – Dec. 6, 2010 – By Oliver Saenz:
“Top Five Reasons Why Strikeforce Stomped UFC”

Crave Online – Dec. 6, 2010 – By Chad Dundas:
“Score One For Strikeforce”

Yahoo! Sports – Dec. 6, 2010 – By Maggie Hendricks:
“Daley, Hendo Top Two Stars of Weekend”

Opposing Views – Dec. 6, 2010 – By Rich Bergeron:
“A Wild, Exciting Night of Knockouts”

Republican American – Dec. 6, 2010 – By Mike Barger:
“Strikeforce and UFC Go Toe-To-Toe And It’s No Contest”

The Big Lead – Dec. 5, 2010 – By Stephen Douglas:
“Strikeforce’s Awesome Saturday Night Knockout Party”

ESPN.com / Sherdog.com – Dec. 4, 2010 – By Mike Whitman:
“A Star is Reborn: Hendo Stops Babalu in First”

MMA Torch – Dec. 5, 2010 – By Jamie Penick:
“Daley Destroys Smith in “Knockout Of The Year”

Post-Event Notes

- Josh Gross from ESPN: Antonio Silva, who began the cavalcade of knockouts after mounting an undersized Mike Kyle in the second round of their fight, said he’s ready to skip the holidays in Brazil to continue training in the U.S. if Strikeforce asks him to fight in San Jose, Calif., on Jan. 29. Based on what Strikeforce is telling fighters and managers, this event will be the start of its heavyweight tournament — the centerpiece of what Scott Coker called “a great heavyweight year.” There could be as many as four opening-round bouts that night, including, potentially, the return of Fedor Emelianenko.

- Josh Gross from ESPN: Henderson seemed unfazed by either and plans to “go after it pretty hard” in his Temecula, Calif., gym after the holidays. His deal with Strikeforce calls for two more bouts by June, and Coker is willing to oblige, telling ESPN.com that he plans on offering current Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante a bout against Henderson for March… MMAPayout: Rumor is that Henderson vs Feijao could headline the March 5th Strikeforce event being discussed for Columbus, Ohio in conjunction with the Arnold Sports Festival next year.

- Loretta Hunt from LA Times: Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker said Walker could be re-scheduled to fight at the promotion’s Jan. 29 show at the HP Pavilion in San Jose… MMAPayout: Nick Diaz is also scheduled for the event.

- M-1, Showtime, Fedor, and Strikeforce close to agreeing on a 3-4 fight extension for Fedor to fight in Strikeforce.  Four televised M-1 Challenge events aired on Showtime are said to be part of the deal as well.  Only details holding back the announcement is scheduling between M-1 Challenge events, Strikeforce events, and Strikeforce-M-1 co-promoted events on Showtime.  The announcement is expected to be made shortly.

- Roy Nelson Gives Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu Publicity on UFC’s Website (Twitter Feed): “DVR the fights, strikeforce does have Hendo, Matt and Daley, Im happy to hear that everyone is a fan great fighters of mma – Roy Nelson” and “Just started to watch the Strikeforce fights kyle did very well against bigfoot, I cant wait to watch the paul daley smith fight, and hendo-Roy Nelson” was posted on UFC’s main website as the Strikeforce and TUF Finale events were taking place.

- Gareth Davies: Strikeforce rumor. They may bring event to the UK if Paul Daley fighting for title. Just whispers put to me last week.

- Scott Coker on The MMA Show with Mauro Ranallo: I believe that we will” – regarding bringing Strikeforce to Canada in 2011

- Strikeforce vs DREAM Continues at FEG’s Dynamite Event in Japan: Josh Thomson to face top-ranked rival Tatsuya Kawajiri at “Dynamite!!” on Dec. 31 in Japan

Sponsor, Promotion and Marketing Watch

- All the usual sponsors where there for this event: FullTilt Poker, Rockstar, GoDaddy, ClinchGear, etc. As we like to point out here on MMAPayout, we always like to see more synergy between big sponsors and the promotions.

- Strikeforce and Rockstar Engergy Drink Holds “Holiday Hunt” in St. Louis

In the spirit of the holiday season, STRIKEFORCE and presenting sponsor Rockstar Energy Drink will hold a “Holiday Hunt” that will award lucky winners in St. Louis, each day between Monday, November 29 and Friday, December 3, a prize pack that includes, amongst other goods, tickets to the Henderson vs. Babalu Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) mega-event at Scottrade Center next Saturday, December 4.

Prize packs, some of which will also include STRIKEFORCE and/or Rockstar apparel, Rockstar canned beverages and a backstage tour at Scottrade Center during the event, will be awarded each day to a pre-disclosed number of winners who provide a codeword to a designated STRIKEFORCE or Rockstar representative stationed at a specific post in St. Louis at a particular time that day.

This was a great way for Strikeforce to promote the event heading into St. Louis, and in fact MMAPayout gave its readers a behind the scenes look at the #Hunt4UFC social media stunt, citing that it was a great social media tool to build the fan base and increase their brand awareness.  Hopefully Strikeforce will keep these social media stunts growing since building a fan base is crucial at this stage of their development as a promotion.

- Strikeforce is slowly integrating the fighters and their brands with the promotion.  If we take a look at the Strikeforce Store, we see that Henderson and Babalu were advertised on the front page with their own signature shirts for the event with the Strikeforce brand also on the t-shirt.  We will keep a look out and see if they will keep this strategy for future big show headliners.

Twitter and Google Trends

Good news for Strikeforce here, as the key words “#Dan Henderson“, “#Paul Daley“, and “#Strikeforce” were all top twitter trends during the evening of the Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu II event. In fact, “Dan Henderson”, “Paul Daley”, and “Strikeforce” were all in the top 20 “Hot Searches” for Google in the U.S. on that evening, with Dan Henderson breaking the top 10.

That would make it 5 out of the last 7 events that have trended on Twitter for Strikeforce, with the previous being the highly anticipated rematch between Nick Diaz and KJ Noons back in October.

This week’s expulsion of Gerald Harris from the UFC is a sign of things to come from the UFC. With the UFC-WEC merger, the UFC will expect more from its fighters, or they will be let go.

MMA Fighting explains:

The UFC has examined the cold, hard numbers of the merger and come to the conclusion that their roster will still house roughly 200 fighters under contract at any given time. In the past, that meant about 40 fighters for each of five divisions. Now, it’s roughly 28 men for each of seven divisions.

The reason the roster is not expanding is because Zuffa staged 32 events last year (24 UFC, 8 WEC), but with the loss of the WEC brand, the company is likely to stage only 26 events in 2011. White feels that the promotion has essentially maxed out the number of annual pay-per-views at about 15 or 16 per year, so that would leave 10-11 free events to be broadcast between cable partners Spike and Versus.

That number could increase if a new television deal is struck, but if it doesn’t, that’s a net result of around 60 fewer matches over the course of 2011. So growing the roster would actually result in a glut of more fighters with fewer shows on which to put them.

Harris was previously let go by the UFC after appearing on TUF. After a successful stint on the regional circuit, he was welcomed backed by the UFC. Many fans are perplexed by the move since Harris was on a 10 fight win streak, including 2 KOs of the Night, prior to UFC 123′s loss.

Payout Perspective:

Unfortunately the numbers laid out show that Dana White has to make some tough decisions regarding personnel. However, it seems that Harris’ dismissal was more of an example to the fighters that they were on notice that their jobs were dependent on their performances in the Octagon. I would gather that the message was directed to the younger, less-established, mid to lower card fighters than the main eventers. The fact still remains that while the roster is expanding and the UFC is adding more weight divisions, it also means less opportunities to be on a card.

The UFC seems to be spinning the dismissals of underperforming fighters as a service to its fans. It wants exciting fights and doesn’t want its fighters to dance around the cage. The Harris dismissal is a sign that it will have a short leash for its fighters. Despite Harris’ past exciting fights which ended in KOs, one underwhelming performance cost him.

As for Harris and others released from the UFC, they can land in Strikeforce, which would bolster Strikeforce’sfight cards and enable them to staff its roster of quality fighters. There are also other options out there too (e.g. Bellator, Shine Fights, MFC, etc.). But, its unlikely that fighters would receive as much monetarily as they may receive in the UFC.

Also, it will be interesting to see if some fighters leave the UFC on their own accord if they find themselves buried down the roster. Elite fighters have a small window of time to be in their prime and waiting in line to fight maybe once a year might not sit well. It would hurt the pocketbook of someone needing to fight to earn a living.

In the spirit of the holidays, I would like to share some great deals for MMA and video game fans who have held off buying any titles until the holiday deals to save a couple of bucks.  I will also discuss the recent EA Sports MMA and UFC Undisputed 2010 iPhone/iPad releases along with overall sale figures.

Best Buy Link:

http://www.bestbuy.com/doorbusters

GameStop Link:

http://www.gamestop.com/gs/weeklyad/current/112610US/default.aspx

***

EA Sports MMA and UFC Undisputed 2010 Updates:

UFC Undisputed 2010 was released on the iPad and iPhone by THQ Wireless on Nov 12, 2010 (selling for $6.99) just a few weeks after EA Sports MMA was released by EA Mobile (selling for $4.99) on the same platforms on October 20, 2010. As of today, EA Sports MMA has had 405 customers review the app, while UFC Undisputed 2010 has only had 17 customers review the app.

Both games have received good customer feedback, but it appears that after 12 days of being available on the Apple Store, UFC Undisputed has not taken off with the fans.  It is currently not in to the top 50 most popular apps or in the top grossing apps, where EA Sports MMA was ranked in the top 35 most popular paid apps and ranked as the 12th most grossing app for apple a week after it was released. Not exactly sure why Undisputed has not taken off on the iPhone/iPad yet considering the good reviews so far, but the $2 dollar pricing difference between the games could be impacting the sales, along with THQ releasing the mobile version of the game months after the console version was already released.

On the console side, after 4 weeks, EA Sports MMA has sold roughly 80,000 (XBOX 360) and 74,000 (PS3) copies  of the game worldwide, not yet taking into account sales from Japan since they are not available at the time.  That is roughly about 154,000 total copies sold on both consoles worldwide according to VGChartz.  On the other hand, UFC Undisputed 2010 has so far roughly sold after 10 weeks,  614,020 (XBOX 360) and 570,549 (PS3) copies worldwide, for a total of 1,184,569 copies sold.

The year has been a tough one for MMA video game releases, where analysts attributed the weaker than expected sales to releasing the games around the same time blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption (6.57 million copies sold worldwide) and Fallout: New Vegas (2.50 million copies sold worldwide) became available. GameSpot reports that “… a number of analysts–Wilson included–circulated notes to investors offering their takes on what did and didn’t live up to expectations. While NBA 2K11 and Fallout: New Vegas both exceeded Wilson’s expectations, many of the month’s other high-profile games did not. In particular, Wilson called NBA Jam for the Wii and EA MMA “dismal failures so far.”

THQ’s bottom line was heavily impacted this year due to lower than expected game sales, including the UFC Undisputed 2010 sale figures expected for this year compared to last years release, as the company saw their shares sharply drop from $8.29/share to $5.01/share as it currently stands this year.  In response, THQ has pushed out their release cycle from 12 months to 18 months, hoping to get better results on their next release. EA Sports MMA, originally set to release every other year, has said it is too early to make any decisions on whether we can expected another EA Sports MMA title in the future, as they will see and analyze how the sales go during the holiday season.

According to early estimates, PPV buys for the Margarito/Pacquiao fight were estimated at 1.4 million viewers. This is double the amount for Pacquiao’s fight with Joshua Clottey in March. It also is the number for the Floyd Mayweather/Shane Mosley fight in June.

Lance Pugmire of the LA Times posted a tweet stating that the attendance figure of 41,734 was a disappointment. At the post-fight press conference, Bob Arum citedtough economic times as a factor for the low attendance. In comparison, the attendance for the Pacquiao/Joshua Clottey fight in March at Cowboys Stadium was 50,994.

Payout Perspective:

Preliminaries

Jones/Soto-Karas action. Admittedly, the establishment I went to watch the fight had multiple televisions so I was watching the Oregon-Cal game during most of the prelims. However, I did catch the Mike Jones/Jesus Soto-Karas fight. The fight was highlighted by a flurry of action in the 2^ndround as Jones hit Soto-Karas with punches in bunches. However, Jones expended so much energy it allowed Soto-Karas to get back into the fight. In the end, Jones won a controversial decision.

Missing the Ghost. It would have been great if Kelly Pavlik was on the card. Pavlik pulled out due to injury. Although on the downside of his career, he is a known fighter and his presence would have complemented the card.

Main Event

There was some pre-fight drama as the hand wrap controversy came into play. But, it was the Margarito camp taking issue with Pacquiao’s hand wraps. Not to be outdone with the gamesmanship, Pacquiao’s camp believed that Margarito was drinking something with the banned substance Ephedra. It appeared to be coffee with Splenda. The broadcast did a good job of investigating the issue by sending Max Kellerman to the back. Although comical, Kellerman provided an up to the minute account of the issues going on in the locker room. While it distracted viewers from the Jones/Soto-Karas fight, it kept people apprised of what was going on in the back. It would be nice to see MMA broadcasts take a page from this from the perspective of providing backstage interviews and more shots of the preparation going on in the back.

Pacquiao/Margarito– A dominating show by Pacquiao. The fight could have been stopped multiple times and it looked like the referee was hoping for a flurry of punches to stop Margarito similar to the end of the Pacquiao/Cotto fight. In his past few fights, it seems that Pacquiao gets bored during the fight (see e.g., the curly shuffle or taking breaks during rounds by putting up his hands and absorbing shots).

Miscellaneous Observations

-  The marketing for the fight has been examined hereand here. Also, Tecate remained a constant presence at the fight.

-  If you watched HBO’s 24/7, you noticed that Affliction sponsored Antonio Margarito. Nike adorned Pacquiao and entourage with various t-shirts coming to a store near you. I would be interested to know if there was any difficulty for Margarito to find sponsors. Secondly, did Affliction have any concerns with sponsoring Margarito.

-  HBO 24/7 is one of the best shows in hyping fights. UFC’s version is a good runner-up. The 24/7 series will be hyping NHL’s annual New Year’s Day outdoor hockey game. Although not a big fan, I will be tuning in. 

-  Buboy Fernandez:  Pac-Man’s success has made this second a noticeable figure. On Saturday, he was adorned with more sponsor patches than anyone in the entourage. As long as Buboy gets a cut of what he wears, I am happy for him.

-          Nelly: His mini-set was met by boos where I was watching. Its good publicity for Nelly, but frustrating to all that were waiting for the main event. It is customary that the main event occurs immediately after the national anthems. When Nelly was announced by Buffer, it deflated the crowd.

-  Max Kellerman: Nothing against Larry Merchant, but I think Kellerman does an all around good job in analysis and interviewing (despite his run-in with Mayweather after the Marquez fight). He also was a good offset to Jim Lampley and Emmanuel Steward who tend to wander. I noticed he stuffed Lampley’s attempt to go with the consecutive “Bangs” a la the Clottey fight.

-  Post Fight Interview: I thought it was interesting that Kellerman asked and got an honest answer from Manny Pacquiao as to whether he took it easy on Margarito in the last round. You could see Kellerman taken aback that Pacquiao admitted to easing up. It was interesting to see how he hesitated in considering whether or not he asks a follow up question. While some may think this shows a lack of killer instinct, it also shows the compassion Pacquiao has for his fellow fighter.

Future Fights

There is much debate as to whether Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will ever fight. This would be the only fight that makes sense and would draw huge PPV and attendance numbers. Mayweather (Floyd and Roger) legal troubles and failed negotiations are hurdles to this superfight.

Despite Shane Mosley’s pleas, it would be hard seeing him winning a fight with Pacquiao. Also, his recent fights aren’t cause to be excited about this matchup. Juan Manuel Marquez could be an option but I am not sure if that is the fight the Pacquiao camp wants since he lost to Mayweather.

Other fighters such as Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander or Andre Berto are not marquee names that would excite the casual boxing fan.

Rumors have been floating around for the past couple of days involving the recently released EA Sports MMA title being “one-and-done” and “dead on arrival” according to Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz, but when MMAPayout reached out to EA Sports marketing manager Randy Chase, he told us that the report is a bit premature.

The video gaming website ComputerAndVideoGames was the first to report Crutz analysis of EA Sports MMA, which was then picked up by many MMA websites, eventually reaching ESPN’s MMA blog and other big name online media.  Crutz went on to say in his report:

“EA’s recently released ‘MMA’ appears to be more or less DOA at retail, while UFC recently announced an extension of its license with THQ, likely putting an end to EA’s efforts to expand into the mixed martial arts genre,” the analyst said in a research note this morning.

The ComputerAndVideoGames article also goes on to note that EA Sports MMA debuted at No. 23 this week, just edging out another competitor which was released on the same day, Activision’s DJ Hero 2 which debuted at #25.  The key factor for the disappointing debut for both titles was the the same week release of Fallout: New Vegas, which finished #1 on the chart and was highly anticipated by many video game enthusiasts.

EA Sports released the following statement regarding the rumors:

“EA SPORTS MMA has been in stores for less than a week and it has been well received by critics and consumers for bringing innovation to the genre.  We are confident the game will connect with fight fans.”

Contrary to what Crutz said on his report, PastaPadre, a well known sports video gaming news and analysis website within the industry, believes there is a future for EA Sports MMA.

Just one week after the release of EA Sports MMA there are analysts predicting that the company will cease making an MMA game going forward. Sales are reportedly soft and with THQ locking up the UFC license through 2018 the thought is being perpetuated that there is no room to grow and pushing forward would prove futile. That really isn’t the case however and EA is not likely to abandon a growing sport when they have now established themselves as players in the market even as that comes from an underdog role.

Keep in mind these are the same analysts who just recently discussed poor sales coming in for Madden 11 only to have the official sales numbers release and the game show a 12% year over year increase. Basically take anything an analyst says with a grain of salt because they are not tied into the goings on of the sports gaming world and may not be even using official data. They are just looking at numbers and not taking into consideration the context of them.

Payout Perspective:

The low initial sales was something that  MMAPayout noted in the EA MMA perspective write-up, and something that should be expected as realistic expectations for this title release.  We also mentioned that the game was well received with good scores from respected video game websites/publishers and also garnered positive user feedback.

As PastaPadre points out, EA went into this project with full knowledge of being the underdog in the market and had realistic sale expectations for sales.  The key here, if they choose to continue the franchise in 2012, is to establish the base for an MMA franchise that can be released on alternating years with their Fight Night boxing franchise. Though we must point out, releasing the game on the same week as highly anticipated Fallout: New Vegas was released was a big mistake (just as THQ did with releasing UFC Undisputed 2010 in the same week as Red Dead Revolver) and affected their sales.

Despite the low sales this year for both MMA franchises, there is no doubt that the MMA market is still growing and is predicted to keep growing in the next several years, so it is well worth their while to stay in the market. There is no doubt that the UFC brand creates an almost impossible hurdle for EA as they continue to dominate the market, but they also don’t have the pressures of having high licensing costs attached to the game, which ultimately lowers the expectations of the game.  Only time will tell what EA decides to do with the franchise, but I believe it is just too early to make decision’s of this magnitude based on the current conditions.  When MMAPayout asked EA Sports if there were any existing plans for a 2012 release, they said we were already working on it.

Welcome to another edition of Payout Perspective! This week we take a look at UFC 112: Invincible, which was held at The Concert Arena on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, UAE on Saturday, April 10th. The event marked both the UFC’s debut in Abu Dhabi and its first-ever outdoor show. UFC 112 was headlined by two title fights: Anderson Silva took on Demian Maia at 185 lbs. while BJ Penn fought Frankie Edgar for the lightweight strap.

Silva decisions Maia, disappoints again

There’s no sugarcoating this performance: Anderson Silva made a mockery of the sport at UFC 112. Silva’s playful toying with Maia quickly turned into crass and disrespectful taunting; his unwillingness to engage in the latter rounds also displayed an utter disregard for the sport, the fans, and the promotion that have so fiercely supported him in the past.

I don’t have any interest in hypothesizing why Silva fought like he did, but I am keen on exploring what are likely to be the consequences of his actions.

I’ll first say that it’s not the end of the world. Fights like Silva’s are simply part of the growing pains that this sport is going to have to endure in order to progress. It’s all one big learning curve where the promotions and fighters struggle to figure out what the fans want and how they can deliver a product that meets those requirements on a consistent basis.

Every sport has gone through similar embarrassing moments of unsportsmanlike conduct or utterly incomprehensible performance – no one is immune. There’s no need to panic.

There seems to be a tendency amongst many MMA fans – especially the hardcores – to watch and critique every event as if the future of the sport depended on the outcome. Yet, despite the sports precarious position within the sports landscape – especially on the regulatory side – there’s simply no need to view the sport from this perspective.

Certainly, the fans have a right to be mad after UFC 112 – they paid good money to watch Silva dick around for five rounds and disrespect the sport they love and support – but MMA isn’t going to fall off a cliff just because of this one event or any single event.

Is there a cause for concern? Sure, there’s no denying that Silva’s performance will reflect poorly upon his own stock, that of the UFC’s, and MMA in general. It’s not going to crush the sport, though.

The UFC has gained a reputation for putting on great fights on a consistent basis and Silva’s fight will challenge that notion; a notion, I might add, that’s already been put to the test in recent months with events like UFC 103, 106, 109, and 110. Again, the fight was the type of main event that can overshadow the rest of the card, which was fairly good.

Luckily, the non-domestic nature of the event likely ensured that the event was purchased by only the more devout of MMA fans – and they already know the story with Silva. He’s hit-or-miss.

The most significant consequence of the fight is probably the affect it will have on the entire UFC middleweight division and the way the UFC is able to schedule its fight cards in the future. Title fights push sales and because there’s going to be very little interest in Silva fighting at 185lbs again, the UFC is effectively down to four titles. That makes it much more difficult to spread the wealth and ensure that events are headlined properly (which is where things got rough for the UFC last fall).

So, what do you do if you’re the UFC? Silva’s not going to draw very well at 185lbs, but there are still some fights left for him at the weight class with Chael Sonnen and Vitor Belfort. He would, however, still draw very well against a George St-Pierre or contender at 205lbs, and that’s because the fans understand it would be the type of challenge he’s most likely to respond to.

The ironic thing is that had Silva simply dispatched of Maia in the first round like he demonstrated was possible, the UFC would have brought GSP into the Octagon and announced a title fight at 170lbs on the sport. They didn’t fly Georges all the way to Abu Dhabi just to sit cage side.

Edgar earns controversial decision victory, unseats Penn

The Penn-Edgar fight ended in such controversy that it might not be such a bad thing that the Silva fight managed to overshadow everything else that happened on the entire card. The flipside, of course, is that the more press the controversial decision receives, the better sales opportunity the UFC will have in any potential future rematch.

From a matchmaking standpoint, the controversy has given the UFC’s lightweight division a needed shot in the arm. Not only will the division retain BJ Penn – its most popular fighter – for the foreseeable future, but the gap between the best and the next has just been narrowed considerably. The number of interesting match-ups between the likes of Frankie Edgar, BJ Penn, Gray Maynard, Tyson Griffin, and Kenny Florian are enormous.

Dana White loses his Twitter cool

Dana White, like most, was a fan before he became involved in the business. He’s also the emotional type that wears his heart on his sleeve and always says what he feels. While that’s admirable and the source of much of his popularity with UFC fans, it can also be a detriment when he loses his cool and over-reacts to certain situations.

Leadership is about many things, but one in particular is setting an example. White is the sport’s foremost representative and there’s a certain responsibility that comes with that in the sense that sometimes he can’t just say what he’s thinking. Especially if he wants to be the guy that takes this sport to the next level, because where he and the Fertitta brothers want this sport to go, there’s very little tolerance for the sort of profanity-laced tirades against the media or the fans that White has exhibited in the past 24 months.

Moreover, when White is visibly shaking during a post-fight press conference and ranting in post-fight interviews about Anderson Silva, it helps to induce the sort of panic amongst fans that really isn’t necessary. Yes, the Silva fight sucked and the fans are disappointed, but it’s not the end of the world – the message coming from the UFC needs to be one of reassurance, not panic.

The situation is quite analogous to customer service in any sort of goods or services industry. The customer that has a complaint handled by a calm, confident, and thorough representative will come away reassured about the value of their purchase. The customer that deals with an angry, depressed, ranting lunatic is likely to take their business elsewhere.

UFC’s first outdoor event goes off without a hitch

The Silva controversy also overshadowed the fact that UFC 112 was the UFC’s first-ever outdoor event and everything more or less went according to plan from an operational perspective. The concerns surrounding heat, humidity, and/or wind really never materialized.

There are a few kinks that the organization needs to work out on the press side – e.g., finding adequate bandwidth to supply their digital channels with more fight week content – but those are small in nature and should be rectified by the time the UFC returns.

UFC 112 shown for free in Germany on UFCLive.com

The UFC may have been banned from television in Bavaria, but the UFC made sure its fans in Germany were able to watch the event for on UFCLive.com. Users logging on with a German IP address were able watch the event for free.

It’s definitely interesting to see the UFC continuing to ramp up its use of online distribution mediums – not unexpected. J

Sponsorship Watch

UFC 112 was devoid of any sponsorship from the alcohol category – namely Bud Light and Tequilla Casadores. I’m inclined to believe that this is likely because of the strict alcohol consumption laws in the UAE. However, it could also simply be a function of the anticipated buyrate for the event.

Lumber Liquidators made its debut on the UFC canvas, which is perhaps further support that there was less demand from the UFC’s traditional sponsors than for a domestic event. Edge Shave Gel was also given a canvas placement and that usually doesn’t happen for a bigger event (even though Edge has invested a good amount of time and money on the activation side of its partnership; check out the UFC Vault contest they’re running).

There weren’t a ton of new fighter sponsors for the event, but the fact that we’re seeing Mom and Pop type sponsorships for some of these guys is further indication that the rumours about the$100,000 sponsorship tax aren’t 100% accurate.

Mike Chiappetta of MMAFighting.com discusses the latest news regarding a possible UFC on Spike event for April 17th, designed to counter-program the Strikeforce on CBS card on the same day.

The UFC is in the process of laying the groundwork for an April 17 show to counter the Strikeforce on CBS offering, MMA Fighting has learned.

 

Though the company has not officially announced the event and it should not be considered a done deal, two separate sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed that the promotion has begun to ramp up its efforts over the last several hours and that Spike TV — the likely broadcast outlet for the show — has been informed of the decision.

 

…

 

Strikeforce’s show is planned for the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, and will feature three title bouts, including a middleweight championship main event pitting current titleholder Jake Shields against former UFC star Dan Henderson. The show could reportedly be moved back a week to April 24 — which would result in a head-to-head battle with WEC’s first pay-per-view offering — but tickets sales for the Strikeforce event have already begun, and a change would also require a shift in the CBS programming schedule.

Payout Perspective:

Event scheduling in the month of April is quickly becoming a chess match of epic proportions as the UFC looks to make life difficult for Strikeforce on CBS, while Strikeforce considers the possibility of switching dates to avoid going head-to-head with Kimbo Slice (and do some counter-programming of its own; nixing the WEC’s debut PPV a week later).

I can kind of understand the desire of the UFC to crush its competition: monopolies can be beneficial in certain contexts. Moreover, the production quality and matchmaking at Strikeforce has been suspect at times, which might leave the UFC in the position of feeling like it has to be the sole flag bearer for the sport.

However, I’m also inclined to think that it’s currently to the UFC’s advantage to have MMA on network television – regardless of whom is producing it – because it generates interest and awareness for the sport. The Strikeforce production isn’t so awful that it’s a detriment to MMA; especially with match-ups like Henderson-Shields, Mousasi-Lawal, and Melendez-Aoki.

If I were the UFC, I’d develop a sneaky little ambush marketing campaign, and buy up $1,000,000 worth of ad space on CBS to promote the UFC brand. The UFC could advertise the WEC 48 PPV scheduled for April 24th and UFC 113 on May 8th; both of which would help confound the Strikeforce branding message on that night.

Sound crazy? It’s becoming a popular trend in the sports world; especially during the latest Winter Olympics. Further consider the fact that Mauro Renallo and Gus Johnson mention the UFC name on CBS more than they do Strikeforce. The UFC could really position itself to steal a number of those impressions on April 17th. The only roadblock to this plan might be CBS’s outright refusal to sell the ad space, but even at that, I have to think they’d sell if they knew they weren’t being counter-programmed.

Besides, the idea of counter-programming seems so inefficient. The cynic in me is inclined to believe that Fedor and M-1 may very well tear down Strikeforce regardless of what the UFC does. If not, big events that only garner $8,000 in merchandise sales or $350,000 in gate revenues, while paying out that much in fighter salaries (not to mention production costs), likely will.

Why spend all this time and money to counter-programming something that hasn’t proven to be sustainable in its newest form?

….

The current speculation is that the UFC has lined up Kimbo Slice to headline this April 17th card, possibly against Matt Mitrione of TUF 10.

The short-term benefit of a Kimbo headline is obvious, but I wonder how much damage it might do to the UFC’s long-term credibility. Kimbo sells for reasons other than his fighting ability; in fact, we saw over the course of TUF 10 and its finale that interest had declined somewhat – the cat was out of the bag regarding his skills. So, what does it say that the UFC would put him in a headlining position?

The UFC has worked very hard to cultivate its existing credibility with the mainstream media and fan base – of which, admittedly, there still isn’t as much as we’d all like. Why jeopardize that? Why put non-MMA fighters in a headlining position on an MMA card?

If Strikeforce wanted to promote Herschel Walker vs. James Toney, the UFC should have let them. No successful, long-term mixed martial arts endeavor will ever be built upon the backs of non-MMA fighters – this is a guarantee.

Now the UFC has been sucked into this high risk, high reward game that might end up backfiring on them and the entire industry.