What's With the Relationship(or Lack There-Of) Between ESPN and the UFC?
It seems like ESPN goes out of their way not report on UFC and MMA events. They’ve had a few segments, but not with any regularity. After saturday UFC events, Sportscenter will play highlights of every little silly a$s thing before they show anything UFC or mma related. They’ll show horse racing, highschool basketball, golf, hockey, — not all big money strong partnership type sports either. They’ll show highlights from every single MLB game, talk about trades and community outlook stories with players EVERY damn thing before they say one word about UFC.
Why are they still trying to distance themselves so much from mma when they realize how much money it’s making nowdays. There was a time a few months ago I thought we had a breakthrough. With the Huerta SI cover, and some Liddell and Rampage sightings on Sportscenter. But I guess not. What the hell?
I think Big there is alluding to the correct answer. The UFC has resisted going down the same road as boxing and some other sports and maintains stronger control over things than some of the other sports that are partly reliant on ESPN and television to help keep them in big money. Spike television itself was somewhat of a maverick in the television industry and a lot of experts felt it would never become a major network or channel. Needless to say it has proven those experts wrong and the UFC like Spike prefers to do it "their way". A huge amount of television advertising dollars and endorsements play a big part in all this with ESPN not sharing in the wealth since they have no MMA events in their programming schedule. Someone is just a little jealous and is choosing to downplay MMA while giving other sports that they do benefit from the prime coverage in their broadcasts.
Thats O.k. because I,m sure the UFC is happy with their deal with Spike t.v.
I’m an ESPN Fanzone member and get survey’s and such about 4 times a year.
About 6 months ago, they sent me a survey about MMA/UFC and asked a lot of opinions.
I gave it my strongest support. But if the survey results as a whole were generally negative, that could be part of it.
Also, they have covered a few live weigh ins and shown some hype for the big, big fight cards.
Also, sometimes PPV places won’t grant "rights" to mainstream news because they want to have about a week to continue to sell PPV’s.
Let me ask you this, if you knew you were going to see the major highlights on ESPN, would you shell out the $44.95 every month for the PPV?
James