Tag: bjorn rebney

UFC 173 vs. Bellator 120: Which Did More Web Traffic?

By Matt Saccaro

Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.

There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.

In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.

Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.

Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120’s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173’s.

Other random insights:

By Matt Saccaro

Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.

There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.

In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.

Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.

Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120′s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173′s.

Other random insights:

The time spent on page, an important and overlooked metric, was “virtually identical” for both Bellator 120 and UFC 173. Referral sources, too, were identical, with much of the traffic coming from search (Google) and social (Facebook and a bit from Twitter). This isn’t terribly surprising.

What does all of this mean, then?

At a glance, people are probably saying “The best Bellator has to offer only barely edges out a lower-level UFC card!” And that’s fair to an extent. But it’s worth noting that before the card, most of our UFC 173-related content wasn’t doing too well. There was very little hype around the event. Fans had a “how dare the UFC charge us for this crap” attitude about it. Even the live-blog was sub-par during the event. Once it was updated to reflect the huge upset that was TJ Dillashaw defeating Renan Barao, however, traffic on it exploded. The massive upset could’ve definitely helped UFC 173.

However, the same could be said for Bellator 120 since Will Brooks and Tito Ortiz upset Michael Chandler and Alexander Shlemenko, respectively. King Mo calling Bjorn Rebney a dick-rider didn’t hurt Bellator traffic either.

Alas, web traffic means little in terms of PPV buys. It’s highly likely that many people who read our post-fight Bellator coverage wanted to see if the event was a train wreck without having to pay for it. Furthermore, we’re just one website. A sample size of one isn’t much to go on. When asked on Twitter, some sites reported that their Bellator 120 traffic was far below expectations.

So, to get a clearer picture, we ran a Google trends comparison:

Interestingly, the search term “Bellator 120″ peaked the day after the PPV, indicating our theory above about most of the traffic coming from people who didn’t watch the PPV. And UFC 173′s peak was slightly higher than Bellator 120′s.

If anything is to be taken from this, it’s that Bellator is capable of generating at least as much Internet-interest (even if it derives from schadenfreude) from the fans as the UFC. Whether that’ll hold true for their future PPV outings is impossible to tell.

Rampage Jackson Solidifies His Place as Bellator’s Biggest Star, but Now What?

Being in the Quinton “Rampage” Jackson business has never been easy.
So far, Bellator MMA appears to be full-fistedly embracing Jackson as its biggest star, what with Bjorn Rebney going on MMA Junkie Radio on Monday to trumpet the former UF…

Being in the Quinton “Rampage” Jackson business has never been easy.

So far, Bellator MMA appears to be full-fistedly embracing Jackson as its biggest star, what with Bjorn Rebney going on MMA Junkie Radio on Monday to trumpet the former UFC champion’s return to greatness.

“‘Rampage’ is back,” the Bellator CEO proclaimed, despite the fact Jackson failed to look the part against Muhammed Lawal on Saturday. “The knees are back. He didn’t just get off the ground (after being taken down). He got off the ground with King Mo Lawal on top of him. Questions answered.”

Rebney is right about that last part, at least. Some of our questions have indeed been answered. Perhaps most pertinent among them was how Bellator was going to paint having Jackson as its standard-bearer. Now we know: with a broad brush and a bucketful of white wash.

What we don’t yet know—and frankly, this question feels a lot more important and a lot more difficult to answer—is what the fight company plans to do next with its brightest pay-per-view star.

If Bellator aims to maintain its momentum, as the MMA media continue to puzzle over its first PPV effort, much of the task will likely fall on Jackson. How the company next positions him will no doubt send a message about where this relationship is headed.

For his part, Rebney seems committed to pretending there was no controversy in Jackson’s win over Lawal, despite the fact nearly everyone besides the hometown judges scored the fight the opposite way.

He even appears cool with Jackson’s declarations that he doesn’t want the Bellator title and that he has no interest in fighting champion Emanuel Newton, even though the whole point of the Lawal bout was to determine Newton’s next challenger.

“The reason ‘Rampage’ and I have had such a good relationship is we’ve approached things as guys working together, not me mandating what’s going to happen,” Rebney said. “I’m going to talk to him about [fighting Newton], but I’m not going to disrespect a guy who’s been nothing but standup with us. He’s rocked and rolled as a promoter for us, so I’m not going to say we’re making this fight and plant this flag in the sand.”

With no Newton fight in the offing, there appear to be very few compelling matchups for Jackson in Bellator. Moments after his win over Lawal was announced, Jackson called incongruously for a rematch, effectively tipping his hand as a guy who is seeking to land lucrative fights against opponents he doesn’t believe can physically harm him.

But to book that fight would be to undermine Rebney’s position that there was nothing wrong with the first one. It also bears mentioning that after all their pre-fight screaming, Jackson and Lawal didn’t necessarily turn in a grudge match that was overflowing with action.

Bellator can’t very well go on booking Rampage against low-profile opponents like Joey Beltran and Christian M’Pumbu, and that leaves perhaps only one real option: Tito Ortiz.

Signing up for a do-over on Jackson vs. Ortiz might be the best thing left on Rebney’s plate, but only if both principals can make it to the cage healthy on fight night. The last time the organization tried to make the match, it fell apart at the last possible moment, along with Ortiz’s neck and Bellator’s initial PPV dreams.

Going all-in on a redux seems like a risky proposition, though maybe one the promotion has no choice but to make.

What to do with Jackson is a quandary that Bellator will have to solve in short order or else run the risk of learning the lesson a few other MMA promoters already know all too well: Being in a “relationship” with Jackson rarely ends well.

Just ask the World Fighting Alliance, which hung hopes for its doomed 2006 “King of the Streets” pay-per-view around his modest celebrity, did less than 50,000 buys and folded six months later. Or ask Pride, after the fighter accused executives of conspiring against him at every turn.

For that matter, ask the UFC. Jackson fought 12 times for the world’s largest MMA promotion between 2007 and 2013. He became the light heavyweight champion, won five performance-based bonuses and participated in high-profile, big-money feuds against Rashad Evans and Jon Jones.

Yet when it was over, neither party came away issuing glowing reviews.

“I doubt (they’ll) miss me at all,” Jackson told MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani last June. “I think I was a thorn in UFC’s side for awhile. I did everything to fix the relationship … I wasn’t happy with UFC. I was trying to hustle and do movies. UFC took the love of MMA out me.”

How long will Jackson and Bellator continue to feel the love? The answer to that question depends entirely on what happens next.

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Bjorn Rebney: There Are UFC Pay-Per-Views I Wouldn’t Watch for Free

Bjorn Rebney admits to being an avid UFC fan back in the good ole’ days, when “pay-per-views were significant” and every event had “big fights.”
But things have obviously changed.
UFC President Dana White’s bid for g…

Bjorn Rebney admits to being an avid UFC fan back in the good ole’ days, when “pay-per-views were significant” and every event had “big fights.”

But things have obviously changed.

UFC President Dana White’s bid for global expansion has significantly increased the amount of annual content the UFC pumps out. There are more fights than ever before, providing fans with continued, unlimited content.

The downside to more content is a lack of sustained star power bolstering important cards. Fans are no longer paying for the best the UFC has to offer. Instead, a whopping $50 is often dumped on watered-down cards with one or two big fights.

“I used to watch the UFC years ago, and I used to buy pay-per-views when they were significant and every pay-per-view had big fights on it, but that’s not the case anymore,” Bellator CEO Rebney said in the Bellator 120 post-fight media scrum, per MMAjunkie.com. “They do one every three weeks, and some of them, I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t watch that if it was on [FOX Sports 1].’”

On Saturday night, Bellator went all in for its first pay-per-view venture.

The biggest names in the promotion stacked out a Bellator 120 fight card that cumulated more interest than initially anticipated. This is the module Rebney has every intention on sticking with for future pay-per-view shows:

My feeling is you should do pay-per-views when you can do huge depth on the pre-show on Spike and huge depth on the pay-per-view, and we did that tonight. And when we have the opportunity to do it again, whether it’s sometime later this fall or next year – whenever it is – we’ll do it again.

It would be interesting to see if Rebney’s opinion would remain the same if he were on the other side of the fence.

The UFC’s most underwhelming pay-per-view card would still draw significantly better numbers than Bellator’s best. With no offseason in fighting, there will obviously be more shows as the UFC continues to expand into other markets. Perhaps White said it best during one of his daily spats with fans on Twitter. You don’t have to buy it if you don’t like it.

Fighters that wouldn’t normally get an opportunity to compete on pay-per-view are now able to do so, which in turn helps the UFC bolster its roster by building new stars.

Still, Rebney has a valid point about a significant amount of depth needed on a fight card to warrant a pay-per-view event. The UFC could look into more free events or decreasing the pay-per-view prices. Perhaps the $50 price tag should only be attached to major fight cards like UFC 168, which featured the highly anticipated rematch between Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva.

Quality will always trump quantity in the fight business.

 

Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Bjorn Rebney Should Focus on Bellator, Not Dana White and the UFC

In the old days, back when he was trying to carve a place for his new mixed martial arts promotion, Bjorn Rebney refused to say a bad word about the UFC.
Bellator was the new kid on the block, created mostly from scratch and aimed at those who wanted t…

In the old days, back when he was trying to carve a place for his new mixed martial arts promotion, Bjorn Rebney refused to say a bad word about the UFC.

Bellator was the new kid on the block, created mostly from scratch and aimed at those who wanted to see more fights. The events aired on ESPN Deportes and localized Fox Sports Net stations and MTV2. Bellator was not an alternative to the UFC, and it was not trying to compete. Which was a good thing, because the UFC juggernaut was chugging along, growing bigger by the day.

Rebney refused to criticize the UFC or its president, Dana White. White, in return, didn’t say much about Rebney or Bellator.

But that was before Viacom came along and snapped up Rebney’s fighting promotion. White, who is simultaneously at his best and worst when faced with competition, changed his public attitude quickly. His prior relationship with Viacom and Spike, where the UFC began its foray into something resembling the mainstream, made things even more personal. Shots were fired, as they usually are, and Rebney finally quit glossing over the questions that were designed to provoke a response about White and his competition.

Today, Rebney will gladly talk about the UFC. All you have to do is ask.

After Bellator’s first foray onto pay-per-view on Saturday night, Rebney discussed his thoughts on finally reaching the pay-per-view milestone. As per the usual these days, he used it as an opportunity to take a shot at the industry leader, per MMAjunkie.com:

I used to watch the UFC years ago, and I used to buy pay-per-views when they were significant and every pay-per-view had big fights on it, but that’s not the case anymore. They do one every three weeks, and some of them, I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t watch that if it was on (FOX Sports 1).

My feeling is you should do pay-per-views when you can do huge depth on the pre-show on Spike and huge depth open the pay-per-view, and we did that tonight. And when we have the opportunity to do it again, whether it’s sometime later this fall to next year – whenever it is – we’ll do it again.

If Rebney ever wonders why some people don’t take him seriously, he needs to look no further than comments like this one.

Yes, the UFC runs too many pay-per-view events. You know it. I know it. We’d all love to see the UFC dial them back a notch. But then, we’d also like to see them run fewer cards on Fight Pass and Fox Sports and Fox and all of the other distribution channels that they’re available on these days. We are oversaturated with UFC events, and I believe that’s why television ratings and pay-per-view purchases are down.

But it’s the rest of Rebney’s statement that I can’t agree with.

“Huge depth on the pre-show on Spike?” Bellator 120’s Spike TV card featured Cheick Kongo fighting a man we’ve never heard of who looked like a refrigerator repairman. I am not sure what Rebney’s definition of “huge depth” is, but Goiti Yamauchi, Mike Richman and Fabricio Guerreiro don’t fit that bill for me, and I suspect that’s the case for most fans who watched the event.

The same thing goes for the pay-per-view. There was some intrigue with Quinton Jackson vs. Muhammed Lawal. Both are stars of some value. But I can’t imagine anyone other than Rebney taking a look at the rest of the card and honestly calling it a stacked event, because it wasn’t. It was a card that would have felt right at home with the rest of Bellator’s events that air on Spike.

I get what Rebney is trying to do. He’s creating friction with White and taking shots at the competition so that this UFC vs. Bellator thing looks like a real battle. That is now synonymous with the sport.

The UFC is the market leader by a wide margin, and unless a catastrophic occurrence decimates the company and drives fans away in droves, it will always be the market leader. Fans should continue to support Bellator and other mixed martial arts promotions but with the understanding that they are there to provide an alternative for the disenfranchised and a supplement for those who somehow can’t get enough UFC programming in their lives.

Instead of focusing his attention on taking shots at the UFC and looking ridiculous in the process, Rebney should focus on making his product better. People will tune in, because they want Bellator to succeed, and because Bellator’s success is good for the industry.

Endless shots at White and the UFC won’t help Bellator’s stature grow, and the sooner Rebney realizes this, the better off he’ll be.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

King Mo Calls Bjorn Rebney out for ‘D–k Riding’ Rampage Jackson

Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal’s unfiltered tirade aimed at Bjorn Rebney, following a controversial decision loss to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, may have been the only entertaining part of the Bellator 120 main event.
The Landers…

Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal’s unfiltered tirade aimed at Bjorn Rebney, following a controversial decision loss to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, may have been the only entertaining part of the Bellator 120 main event.

The Landers Center in Southaven, Mississippi was ripe with boos on Saturday night as the five-year feud between Jackson and Lawal ended in a forgettable, 15-minute snooze fest. After the fight, Jackson was awarded a 29-28 decision across the board, which prompted a seething Lawal to call out Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney.

“Bjorn, you know what’s up, d–k riding a–. I see you smiling,” Lawal yelled from the microphone in his post-fight interview.

Unfortunately for Bellator, “bumping gums” was the only legitimate entertainment the main event grudge match had to offer.

Lawal seemed more preoccupied with not getting knocked out than actually winning the fight. His entire game plan consisted of backpedaling and clinging on for dear life whenever Jackson closed the distance.

Jackson, on the other hand, was completely outworked in the wrestling department. It’s hard to believe that Jackson was once considered a world class wrestler in MMA. Many of Lawal’s takedowns were telegraphed and had little effort behind them.

After the fight, Jackson asked Rebney for an opportunity to redeem his performance in an immediate rematch with Lawal.

Perhaps the question that should be asked is whether Lawal will even have a job in the coming weeks.

The former Strikeforce light heavyweight champ has lost twice to Emmanuel Newton, and he is coming off a lackluster showing against Jackson. Not to mention, he uttered expletives at his boss on live television.

If anything, Rebney could always trade in the suit and tie for some stage boots and wrestling tights. TNA wrestling would be the perfect place to promote his boss vs. employee feud with Lawal.

As for MMA, we would all do just fine to never have to see Jackson vs. Lawal ever again.

 

Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon.

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Bellator MMA Faces Defining Choice: To Be or Not to Be (On Pay-Per-View)

After two hearty swings, Bellator MMA will finally split the pay-per-view pinata on Saturday night, though most observers predict only sorrow and red ink will tumble out.

Lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez is concussed and out of his third meeting wit…

After two hearty swings, Bellator MMA will finally split the pay-per-view pinata on Saturday night, though most observers predict only sorrow and red ink will tumble out.

Lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez is concussed and out of his third meeting with Michael Chandler, effectively stripping the show of its crown jewel. In its place, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Muhammed Lawal will serve as the makeshift main event, while Chandler will meet Will Brooks for an interim title and Tito Ortiz will fight up-jumped middleweight Alexander Shlemenko in bout that obviously shouldn’t exist but somehow does.

Even in an industry that is conditioned to expect absurd flame-outs, the crumbling of Bellator 120 has been notable, especially considering what happened last time the fight company tried to move its circus from Spike TV to PPV.

This time the organization will stay the course, likely because rolling the dice on a depleted for-pay event seems preferable to angering providers by again pulling out on them at the last minute. Or, as Spike TV President Kevin Kay told MMA Fighting.com’s Luke Thomas back on May 6: “Look, I think there’s a point that comes in any promotion where you want to play with the big boys, right? Pay-per-view is the big boys and you want to put on premium fights.”

In the process of taking that step this weekend, the company may well answer the defining question of its life as a company: What (if any) is the demand for Bellator on PPV?

Say what you will about this fight card, but at least it will establish the baseline number of fans who are willing to shell out $34.99 (and more, if they opt for HD) to watch America’s second-best MMA promotion. The size of that number will no doubt be quite instructive for Bellator (and more importantly, its overlords at Viacom) and should be instrumental in plotting a course for its future.

On that front, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney is holding his cards pretty close to his tailored black suit at the moment. He told MMA Junkie Radio on Tuesday that Bellator is planning to remain in the PPV arena, regardless of what happens on Saturday.

“We’re absolutely looking to do pay-per-views in the future,” Rebney said. “We’ll do big, significant pay-per-view events.”

Perhaps that confidence is well-earned. Perhaps not.

Rebney’s company has found some moderate success on cable television lately. When it pulled Alvarez and Chandler off PPV and put them on Spike last November, the result was another Fight of the Year-caliber clash that garnered 1.1 million viewers (with a peak of 1.4 million) and set records for Bellator’s best-ever rating.

UFC castoffs like Jackson and Cheick Kongo have also popped the organization’s numbers in recent months, despite numerous jabs to the ribs from media and fans over their signings. Jackson averaged 880,000 viewers (1.1 million peak) when he fought Christian M’Pumbu at Bellator 110 in February, while Kongo netted 830,000 (1.1 million peak) against Vitaly Minakov at Bellator 116 last month.

Numbers fluctuated as the PPV drew nearer—Bellator 119 pulled just 511,000 last Friday—but Bellator’s 10 most recent events on Spike have averaged a bit more than 668,000 viewers apiece. That puts it near the same ballpark as UFC shows on Fox Sports 1, which have averaged 755,600 over the last 10 installments.

Comparing those two numbers should likely come with substantial caveats, but the fact is that Bellator has established a better television audience than we often give it credit for, while we’re busy ripping its personnel decisions and gloating over its bad luck.

Now we just have to see how many of those people it can convert into paying customers.

Historically, pay-per-view has been a wasteland for MMA promotions not named the UFC. Dan Plunkett of 411Mania.com recently detailed exactly how horrific it’s been, recalling the failed efforts of Bodog Fight (13,000 buys in April of 2007), a joint venture between Strikeforce and EliteXC (35,000, June 2007) and Affliction Entertainment (100,000, July 2008).

Not a good sign, though as Plunkett noted, it doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for Bellator.

“None of the promotions listed above had anything approaching Bellator’s television presence,” he wrote. “Its weekly events and various countdown shows go a long way in promoting the show and establishing the brand.” 

If 10 percent of the 1.1 million peak viewers who watched Jackson’s first-round KO of M’Pumbu show up for the PPV? Go ahead and cover everything in Rebney’s office with plastic; otherwise you’ll never get the champagne smell out of there.

If Bellator 120 does even 80,000 buys? That’s still not terrible.

50,000? Salvageable.

Less than 50,000? Maybe then you take down the tent and move the whole shebang back to Spike TV on a permanent basis.

No matter the outcome—and despite what Rebney says—Bellator will have its answer. It will know if the demand is there for it to make “big, significant” contributions to the wild world of pay-per-view, or if it is merely a cable curiosity—a show with a dependable weekly time slot to help us wile away our Friday nights.

Either way, it’s better for the fight company to know what kind of player it really is than to continue booking PPVs like a blindfolded man with a club who is continually stumbling around and swinging at air.

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