Sherdog.com: Could you identify one thing you liked most
about Bellator’s eighth season and one thing you’d like to adjust
in the future?
Kevin Kay: Sure. The thing I liked most is, I really feel like
Bjorn [Rebney, Bellator CEO] and his team put on great fights.
Honestly, no matter what we did at Spike -- and I feel like we did
some good things -- just the quality of fights and the fact that,
week after week, there were amazing finishes. Not just one good
fight on every card, but tons of great fights on every card. You
look back at Emanuel
Newton knocking out King Mo, to David
Rickels coming into the ring with the dinosaur -- they’re just
great moments. Doug
Marshall kind of emerging as the crazy character that he is,
and then [Michael] Chandler’s domination, [Ben] Askren -- you’ve
never seen an Askren fight like that before. And Pat Curran --
just wow. Every week, I think the fans got great fights, and I
think that’s what we set out to do. That’s why people watch, and
that’s why people come back week after week. The fights are always
my favorite part of everything.
The other thing we did was the Bellator app. Creating that app and launching it mid-season and having over 100,000 people download it just on Apple -- it hasn’t even launched on Android yet -- and giving the fans an experience that’s new and different. It’s a second-screen experience, letting the fans vote based on CompuStrike data and their own opinions, and then integrating it into the show so Jimmy [Smith] and Sean [Wheelock] are talking about the fans as the fourth judge and getting them involved. I just thought that was a great step forward for the sport and a great way to engage fans in a way that hasn’t been done before, so I’m really proud of that.
On the “what could we do better side,” well, it’d be better if King Mo didn’t get knocked out. That’d be the one -- well, actually, I say that and I’m joking around, because actually, the week after Mo got knocked out, our ratings went up really significantly, by a couple hundred-thousand viewers, I think. And I believe that’s because the Mo knockout got so much attention that it was another kind of brand-identifying thing and people tuned in the next week to see what was going to happen, having heard about Bellator the week before. So, it actually worked for us in a lot of ways.
The serious thing that I would say we can do better is: I think we did a nice job of letting the audience know that Bellator is tournament-based -- that’s what sets it apart from all the other promotions -- but I think we can do an even better job in explaining how the tournaments work, who’s in them and which one is taking place, so that the fans are really clear about what they can expect each week in terms of the tournament. That’ll be part of what we try to address this summer.
Sherdog.com: King Mo was obviously a big part of the plan,
not just for Bellator but also Impact Wrestling on Spike. Aside
from the ratings bump, what kind of effect has his knockout loss
had?
Kay: He’s going to come back and fight in the Summer Series, so we
can’t wait to get him back in the cage. I think people will be
really interested to see what he does different this time. I’m
excited. I love Mo. I think he’s everything you want in a mixed
martial artist, right? Because he’s incredibly gifted as an
athlete, he’s very versatile and he’s got a great personality. So,
you know, nothing changes. I’m now curious to see what he does, as
I think the fans are. How’s he going to adjust his game plan and is
he going to be able to win a tournament and win a championship in
Bellator?
The only thing it changes a little bit is that we thought there would be more time. If Mo had won the tournament, then he would have not had to fight this summer, probably would have gone to TNA for the summer and then come back in the fall to fight in Bellator again. But because we want to get him back in the cage and give him as fast a shot as possible to get back up and running and hopefully win, we’re going to get him back on this summer. So, he won’t go as quickly back to Impact as we originally had planned, but that’s all good.
Sherdog.com: The upcoming light heavyweight tournament King
Mo will be part of is a four-man bracket. What was behind the
decision to switch the format for the Summer Series?
Kay: We just don’t have as many fights, so we can’t do eight,
because it’s basically a three-episode arc, the Summer Series. I
think Bjorn felt it was important to get a number of tournaments in
there. A four-man tournament is more executable in terms of getting
all those fights on TV.
Sherdog.com: The season which just ended averaged about
800,000 viewers for live broadcasts. Is that in line with what you
expected? And for a TV layman, is there any major significance that
would come with breaking the million-viewer mark?
Kay: I think the average was about 860,000, and I think three of
the events went over 900,000. With the immediate repeats, we were
always over a million viewers. For me, I never set ratings
expectations, because you’re always wrong. Doing that just seems
silly, in a way. But, in my mind, I was like, “OK, where do we want
to be?” And this is a really good place to be for the first season.
What I love about it is that we launched to 900,000 viewers, we had
some significant competition in there -- [the] NCAA [men's
basketball tournament] and stuff like that -- and then we ended up
bringing all those 900,000 and more back. It feels like a really
good place to be.
Now, that said, my job is ratings growth, and there’s plenty of room for growth in those numbers. I think that, as we get into the summer and the fall, when you have all these guys who have fought and who people now know -- Michael Chandler, Pat Curran, Emanuel Newton, Alexander Shlemenko, David Rickels -- I believe that they’re going to come back and want to see them. I think the word spreads and more people want to see them because they put on great shows. So, I feel like we have very significant room for ratings growth. We’ve got the reality show coming this summer, which is another way to showcase Bellator with some great talent, because you’ve got Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, Greg Jackson and Joe Warren, which is kind of an amazing lineup of coaches. It’ll be a very strategic look at how they do their business and how they train and how guys bring different approaches. All those things are going to continue to help build the ratings.
Sherdog.com: Speaking of the reality show, is “Fight
Master” done filming?
Kay: We’ve completed filming and we’re in post-production now. The
only thing left is the final outcome between the two guys, but that
happens later. That will happen live on a Bellator card in
September.
Sherdog.com: Is there a premiere date set for the
show?
Kay: We have not announced a premiere date yet. We’ll probably
announce that in a couple of weeks. It will run over the summer,
and the finals of the reality series will actually happen at the
beginning of the ninth season.
Sherdog.com: Is there more Bellator programming to come on
Spike? Will there be highlight shows to fill the gaps between
seasons?
Kay: We did that “King Mo: Unrivaled” special. We’re doing more of
those on our champions that will line up with their next fights,
and there are a couple other ideas out there. I’m talking to Frank
Shamrock tomorrow about doing something to re-educate fans about
Frank and his amazing career as we get ready to launch the reality
series. So, there’s a number of shows and programming ideas that
you’re going to start to see leading up to the reality series and
the Summer Series.
The focus, for me, was like, the first season, let’s promote the tournament, that it’s on Spike, and let’s make sure everybody knows where it is and what it is. Then, it’s like, let’s make sure we’re doing the same for the reality series and be very focused about that. Then, we can roll out more shows and programming over the summer, once we’ve built up these stars. To ask the audience to watch shows about guys they don’t know would not be a good idea. To ask the audience to watch shows about guys they’ve experienced and now seen fight, and dive deeper on them, I think is a really good idea.
Sherdog.com: You’ve described the Forrest
Griffin-Stephan
Bonnar fight on “The Ultimate Fighter” as a seminal moment. Do
you think Bellator has had that moment yet, or is that yet to
come?
Kay: I think we had a lot of great fights. I mean, the
Griffin-Bonnar fight is going to be tough to repeat. Remember, the
sport, in terms of widely distributed cable TV, was in its infancy.
That was the first season finale of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which
was a new show. There was a tremendous expectation. It’s a legend
now, right? So, it’s going to be tough to repeat. When I look back
on this season, I just think Emanuel Newton’s knockout of King Mo
was such a stunning moment for Bellator. Now, was it
Griffin-Bonnar? No. I think that’s still to come. But that was --
you know, I stood up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Also, the first fight, Curran versus “Pitbull” [Patricio Freire], just set a standard for the fact that, if you tune in to Bellator, you’re going to see great fighters in great fights. That’s what we’re trying to do here. Along the way, there’s going to be some amazing fights, and that’s what we want fans to know. If you tune in, every week, you’re going to see some amazing fights on Bellator.
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