Rizin garnered some traction, peaked at 10.3% on FujiTV during Tenshin vs Fujita

Not true. You're not going to get any sales if potential customers don't know your product exists. Killing any grassroots marketing this early on to make a few thousand dollars is the height of bad business.

New Japan Pro Wrestling wouldn't have run shows in the US this year if they were still charging $100+ for the G1 Climax. They made their product extremely accessible to an international audience with the introduction of NJPW World, and are reaping the benefits of increased exposure, massive merchandise sales, and international gates / rights fees.

JMMA promotions usually realize this just before they're about to die. Then what happens are Hail Mary shows like PRIDE 32 or Dynamite USA, where these companies are hedging their bets on the success of late-in-the-game US shows on the hopes it gains immediate traction and they can benefit from UFC-esque success to save their Japanese operations. UFC (who were native to this market) spent a lot of money, took a ton of risks, and spent years to build their brand domestically.

RIZIN already isolating the worldwide market to generate insignificant sales (hardly enough to pay a single fighter, probably) isn't smart decision-making.

From my personal experience, I can agree. If it wasn't for free UFC.tv in Germany (~2011), I would have never become a MMA fan.
I was curious watching it, but I wouldn't have paid for it back then, because I wasn't a fan. I knew who Chuck Liddell and Brock Lesnar were, that's about it.
 
They have 2 stars they should continue to build.

Now they need to build a couple more, but this is a good start.

Don't worry, they can also have Erson beaten up every other event or some other random Kid relative.
 
Not true. You're not going to get any sales if potential customers don't know your product exists. Killing any grassroots marketing this early on to make a few thousand dollars is the height of bad business.

New Japan Pro Wrestling wouldn't have run shows in the US this year if they were still charging $100+ for the G1 Climax. They made their product extremely accessible to an international audience with the introduction of NJPW World, and are reaping the benefits of increased exposure, massive merchandise sales, and international gates / rights fees.

JMMA promotions usually realize this just before they're about to die. Then what happens are Hail Mary shows like PRIDE 32 or Dynamite USA, where these companies are hedging their bets on the success of late-in-the-game US shows on the hopes it gains immediate traction and they can benefit from UFC-esque success to save their Japanese operations. UFC (who were native to this market) spent a lot of money, took a ton of risks, and spent years to build their brand domestically.

RIZIN already isolating the worldwide market to generate insignificant sales (hardly enough to pay a single fighter, probably) isn't smart decision-making.
Streaming costs money. I doubt they even make back what it costs them to stream on Fite TV.
You mention that the prior promotions only worried about expansion when it was too late. For Rizin right now, it's too early to worry about expansion. They don't even have a firm foothold on the Japanese market. No foothold, no expansion. Even then, expansion is extremely risky.
 
This is somewhat of a bad idea.

NJPW has been around for since 1972.

RIZIN has been around for about 3 years.

Also NJPW ran shows before with collaboration with JAPW in the US and they were considered failures.

A lot of NJPW's current success stateside is because of the Bullet Club which is mostly composed of foreigners.
?

I wasn't proposing an idea; I listed an example. The length of each promotion's existence (and their history) are irrelevant. NJPW was a dying product until Jado / Gedo / Tanahashi (and later Nakamura / Okada) saved it in the late-2000s. Bullet Club also didn't really gain any traction internationally until Styles left TNA and replaced Devitt in NJPW (and brought a significant American audience with him).

The partnership with ROH has helped, but ultimately, NJPW World was the key factor to NJPW's US expansion. The point here is that pricing is a HUGE barrier to business growth if not optimized correctly given what should be apparent circumstances (IE: MMA is not as hot as it was ten years ago, too much content on the market, etc).

RIZIN isn't isolating the worldwide market, they're just building a local, core fanbase first.

Whatever they decide to do going forward is unknown.
They're about seven shows into this venture. DREAM (which was much better backed with a bigger production, and began with US distribution on HDNet) lasted 24 shows. Running these shows are expensive. There's no time to focus solely on building one small audience first.

And if they're distributing internationally (via Fite TV currently), then they are on the worldwide market. But the fact that RIZIN barely got a blip of attention from the MMA media (and more so for the dud that Shamrock-Sakuraba was) is extremely telling.
 
Anyone that is willing to watch JMMA from 1-8 am will pay for a cheap PPV. Maybe putting the fights on YouTube a few weeks after the fact would be a good idea but I don't think it's in their best interest to stream free at this point, especially if Japanese fans start watching the free live stream instead of adding to their all important Fujii TV ratings.
 
The partnership with ROH has helped, but ultimately, NJPW World was the key factor to NJPW's US expansion. The point here is that pricing is a HUGE barrier to business growth if not optimized correctly given what should be apparent circumstances (IE: MMA is not as hot as it was ten years ago, too much content on the market, etc).
True, I won't argue these points.

They're about seven shows into this venture. DREAM (which was much better backed with a bigger production) lasted 24 shows. Running these shows are expensive. There's no time to build a small audience first.

And if they're distributing internationally (via Fite TV currently), then they are on the worldwide market. But the fact that RIZIN barely got a blip of attention from the MMA media (and more so for the dud that Shamrock-Sakuraba was) is extremely telling.
Here's where the thing, they aren't building a small audience first. They had millions of people watching on Fuji TV. IIRC the percentage should reflect around 10M viewers on Fuji TV. That's not a small amount of people...

They are on the worldwide market, but their main priority is their local market which is those 10M or so people watching on Fuji TV.
 
And if they're distributing internationally (via Fite TV currently), then they are on the worldwide market. But the fact that RIZIN barely got a blip of attention from the MMA media (and more so for the dud that Shamrock-Sakuraba was) is extremely telling.
Extremely telling that MMA media cares less about MMA and more about generating a few more clicks maybe. Even if it's free the MMA media still wouldn't cover it, meaning western fans still won't know about it (unless they follow the smaller niche sites and certain social media accounts). Look at ROAD FC, streams completely free with a free complete VOD library, holding a tournament with the biggest cash prize in the history of the sport....0 coverage from major western media.
 
Streaming costs money. I doubt they even make back what it costs them to stream on Fite TV.
You mention that the prior promotions only worried about expansion when it was too late. For Rizin right now, it's too early to worry about expansion. They don't even have a firm foothold on the Japanese market. No foothold, no expansion. Even then, expansion is extremely risky.
RIZIN should definitely stay in Japan for as long as its feasible (and on the contrary, I think running shows in the US should be avoided—given historical challenges for JMMA companies), but growing a US-based fanbase is the heart of the issue which could pay dividends if (and probably when, unfortunately) the going gets rough and they need to rely on the disposable income of Americans to sustain the product.

If I were them, I would use whatever connections they have with Coker to broker either a live / tape-delay broadcast of RIZIN on Spike Sports, and take whatever licensing fee they can get from that. My guess is it'll be much better than whatever they're getting from Fite TV, and by removing the paywall (and on a major television platform like MMA-friendly Spike), they'll exponentially grow their American audience more so than they are now (and I would anticipate the MMA media would give RIZIN a lot more coverage than they did this past weekend).

Extremely telling that MMA media cares less about MMA and more about generating a few more clicks maybe. Even if it's free the MMA media still wouldn't cover it, meaning western fans still won't know about it (unless they follow the smaller niche sites and certain social media accounts). Look at ROAD FC, streams completely free with a free complete VOD library, holding a tournament with the biggest cash prize in the history of the sport....0 coverage from major western media.
True say. A classic case of "if a tree falls in a forest..." RIZIN isn't making a sound given their current distribution. Even UFC Fight Pass is a dead zone for exposure.

Meanwhile, ten years ago, Elite XC was doing mindblowing numbers with Kimbo Slice headlining just because CBS was distributing their shows on primetime.
 
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Japan has a population of 127 million. How many do you think would watch TV on a Sunday night?

Whatever that number of total tv watchers on Sunday night, 10% tuned in to watch Tenshin and Rena's 1st live fights on TV. Shoot Boxing and Knockout/Rise don't have great tv deals if any at all. Tenshin and Rena each have around 5 MMA fights. It was the last hour of a 3 hour broadcast, so there wasn't a lead in program to the Tenshin and Rena fights to create a misleading peak.
 
They probably do not want that Japanese audience watch free Russian live streams instead of paying Sky Perfect PPVs, or watching events on Fuji TV where large number of viewers generate more income from selling TV commercials spots for Fuji TV and then significant part of that money goes to Rizin.

In some European countries like Croatia last years NYE events were streamed live only on web portals of TV station, probably so they could restrict viewers only to that country by IP adress, and tape delay went on TV channel later in the evenign.

Their new strategy of mixing tape delay with some main live fights was obviously very good decision since it raised the peak from 7 to 10 %.

They need to make good balance between PPV on Sky Perfect and to give portion for free on live broadcast, but not too much, to be careful no to make PPV Sky buyers and fans feel like fools. And time between actual live events and tape delay should be optimized.

In todays world of social networks, fast interet and digital media, informations and videos are shared and move much faster and people want information as fast as possilbe. Different times from 15 years ago when videos and informations could stay safe and fresh for hours and be watched on delay.


I also agree that they need some kind of exposure in Europe, North America, Russia and Brazil to make their product known, at least some kind of tape delay or special TV events with partner TV stations. But they probalby want to establish firm foothold in Japan first, wich is their main source of existence.

I truly belive that Japan market and potential base of MMA fans and casual audience are certanly big enough and with enough potential interest and buying power to support world's major MMA organization and that Rizin should be that.
 
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Damn that kid is already a biger star then Demetrious Johnson.
A lot of my Asian friends are already fans.
 
This is somewhat of a bad idea.

NJPW has been around for since 1972.

RIZIN has been around for about 3 years.

Also NJPW ran shows before with collaboration with JAPW in the US and they were considered failures.

A lot of NJPW's current success stateside is because of the Bullet Club which is mostly composed of foreigners.


RIZIN isn't isolating the worldwide market, they're just building a local, core fanbase first.

Whatever they decide to do going forward is unknown.

A lot of people do not understand or have the business skills to know a company has to do that. People forget that Strikeforce was a california-based company Northern California at that.
Hell The UFC used to be the Midwest back in the SEG days.

This is one of the reasons I think Bellator MMA is having so many issues.

They are a big National promotion but they really don't have a home base.
 
The kid is fun to watch. I just hope he shores up his wrestling
 
Need to replay Miyu Yamamoto's boob slip even more for ratings bonanza!!!
 
I really hope it gains traction and eventually becomes Pride 2.0. Right now the presentation and feel is there but the talent is not. They need to bring in a bunch more gaijins who have name value and/or are considered credible.
 
I think if Rizin did have an expansion, I hope its Macau. That chinese money and viewership is there for the taking.
 
...eventually becomes Pride 2.0.
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The kid is fun to watch. I just hope he shores up his wrestling
This. Those grappling exchanges were fun and all, but a great wrestler is going to eat his lunch. Get him to TAM or something. They need to try and build more stars in the meantime. I think Jiri and Aliakbari could be a big stars over there.
 
This. Those grappling exchanges were fun and all, but a great wrestler is going to eat his lunch. Get him to TAM or something. They need to try and build more stars in the meantime. I think Jiri and Aliakbari could be a big stars over there.
He's with a good grappling team (same gym as Kanna Asakura, Nobita Naito, Hiromasa Ogikubo and others), problem is he only trains it when he has a MMA fight coming up. He has also been training it for less than a year. Little to no chance he goes stateside when he's fighting back in Japan every month. ATT is the only western team I'd be interested in seeing him with anyways, a bunch of Japanese guys have gone to TAM and made little to no improvements in their game. ATT seems much better at getting strikers to pick up defensive wrestling skills (just look at Horiguchi's improvements since training there)
 
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