Coker has done a great job with Bellator. So far they have put together better fight cards compared to the watered down fight cards the UFC has put together for almost 2 decades. Coker can't force Viacom to heavily promote Bellator but with 0 Viacom promotion he has kept the company out of the red and profitable over 5 years. Coker has not made the same mistake he made with Strikeforce. The PFL and One are currently on that Strikeforce road deep in the red and ready to fail.
Now just look at the Bellator roster. Its incredible that Bellator has more fighters in top 10 Sherdog rankings including Vadim Nemkov ranked #1 LHW and Patricio #2 FW is a big accomplishment for Coker proving Bellator has just as good of a roster as Strikeforce had back in the day.
Coker has not run Bellator into the ground he slowly built them up and and anyone that believes Bellator fight cards over the past year have been garbage are just UFC butt kissers period! Bellator is the clear #2 profitable MMA promotion on the planet while the PFL and One are far behind and deep in the red. Would I like to see an investor that will spend money on heavily promoting Bellator shows hell yes but not at the expense of having the company go deep into the red to the point they end up failing.
Nobody is going to catch the UFC while they continue to take in 85% of total revenue while paying the fighters the peanut portion of 15%. Thats why the UFC ihas held onto its #1 position they can spend millions promoting the Org year after year. As long as that 85% - 15% split in total revenue remains intact the UFC will remain a monopoly in MMA.
We all know no one is every going to catch the UFC.
You do know it cost basically nothing for Viacom to offer more support to Bellator. Every media channel they own there is set time spots for promoting their own content. You see it all the time. Only time I ever see anything on Bellator event is once in awhile on Showtime break between shows an upcoming event gets mention. Why can't that be done on Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central, etc.???
Up until they moved to Showtime, Viacom never even put on a rerun of an event.
Bellator has a lot of very blah cards at best on paper. No doubt Coker has done a great job securing talent. He just can't seem to get his ducks in order and give us much more solid cards they do with the roster he has to work with.
Bellator growth around the world with media deals is much more a Viacom thing than a Coker thing. Scott Coker isn't flying around the world doing media deals on behalf of Bellator and Viacom. I'm guessing Bellator many times is just part of package that Viacom umbrella is just selling to a media company in France to distribute content or wherever. I'm willing to bet very few markets is Bellator sold separately on its own.
A sale may fix some of this, may lead to more growth, may lead to nothing in 5 years, who knows. All I know is we seen the Coker/Viacom Bellator show now for quite a few years and its pretty stale overall. Sure they are the number 2, but I don't hear much about Bellator being involved in signing the 3rd ranked fighter in the UFC who is 25 and has a great career ahead of him. Bellator name comes up mostly when the UFC is done with said fighter for whatever reasons(usually age, ran their course in the UFC, etc). Rarely are they ever in play for the better fighters under the UFC banner or any orgs banner for that part. I think what fans wish was there was better #2 that was a real option for fighters to shop themselves with and right now it seems like very few fighters have that option. Most are basically left taking whatever the UFC offers them. None of this will ever change under Bellator's current ownership.
