News Bellator sale talks heating up

TorontoTO said:
I think youtube clamped down on the bot accounts recently since ONE viewership on Youtube is not looking that great for supposedly almost 7 million subscribers

https://www.youtube.com/@ONEChampionship/videos
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After a certain point engagement just looks like that for a lot of huge accounts, take a look at UFC's for example. Dead subscribers are a thing that's very prevalent once you cross a certain threshold, and while botting does exist, I wouldn't chalk the drop off in views to just that.

Imo it's a mix of things: People who's interest in combat sports waned, people who only subscribed for certain fighters, people tired of the constant output and recycled content etc. One thing's for sure, even with the drop off their presence on social media is still larger than Bellator's by a lot. That doesn't translate into financial success however, but I think at this point saying One is the #2 company in terms of viewership isn't an outrageous thing to say.

Different market and a willingness to sink way too much money into the company does that. Kinda like KSW having a stranglehold on the polish market and historically having pulled better numbers than Bellator. They don't have the talent Bellator have, but they have a whole market for themselves.
 
Thesnake101 said:
After a certain point engagement just looks like that for a lot of huge accounts, take a look at UFC's for example. Dead subscribers are a thing that's very prevalent once you cross a certain threshold, and while botting does exist, I wouldn't chalk the drop off in views to just that.

Imo it's a mix of things: People who's interest in combat sports waned, people who only subscribed for certain fighters, people tired of the constant output and recycled content etc. One thing's for sure, even with the drop off their presence on social media is still larger than Bellator's by a lot. That doesn't translate into financial success however, but I think at this point saying One is the #2 company in terms of viewership isn't an outrageous thing to say.

Different market and a willingness to sink way too much money into the company does that. Kinda like KSW having a stranglehold on the polish market and historically having pulled better numbers than Bellator. They don't have the talent Bellator have, but they have a whole market for themselves.
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I would believe ONE's viewership if Chatri wasn't a proven liar and if they were transparent about their viewership, but they hide it at every corner. Have we ever gotten any viewership stats, even from Chatri?
 
TorontoTO said:
I would believe ONE's viewership if Chatri wasn't a proven liar and if they were transparent about their viewership, but they hide it at every corner. Have we ever gotten any viewership stats, even from Chatri?
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Oh he definitely lies about the scope of shit and their achievements, but I don't doubt they pull better numbers than Bellator and PFL at least. It's not a high bar to clear and they cater to a wider market than the US/North America.

I should have clarified that first - One isn't doing better than Bellator in terms of viewership because they're amazing and Chatri is great at what he does, they're doing better because Bellator is horrible in that facet and Coker did irreparable damage to Bellator's reputation with his gimmicky matches when he first took over.
 
TorontoTO said:
If PFL buys Bellator, they will go bankrupt within the next two years.
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Shocked they haven't already.

Maybe Khan invests into PFL heavily so they can buy Bellator and becomes a majority owner in it all and running the shots.
 
ONE definitely has higher viewership than Bellator internationally just rationalizing their markets and strategy. I think people picking apart the "ONE is the most popular promotion in the world behind slap fight" overlook that it still is a promo that has been going around strong just as long as Bellator.

Living in Asia, while ONE is nowhere near a house hold name people do know what it is even if they're not hardcore MMA guys. No one in Asia really knows what Bellator is, even some of the folks in the MMA community don't know it too well.

Bellator and especially PFL are really niche. If Bellator had a better platform it would be more popular but at least during the Shotime era it's been pretty sow. DAZN didn't work out for them either though I feel like it had better presence back then.

I'm not sure if ONE is more popular than Bellator in USA but they're likely in the same tier of "who cares". They only started pushing into USA recently but I think they made a decent splash with the DJ trilogy. Bellator is bigger in Western Europe for sure. Asia, I think it's not a contest for ONE.
 
TorontoTO said:
I would believe ONE's viewership if Chatri wasn't a proven liar and if they were transparent about their viewership, but they hide it at every corner. Have we ever gotten any viewership stats, even from Chatri?
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As if the blatant bot’ing on other platforms isn’t enough to make people suspicious of ONE on ANY platform.

ONE always would hide the viewership numbers during live events on YouTube but in the chat you could see how many were watching and it always was super low.
 
If ONE has this great viewership and are a big name in Asia, why is there never anyone at their events? I respect that Rizin doesn't make these kind of wild claims, despite there been actual evidence that people attend and watch their fight cards
 
ReemAteMyPony said:
If ONE has this great viewership and are a big name in Asia, why is there never anyone at their events? I respect that Rizin doesn't make these kind of wild claims, despite there been actual evidence that people attend and watch their fight cards
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People go to ONE events at least when I went there. I'm not sure what you mean by no one is at their events, you mean like huge gate numbers? It's not ahouse hold name by any means, but they consistently promote in pretty big cities. Pre pandemic if you lived in Manila it would be hard not to see a ONE advertisement in some form considering the major malls were filled with their shows. Does that equate to a large audience? Probably not. Does it equate to a larger audience than people who watch Bellator? Probably... it's not a high bar at all.

I think ONE has OKAY presence in Singapore, Manila (at one point) and Bangkok (especially with them spamming Muay Thai there every Friday). In countries they don't go to where the MMA community is very small people are familiar with the product because if you want to get into MMA, where else would you go? No one in Indonesia or Taiwan is thinking of trying to fight for Bellator, for obvious logistical reasons. I feel like people aren't looking at middle ground here, it's not they're totally worthless no one watches it or everyone in the country is rushing home to watch it.

Anecdotally, I've been to many bars in Asia and when MMA is on the TV it is usually ONE, for rather obvious time zone reasons. I have never seen Bellator at a bar when in the United States. I've seen PFL and UFC, but Bellator just has a terrible TV deal for the modern era.

Rizin is way more focused and is backed by promoters with ties in that market for decades now, they also have stars that are bigger in Japan than anyone that is in ONE (plus they had Nasakawa fight on their cards). I think we as fans get things confused with the "goodness" of promotions fighters and how well ran these promotions are.

IMO Rizin is better ran than Bellator , PFL and ONE even if their fighters aren't as good as theres or they don't come off as a real sports league or whatever. They're more focused, they have stars with intangible factors that make them have mainstream popularity in their sector, they have a very long and dedicated relationships to the major venues and other major promoters.
 
TorontoTO said:
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If Bellator is kept by Viacom/Paramount, they just need an investor to buy part of it to infuse some cash in it. They have a solid base of champions, just need to spend on depth, promotion, more events especially in europe. there are periods where they dont have events for over a month and everyone forgets about bellator. Maybe Liberty Media, or some rich guy like Zuckerberg who is into MMA or Shaquille O Neal on a lesser scale.
 
mime said:
If Bellator is kept by Viacom/Paramount, they just need an investor to buy part of it to infuse some cash in it. They have a solid base of champions, just need to spend on depth, promotion, more events especially in europe. there are periods where they dont have events for over a month and everyone forgets about bellator. Maybe Liberty Media, or some rich guy like Zuckerberg who is into MMA or Shaquille O Neal on a lesser scale.
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Zuck follows Bellator and even messages guys like Sabatello, he is already more of a mma fan then 99% of mma fans
 
Kingz said:
This scenario doesn’t make much sense. Is this a pool purchase by a group of orgs that are supposed to be competitors? Sounds like bullshit.
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FWIW, Josh Thomson was adamant that his source in PFL said that if they'd buy Bellator, they'd only take certain fighters. It's why he was so heated about it. He didn't want all the fighters being out of jobs.

If that is the case, it's not out of the question the other contracts could be bought by other organizations. It's also a win for the UFC. Their acquiring fighters can't be seen as a monopoly if they are only a piece of it.
 
Terry_Dak_Tull said:
FWIW, Josh Thomson was adamant that his source in PFL said that if they'd buy Bellator, they'd only take certain fighters. It's why he was so heated about it. He didn't want all the fighters being out of jobs.

If that is the case, it's not out of the question the other contracts could be bought by other organizations. It's also a win for the UFC. Their acquiring fighters can't be seen as a monopoly if they are only a piece of it.
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I think UFC being even remotely involved with the purchase/dissolution of Bellator and the divvying up of their talent isn’t a win for them with that lawsuit going on. Even if supposedly another org is behind the purchase. I think they would steer clear of it. UFC isn’t really at that stage where they covet specific non UFC fighters enough to be involved in this. Not like in the PRIDE and SF days. Where the MMA world was still small enough for their to be a overwhelming demand for UFC to go after certain fighters.

if say PFL bought them, then UFC would just wait for them to release the fighters they didn’t want.

I don’t know if that tweet example was literally saying that Nemkov is going to ONE and Pitbull to UFC, or if it was just a straight ass pull example…but why would PFL want Bellator and then leave two champions? Including their best one?
 
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Kingz said:
I think UFC being even remotely involved with the purchase/dissolution of Bellator and the divvying up of their talent isn’t a win for them with that lawsuit going on. Even if supposedly another org is behind the purchase. I think they would steer clear of it. UFC isn’t really at that stage where they covet specific non UFC fighters enough to be involved in this. Not like in the PRIDE and SF days. Where the MMA world was still small enough for their to be a overwhelming demand for UFC to go after certain fighters.

if say PFL bought them, then UFC would just wait for them to release the fighters they didn’t want.

I don’t know if that tweet example was literally saying that Nemkov is going to ONE and Pitbull to UFC, or if it was just a straight ass pull example…but why would PFL want Bellator and then leave two champions? Including their best one?
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there's been a few grifters claiming to have inside info on this but so far everything seems like its been guesses with hopes they are right to gain clout or bragging rights. the only thing that seems consistent is what was reported by ariel saying there are/were potentially 3 bidders with pfl being at one point one of them. it does seem like something is going to happen though since the slow down in events and no events past the sept ireland event. I guess we just gotta wait and see.
 
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