Chael p Sonnen was the one who did the rant that 2 things in this world need to be live… sports and news… I just ripped him off. If I’m wrong then he was wrong. In my personal opinion it loses its luster. It’s not all about the results. To be quite honest I don’t care as much about the results as much as I care about the atmosphere… which is greatly diminished if it’s not live.
I come from a world of getting plooked by the west coast tape delay screw job for decades… where everybody else in the USA gets it live except us… all these years of everybody in the USA getting the ufc live on spike except us getting plooked by 3 hours. This is a very specific type of plook job that only we get and believe me when I say there is a boiling point you reach that you wouldn’t understand unless you went through it.
Some areas don’t allow satellite dishes in the area so you have no choice but to use cable n get plooked by 3 hours. I die a little inside every time I see a delayed ball drop from Times Square on New Years with the lie “live” written right there on my screen. I would have rather watched it at 9 then passed out.
I suffered through getting plooked by spike tv with ufc tape delays for years and years even within America, while most other Americans were enjoying live ufc fights on spike.. we were getting fucked over by 3 hours. Tape delayed sports have become something personal to me over the years.
After years of putting up with what we did… you get a sick disgusted feeling in your gut anytime you hear about any sort of non live sports broadcast.
I understand with or without Covid sports with such time differences between countries can’t always be live. If one is doing live events in the USA when they can and taped fights between that would make it a good product overall but There has got to be something I am missing. Why do they need to be delayed as long as they are tho? The UFC put on live fights all through covid. I do believe I read they will air fights filmed in late February on may 15. Sorry if I am incorrect in that but I know they are showing at least a couple fights delayed as much as 2 weeks. Covid doesn’t really explain a 2 week delay on a heavyweight title fight to me.
The possible reasons I can think of is we know mma events rack the hours up and tnt obviously isn’t going to hand over a 6 hour time slot right off the bat on something risky such as mma. However that ONEFC time slot I saw was not even a full 2 hours. TNT gave them 90 minutes? That’s all they get? Aren’t these the people who insisted that nitro should be given a 3rd hour?
if you wanna say not completely ideal time slot situations isn’t ONEFC’s fault… well ONE still signed the deal did they not? …a deal with less minutes per week than 1 average mma event lasts by far. One knew darn well 90ish minutes to 2 hours wasnt long enough for a real live sports event, especially this sport. They trapped themself into a situation where they have no choice but to not be completely live even if they wanted to. One still agreed to the deal. They are the ones who trapped themselves into a TV deal that walls them into having to pick and choose which stars are worth lining up a live tv spot and who gets put on a delayed card. They could have had online streaming or gone just about absolutely anywhere. They are the ones who knew the minutes per week they agreed to is far less time than what’s expected of a mma event but agreed to the deal anyway. Ultimately the blame is with ONE.
the good news is if this really isn’t going to be the standard assuming we get over the covid hump and ONE’s hands are tied then we can expect these massively delayed fights to be phased out eventually… tho there still the issue of one knowing before hand that mma events last way longer than 90 minutes to 2 hours but they signed the deal anyway, thus forcing them into this weird experimental random release format that feels like 90s tape delayed wrestling and the ultimate fighter had offspring. That can not be blamed on covid. ONE elected the west coast tape delay screw job. You can’t blame that on covid either. That was a choice.
It’s ONE’s own fault that they now have no choice but to either not show most of the fights and then show the ones they could not fit on time live at a later delayed date. ONE just went and created a new low class of fighter. You had main eventer.. co main eventer, undercard main eventer etc all the way down to first person to walk out for the first early prelim… which was the previous lowest tier but now all thanks to ONEFC a new low just above non televised fighter has been created which is the “double digit number of days tape delayed fighter.” Ouch…
Of course there’s still the same old west coast tape delay issue.. where once again…. Most of the USA got 2 live one events on TNT but we got plooked by 3 hours… somethings never change … and the watch TNT app that is supposed to enable people in the west to stream it live without the 3 hour delay … is of course a buggy broken laggy nonfunctional broken mess that lagged me out constantly till I just gave up on it. Get a reliable app if you are going to bank on every western cable user who wants to watch one live depend on it. The ESPN app is unreliable but the watch tnt app is unusable… so even when one claims the USA is getting a live event on tnt… some of us are still getting plooked by 3 hours. Even if the app worked perfectly you still can’t use your DVR with it like the cable box. The west still gets the shaft as usual.
You will never understand our frustrations unless you have been getting west coast tape delay screw jobs for decade after decade and just when you thought it has finally been eradicated from your favorite sport for good… a company dedicated to come along and set the all time world record for longest delayed broadcast time in the history of a major international distribution deal tier mma league heavyweight title fight.
one knew darn well TNTs offer wasn’t enough minutes per week to allow for a normally expected live broadcasted sporting event for this particular sport but said yes anyway and that’s why we are in this mess. They’d have the same problem if they were based in the USA and they’d have the same problem if covid never happened. You can’t blame this on any broadcast times zones or covid.
Most Americans don’t watch tv at 3am. They’re trying to reach a broader audience on TNT, not the hardcore losers.
The casual broad audience aren’t watching week(s) delayed mma fights of fighters they haven’t heard of starting at 10pm for many of Americans… on a weeknight. “Hardcore losers” you speak of are the ones who would stay up till midnight on a weeknight to watch ONEfc or any mma at all that’s not ufc. The TNT app to see it live in the west is a broken unusable laggy piece of garb… so I get fucked by another 3 hours ontop of it all. 10pm on a weeknight is far from a casual viewer time slot.
The time slot ONE ultimately signed on the dotted line for isn’t much better than a 3am show. People where I live will be in bed either way.
The Casual broad audience you speak of only watch
ufc ufc and also ufc…. Aired on a weekend night… Not a work night starting as late as 10pm for many of the American target audience they went out of their way to makes fights non live in the first place.
Are these fights delayed in asia too to keep the secret… cause there is virtually no chance they didn’t just piss off people over there too. They all must be saying “You mean we have to wait now because of fuckin American? To hell with that!”
