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Yea they make money, but they turn away casuals. Casuals then are more willing to watch other promotions like Belletor. It allows their competition to grow. Bellator used to be complete shit. Now they are getting some good fighters and more attention. Give it 4 years, where will they be then when they have more people watching, more advertisers are buying big dollars to fighters, and they become a real threat like Pride.
I say they should change it to grow the fanbase massively while crushing the competition. What star football player says "You know I like the NFL but the Canadian league seems like a good idea, I'll go join them." None. Yet the UFC has constantly had competition that either matched them or nearly caught up to them. StrikeForce champs became UFC champs. Pride was long said to have better fighters (not saying they did or whatever, but that was the battle on these boards for a long time). Every time the UFC cuts the head off the hydra 2 more heads pop up. Kill the Hydra, don't cut a head off. Become the only show people want to watch. Easier said then done perhaps, but if they can somehow put all their content on Fox, make enough to pay the fighters better than Bellator will, it would crush all competition for good. What are you going to watch for sports, the UFC on fox free, a premium league for free, or pay for a lower level leagues PPV? The casual fan won't even bother with Bellator, they'd just laugh and say there is no chance theyll buy something they can get for free. So now low level orgs only get money from advertising, their is no chance they can pay their fighters anything near what the UFC will be able to with their massive fanbase and much higher advertising money. The UFC should then demand Rebok increase their sponsorship cash 10X what it is now easily because far more people will be watching fox and UFC will transform itself into the be all end all MMA organization. Right now they are, but as we have seen over and over lesser orgs keep growing. What if Bellator continues growing, puts on their own ppv's, allows fighters to make 100k on sponsors while the ufc pays 2500 and Viacom laughs at the ufc when they try to buy them out? Not saying this would be the worse thing to happen short term, it would be great for fighters short term. But long term it just leads to more and more splintering and then we end up with one fighter making 100 mil and 99.9% or other fighters making less then what they make now in the ufc.
