UFC terminates contract with Setanta Sports
By Jim Murphy June 23rd, 2009To the surprise of no one, being as the network is in bankruptcy and going off the air, the UFC has terminated its contract with UK affiliate Setanta Sports:
The UFC on Tuesday morning confirmed it has terminated its agreement with Setanta Sports.
The news as the troubled pay-TV broadcaster went into administration on Tuesday afternoon after losing TV rights to both English and Scottish Premier League football.
Setanta went off the air at 6pm BST on Tuesday evening.
UFC UK Division President Marshall Zelaznik said: “It was with great regret that the UFC ended its relationship with Setanta. Over the last two years, Setanta has helped the UFC become the biggest indoor sporting event in the British Isles.
“They were the right partner for us at the right time as we continued to build the sport of mixed martial arts and our brand.
“Throughout the last few weeks we have been kept informed of the situation at Setanta and therefore we are in a position to ensure our UK and Eire fans will not miss any of this summer’s huge UFC events, commencing with UFC 100 in July.
“We will be announcing the new home of UFC shortly but assure our fans they won’t miss any of the upcoming super-fights.”
June 24th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Whats the betting that it ends up being some huge money deal with Sky Sports? And we then have to shell out £40 -£50 each time we want to see the event!
June 24th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Whats the betting that it ends up being some huge money deal with Sky Sports? And we then have to shell out £40 -£50 each time we want to see the event!
Since that’s the UFC’s business model here in the US and its worked well for them I can almost guarantee that’ll be the case. Obviously it makes sense for Zuffa to do that from a revenue standpoint, but it’ll be interesting to see how many of the UK fans are willing to pull the trigger on PPV purchases. What’ll also probably happen is they’ll work to get more ‘free’ UFC programming on TV there–like ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ and ‘UFC Unleashed’ here in the states.
In the long term that’s the direction I guess a lot of sports and ‘niche’ content is going in and in some ways its a good thing. Here in the US there’s been a push by consumer groups for cable companies to offer ‘a la carte’ programming where I pay for networks I want and don’t pay for the ones I don’t need. For example, if I could knock a few bucks off of my cable bill each month for axing networks for women and small children sign me up. The cable companies have fought this tooth and nail, of course.
On the other hand, they love the idea of offering paid content to every obscure demographic and this is a trend that is likely to continue. For the most part, its a good thing–if I could take the money I save by not getting ‘Lifetime’ and get cricket and Japanese pro wrestling I’d be very happy.
Long story short–I can almost guarantee that the scenario you draw up is what will happen. If the UFC had more lead time after the Setanta demise what they would have probably done is put UFC 100 on PPV and hype the fact that its a historic event. They could gauge the response to that in the UK and go from there…
They do have one problem in the UK with getting as much revenue from PPV as they do here in the US–they’ll have to offer the events on a serious tape delay. It’s not too bad the other way around–for example, the recent UFC in Germany started at 12:00 noon here on the west coast of the US and that’s a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
But for an event that starts 7 PM Las Vegas time that would be like 2 or 3 AM GMT if I remember correctly. The really hardcore fans will be there–here in the US its kind of a badge of honor among hardcore Formula 1 or English Premier League fans that they get up to watch the events live. Of course the UFC would like to be more of a mainstream sport in the UK than F1 or EPL is here in the US. Maybe they could have a deal where if you buy the event you can watch it live at 2 AM and/or tape delayed the next night for the same charge. Then the question becomes whether the mainstream fans will pay to watch an event that they can easily get results for (if not find pirated videos of) for free on the Internet.
I do think they’ll be doing some version of a PPV deal as you describe, but there’s definitely issues involved. It’s not quite as simple for them as throwing it up on Sky Sports and watching the money flow in.