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BELLATOR EXECUTIVE SAYS BELLATOR GOING TO SHOWTIME WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Bellator MMA aired their events over a multitude of networks over the years, including Spike TV, Paramount, CBS, Showtime and some others.

Mike Kogan, who was an executive at Bellator, says the promotions move to Showtime signaled the begging of the end for Bellator.

“I don’t want to point the finger at Showtime and say specifically, ‘Everybody else was in line to fall over to promote us and then Showtime was keeping us down.’ I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. I think Showtime was a dead network when we got there,” Kogan said on The MMA Hour. “And three months later, the CEO of Viacom comes out and goes, ‘Yeah, this is a dead network, we’re going to shut it down.’ So I think by virtue of where we ended up, it was kind of like the beginning of the end.

“We went from Spike being in 93 million households, down to CBS Sports, which was still in 54 or 55 million households, to a paywall with 25 million subscribers. That’s kind of going backwards, so that definitely didn’t help. I think Showtime might have tried to do whatever they can do, but there’s only so much they can do when they’re sitting behind a paywall and their subscriptions were dwindling down. So I don’t know that it’s Showtime per se. I just think in a corporate structure that is so multifaceted and has so many shows and so much product, we just kind of got lost, and we were just being ping-ponged around.”

The PFL recently acquired Bellator, but no broadcast home has been announced for either the PFL or Bellator in 2024.

Kogan also likes the idea of PFL and Bellator events being run separately from each other.

“I think it’s a smart decision [to keep Bellator separate], because you could always roll it in later,” Kogan said. “But Bellator, I believe, has a pretty good recognizable name, especially in European markets, which is where the PFL wants to run Bellator mostly. Like in Europe, we’re a known product. We’ve filled arenas in Paris and Milan, in London, in Dublin, Israel. So why get rid of it? Keep it. I think it’s a smart thing to do, and it shows that PFL is open-minded into seeing, ‘Hey, let’s see where this goes.’

“Also, I think from a strategic standpoint — and this is just my opinion, I don’t know what their view is, why keep it — PFL is kind of set in its format, right? There’s the preseason and season, championships, titles, we’re done, start over. There’s not much flexibility there. With Bellator being a brand that runs outside of that format, now you have some flexibility. Now you can create some interesting matchups and some fights that fans might want to see that you can’t do during the course of a season, so you’re kind of limited there. So maybe they’re trying to see how that might work and see what happens, I don’t know. But I think it’s a smart thing. I don’t think it’s stupid.”