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[ads2]A report from Loretta Hunt at Sports Illustrated stated that Bellator shows will be moving to Friday nights this fall:
To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week for Fight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.
Following a rare Saturday night launch on Sept. 7 — which will also double as Fight Master’s live finale – Bellator’s ninth season will settle into the 9-11 p.m. ET slot on Sept. 13.
Kay also openly admitted that Spike and Bellator does not want to compete directly with the UFC:
“I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC. I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario, you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.”
Now, TUF 18 will probably do very good numbers this season because of Ronda Rousey/Miesha Tate and the new format with guys and females on the show.However, Bellator should go head-to-head with them in my opinion. Can Bellator shows on Friday night score ratings comparable to the 862,000 average will airing on Thursday nights last season? Kay seems to think so:
“The Ultimate Fighter on Fridays was doing over a million viewers a week. I’ll take that, and with live fights, I think we’ll do even better. There’s a lot of young men at home across [the] 18-49 [age demographic]. Gold Rush on Discovery does 4 million viewers on Friday nights. [The viewers] are there. You just have to give them the right thing and I think live fights on Friday, without competition, is going to be the best place for Bellator.”
If Bellator couldn’t break a million viewers consistently on Thursday night with a TNA lead-in show, how in the world are they going to do that on a Friday night with no TNA lead-in show?
The fact of the matter is this isn’t a wise move at all when Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney just stated a couple of weeks ago that they are not in the game to be the number two organization behind the UFC. It’s a fact that they are the number two organization, and they have nothing to lose by going up against the UFC. Why are they are all of a sudden signing UFC veterans whereas that wasn’t the case in the past? If Bellator could average close to 862K they got last season while competing directly with the UFC, then they would gain more credibility and be perceived as more of a threat/competitor.
The other part to take a look at is the lack of support from Spike and Viacom. Tuesdays were ruled out because of “original Spike programming”, so do those shows blow the ratings out of the water on Spike TV? Probably not. Why couldn’t they be moved to Friday’s while allowing Bellator to air on Tuesday nights? Spike TV allowed the UFC to do air content whenever they wanted for the most part when they were business partners. Why not the same for Bellator?