Bellator in trouble?

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/11/8/1802082/rumour-bellator-finances-about-to-go-way-down-south

# I really wish I wasn't the bearer of bad news. Bellator has kept me thoroughly entertained since the summer of 2009. However, things with Bellator are starting to 'hit the fan'. As of this morning, Bellator does not have a television deal to air their season four tournament scheduled for the beginning of 2011. Negotiations with G4 supposedly fell through around the time DirecTV decided to drop the channel from their lineup.

# Each Bellator show costs the organization around $400,000. A fee of $65,000 is paid to NBC (similar to what the IFL did) to broadcast regionally in hopes that NBC will pick up the program for a national time slot. They make roughly around $20,000 from sponsors per show which still leaves them in a substantial hole that gets deeper with every week of Bellator broadcasts.

# The hedge fund investing in Bellator understood they would take a loss when the organization was created, but with season three wrapping up, they are just not happy with the financial results thus far.

# Bjorn Rebney has given away a substantial portion of his share in Bellator away to investors solely for them not to 'pull the plug' on Bellator.

# Hence, one of the reasons why Bjorn has been pushing for an Eddie Alvarez vs. Gilbert Melendez fight is to not only garnish interest for Bellator, but if Eddie defeats Gilbert, Bjorn can then use that as leverage for his investors.

Doing some rough calcuations Bellator could be as much as $13,500,000 in the hole, now I have no idea what FSN pays them but I doubt it's significant enough to cover those losses and fighting a lawsuit from Zuffa is not cheap just ask Ken Shamrock and the large legal bill he's trying to pay off.

If these rumours ring true it leaves a large number of fighters with uncertain future's. Eddie Alvarez would draw the most attention with the both the oft-mentioned Melendez fight and Dana White recently admitting that he is a fan. Cole Konrad, Hector Lombard and Ben Askren would draw interest from both the UFC and Strikeforce while the UFC would be only realistic option for Joe Warren and Zach Makovsky.

Now I again stress that these are rumours and may come to nothing but if Bellator does indeed fold I wish the fighters the best and hope that something can be learned from this.

Sad if true, Bellator was doing a solid job and had the second best production in the business. I'm not gonna lie, I'd like to see all their top fighters go to the UFC, I'd say Warren, Pitbull and Soto would def now that the WEC merged, then Eddie would be great, and Lombard, Askren and Konrad all very solid adds.

Well, if this article is accurate, it sounds like Bellator is pretty much finished. No TV deal for season 4. Almost 14 million in the hole. Consistantly shitty attendance in small venues. It sounds like a situation where the UFC or Strikeforce/Showtime will end up picking up the peices.

It would be a shame. Bellator has done a great job introducing new talent that can be among some of the best in the world in the future and I love their tournament model. I hope they find a way to stay afloat.

sad to hear i men read

They would add great depth to Strikeforce.

freakzilla316ftw wrote:

They would add great depth to Strikeforce.

It would be huge for SF if they could land some of those fighters, I don't want to see Bellator go under, but yeah even if they just got Eddie it would be huge for them.

Well Strikeforce is valued at around $100 million. They could eat that and buy the whole organization and that would greatly add to their depth, which is not good.

wtf is up with the china avatar?

http://mmajunkie.com/news/21336/bellator-exec-blasts-reports-of-impending-demise-says-new-tv-deal-official-soon.mma
To say that Bjorn Rebney disagrees with a recent report describing the impending demise of his fight promotion would be a slight understatement.

In fact, the Bellator Fighting Championships founder and CEO says the report is lacking one vastly important factor: the truth.

"Usually, when you see rumors that are completely ridiculous, they're coupled with something that's true," Rebney told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "In this instance, it's false on top of false on top of completely ridiculous on top of completely unfounded."

A weekend report on MiddleEasy.com outlined a series of issues Rebney and Bellator were said to be currently facing. Among the concerns were the lack of a television deal, angered investors looking to "pull the plug" on the promotion and a desperate need to arrange a long-discussed bout between Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez and his Strikeforce counterpart Gilbert Melendez as a last-ditch effort to save the company.

Wrong on all accounts, says Rebney.

"Either it's someone just starting rumors for the sake of starting rumors, or it's just the most ridiculous type of amateurish nonsense," Rebney said of the report. "I don't even like to call it journalism because it has no connection to reality.

"That blog, whoever that is that wrote that, is just so filled with nonsense. It's completely, unequivocally untrue on every front they wrote. It's literally as if someone stepped out and just said, 'I'm going to create whichever fantasy I choose to create, and I'm going to write it.' There wasn't even the slightest hint of accuracy or truth in anything that showed up on that blog.

"It's the downside and the negativity of the Internet. Any idiot can write any ridiculous, completely unfounded nonsense thing, and it can gain traction."

there is alot more to it I didn't copy and paste.

Could be a dumb rumor, but I think Rebney is a semi-shady character just trying to save face here. Something about that guy...

Oh man, sounds just as bad as Affliction collapsing

Not as bad, they were way overpaying fighters on top of losing money on every show

LA wrote:

Not as bad, they were way overpaying fighters on top of losing money on every show

Making 20k on a 400k show on top of paying 65k to have to air your cards is very bad

That's just from sponsors

hope they stay around, but I have a feeling they won't be around in 2012.

IF the report is to be believed. They didnt really offer a true source to their information and i've personally seen a lot of garbage posted on middleasy and bloody elbow.

Affliction never had a chance. There were fighters on the preliminary card making main event money.

KingsOwn19 wrote:

IF the report is to be believed. They didnt really offer a true source to their information and i've personally seen a lot of garbage posted on middleasy and bloody elbow.

Affliction never had a chance. There were fighters on the preliminary card making main event money.

Yup, Timmy making like 800k in the Fedor fight

Lol 250k for Lindland and 1.5 million for AA

KingsOwn19 wrote:

IF the report is to be believed. They didnt really offer a true source to their information and i've personally seen a lot of garbage posted on middleasy and bloody elbow.

Affliction never had a chance. There were fighters on the preliminary card making main event money.

same here

I don't know about the rest of the stuff, but as of now, Bellator does not have a TV deal, their last TV deal was severly lacking, and one of their recent shows drew about 900 people.

Of coarse it's pretty much standard procedure to question the viablity of any non UFC organization, wether founded on solid ground or not.

And conversely Bjorn could very much be doing damage control with his strong retort.

It would be very interesting to see where the fighters went if indeed they fold.

My dream sequence would involve the UFC buying Bellator and using it as a developmental league as the WEC was used. Now that the WEC is inside the UFC, the UFC could use another developmental brand. Stick em back on VS, do weekly tournament shows just like they did. They could roll out FW this way, build the division, and later absorb into the UFC. If they kept the womens fights and FlyW, then they would have a similar hook to the WEC, in that they may not be "UFC" but it's the same company with the world champion in a weight class the UFC doesn't have.

I would love to see TUF have live fights on FSN for their tournys.