Ken Hershman leaves Showtime

...to become President of HBO Sports

http://ringtv.craveonline.com/blog/169616-hershman-to-be-hbos-sports-president

This is actually pretty big news yet 0 replies. Ken Hershman is definitely pro MMA taking charge of HBO sports that has generally been reluctant to bring in MMA.

It would be pretty big for any org to get on HBO. A few stars were built on just Showtime and HBO has a much more subscribers. That would be like an MMA org getting on Showtime times 2 or 3. Hopefully Ken brings MMA to HBO. Maybe Hershman being more up to date with what sports fans want is why they brought him in.

When i saw the thread title i first thought that there was some type of beef that led to him quitting Showtime..but it appears he just upgraded.

Also, in a way, i think this might improve the chances of Showtime extending Strikeforce or maybe scrapping MMA all together. Ken Hershman was the guy with aspirations of building a huge MMA org on Showtime..maybe now they'll be content with having the official farm league of the UFC a mainstay, or maybe they figure with two losses that it's time to take a break and focus more on boxing.

This certainly COULD be big for MMA. Or it COULD be the end of MMA on premium TV. Hope for the former, but I don't know enough about this guy, or the heads of HBO, or the remaining heads at showtime, to really speculate.


Only prob I see with HBO is, unless they could somehow steal Bellator, they would have to start from scratch. I know MMA is a growing sport, but small show stuff does not seem HBO's style.

And I still don't see how this saves SF on Showtime.

The only thing this does is sour the UFC to HBO, not that this matters in the Fox deal, and it also opens up Dana to working with Showtime. Dana helped with the WEC.

captain organic wrote:

This certainly COULD be big for MMA. Or it COULD be the end of MMA on premium TV. Hope for the former, but I don't know enough about this guy, or the heads of HBO, or the remaining heads at showtime, to really speculate.


Only prob I see with HBO is, unless they could somehow steal Bellator, they would have to start from scratch. I know MMA is a growing sport, but small show stuff does not seem HBO's style.

And I still don't see how this saves SF on Showtime.

True. HBO would probably demand something in the shape of SF before the purchase right off the bat. Showtime had a little more room to experiment while HBO has a lot going on. Plus, even EliteXC and Strikeforce started off with Shamrock who carries more name value than anybody on BFC's current roster.

It's still pretty interesting to know that there is a guy open to MMA now in charge of HBO Sports. That even if not soon, MMA will likely land on HBO sometime in the future, even if it's the distant future. HBO had been pretty stubborn about it while Hershman is an MMA fan and knows the potential in it.

I think we are looking at a few more years before MMA and more specifically MMA starts reaching multi-platform deals like football, baseball and basketball. I do think that the sport is about to really start grabbing new fans and soon we will be dealing with a whole new group of noobs who never heard of Royce Gracie, Yamma-pit Fighting or even Pride. But it will bring some much needed new blood to the sport.

Andrew the Raider King wrote:

I think we are looking at a few more years before MMA and more specifically MMA starts reaching multi-platform deals like football, baseball and basketball. I do think that the sport is about to really start grabbing new fans and soon we will be dealing with a whole new group of noobs who never heard of Royce Gracie, Yamma-pit Fighting or even Pride. But it will bring some much needed new blood to the sport.

Hopefully not here. When the last influx of noobs came in seemingly the day after UFC 100..we had to abandon ship at ESPN to NinjasPlace.

If Moeysplace is no longer around i'll be more than happy to start Kingsplace for the fallout.

Wolfsplace

WOW this is huge, Showtime just can't catch a break at all.

Great news for boxing fans.