Bellator Inks TV Deal

The next time a fighter sinks a dramatic submission or scores a big knockout in the Bellator Fighting Championships, the video clip might be much more than just a YouTube sensation.

The nascent promotion promises to return to television in April in impactful fashion, as it will launch its second season with three new broadcasting deals in place. The promotion’s events will air live on Fox Sports Net on Thursdays in English, and highlight shows will air on the prominent Telemundo network in Spanish and the NBC network.

The announcements put the promotion, headed by former ESPN boxing producer Bjorn Rebney, in a good position to raise its profile after an inaugural season that aired on ESPN Deportes, which has limited availability. The new television deals also cover Bellator’s third season, expected to start in August. Bellator’s champions will compete in super fights on the second season, which will also include featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight tournaments. Those tournament winners will face the champions in season three.

With the deals, Bellator appears to have filled voids on networks that had become accustomed to airing MMA. Fox Sports Net aired weekly International Fight League events in 2006 and 2007, and NBC saw strong ratings with half-hour, late-night packages of Strikeforce fights. It was not clear if Bellator’s NBC deal, which puts its fighters in front of some 112 million eyeballs, will take the place of the Strikeforce series, which was launched before the company signed on with Showtime and reached a deal to broadcast live on CBS. One potential pratfall exists. The Fox Sports Net deal creates a likelihood that Bellator shows will be regularly preempted in markets where FSN carries local pro sports games in prime time.

Perhaps equally significant is the reach the Telemundo deal allows. The network is second only to Univision in terms of reach into the Spanish-speaking domestic market. By virtue of its ESPN Deportes deal, Bellator is stocked with fighters of Hispanic heritage, including champions Eddie Alvarez, Joe Soto and Lyman Good.