Professional Fighters League (PFL) recently acquired Bellator MMA and repackaged the long-running mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion as Bellator Champions Series. The schedule gets underway with Bellator 302 on March 22 at SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Bellator 302 marks the first of eight Bellator Champions Series cards scheduled for 2024.
“We could have called it PFL, but Bellator has a lot of brand equity,” Davis told MMAmania.com. “When you look at the schedule and who’s fighting on them, two title fights for every event, it will be better than every UFC event that’s not pay-per-view (PPV), which are great. If you just tune into Saturday on ESPN, every Bellator Champions series is a better card because there’s such an excess of top talent that could not participate in the PFL season with our Bellator acquisition. So, we’re very committed to that. We think that’s going to be the right model. We think that’s what the market is telling us in terms of media companies, in terms of fighters, in terms of the right approach. But we just reimagined this product. The first one is March 22nd. I think it’s gonna be great.”
UFC has been running weekly “Fight Night” cards at the oft-maligned APEX.
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Sure, sure… those awesome distracting real-time stats of useless information on screen alone will surely put the nail in the UFC’s coffin…
Why even mention the UFC? Sell us your product as a stand alone.
Likely because they know none of the average viewers would know what PFL even is without likening themselves to the UFC…I agree with your point, he should promote his own product, without name dropping UFC, he just knows it won’t work to attract new viewers without it
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PFL has been making some major moves over the last few months. In addition to acquiring Bellator MMA, Davis and Co. recently inked a multi-year streaming deal with ESPN. That said, there was still some concern about how well the PFL vs. Bellator card would perform in Riyadh with no existing precedent.
“We didn’t even know how the tickets would sell but it sold out,” Davis continued. “It’s like in the United States, sometimes we go to a market, it’s a new MMA market, sometimes we don’t sell out. UFC will always sell out, but we won’t sell out. Here we sold out. So I think people are interested, it’s a huge card. I think MMA is still just starting its growth. We thought the card would do really well, globally, but locally? Will it sell out or not sell out? You don’t wanna throw a party and have no one show up.”