Multiple sources have confirmed to MMAWeekly that Pride is planning to make its next pay-per-view event from Japan available in the United States on live pay-per-view for the first time in the promotion's history.
In the past, Pride's events in Japan have always aired on a tape-delayed basis on United States pay-per-view outlets. While this tape delay has been as short as 18 hours in many cases, it has also been a full week in other cases, or even a full month in the case of a few Bushido events.
Even when the tape delay was only 18 hours, many MMA fans wished that they could watch the events live and couldn't resist the temptation to read the results online before the U.S. pay-per-view debut.
Now, starting with the event that will be held in Japan on April 8th, Pride is planning on making its events available for live viewing on U.S. pay-per-view outlets. The events will still have numerous replays for fans who don't want to stay up late to watch the events live.
This is not unlike what HBO does with major boxing events that take place in Europe. For example, HBO will air the upcoming Wladimir Klitshcko boxing match from Germany live in the United States at 5:00 PM Eastern Time (which is 2:00 PM Pacific Time) and will then replay the fight in the U.S. in primetime with a 10:00 PM Eastern and Pacific start time.
Part of Pride's motivation for doing this stems from the fact that they lose money every time a fan watches an illegal Pride video online instead of buying the PPV.
However, the primary motivation for doing this is that Pride wants to cater to the U.S. market as much as possible, and offering its Japanese events on live U.S. pay-per-view is a big step in that direction.
This is great news, although it does seem like a reactive move a little too late in the ballgame. They should've done this a looong time ago. But better late than never.
Given that fights in Japan usually start at 5 or 6pm wouldn't that put the live showing time in the US at like 4 or 5am? Would there be enough buyers out there to justify this?
"Given that fights in Japan usually start at 5 or 6pm wouldn't that put the live showing time in the US at like 4 or 5am? Would there be enough buyers out there to justify this?"
tens of thousands of people stay up to read the results, I'm thinking many of them would buy the event as well.
This is great news to me! I have wanted this since I first was able to get Pride PPV's through my cable outlet (after Pride 25). I have wanted this and would love it even MORE if they would just air the Japanese broadcast! I don't know Japanese, but I'd like to see their show.
"Part of Pride's motivation for doing this stems from the fact that they lose money every time a fan watches an illegal Pride video online instead of buying the PPV."
The irony is that all the Pride trolls on here do that.
So.. would these Pride broadcasts show all the fights then, not the ridiculous number that some Pride broadcasts have shown? (Such as the Bushido where several keys fights were omitted to show on FSN, and how Pride always has several fights between two asian combatants that don't get shown.)
Dumb idea....I dont see how this can possibly up their ppv buys. If 10's of thousands of people stay up till 4 AM to READ the results live on the internet, Im sure the majority of those people can just as easily download the events 4 hours later from the net.
You are fooling yourself if you think 10s of thousands of MMA fans are staying up till 4 am to read text description of a fight, but don't have the means to download the event for free a few hours later from the same resource (internet).
No one is going to order a ppv and watch it at 4 am. lol at pointing to this thread and its supporters as evidence that people want it.