This is huge. this is a sign that fox has given up on trying to bury the UFC on fuel and it's also a sign that more UFC content will be moving from fuel to fs1 (currently called speed which is available in 80 million homes).
I suspect UFC's mainstream growth in Brazil has contributed to this... I believe they will be using the significant amount of blue chip spnsors they are getting there (gillette, ford, etc...) to leverage deals in the north american market. And also Fox losing out on premiere league and other bids on sports properties, and the fact that they'll be launching their own national sports channel this summer (fs1) has placed tons of pressure on them to make the UFC work.
This Fox deal looks like it's turning out to be what everyone originally expected it to be and then some.
And with Dana mentioning that they could be with fox "even longer" than what they orginally agreed to, it sounds like there could be more UFC on fox shows which would decrease ppv events even further. Big fox likely wants 8 events a year or more (cbs wanted around 12).
Now that it looks like they've given up on fuel, I suspect Fox will launch it's own subscription network to compete with showtime/hbo and make use of their vast movie library and sports properties they can package as permium programming (including the UFC).
Chris27 - Great news all around, way more people will watch the prelims, they will go from doing 100k on Fuel to possibly close to a mill on FX.
Still not sure this means they are moving everything off FUel I just think they feel they get a better lead in for Fox shows by having prelims on FX.
I hope they do move all Fuel content to Fox Sports channel and or FX in the next year or so.
i dont know about moving everything off fuel. But Im sure the live content will be moved to fs1 and fx. I also believe in exchange fuel will get alot of other content from speed and other places.
yeah 150k on fuel versus 1mil on FX... that's a big leap in exposure.
slamming - It's astonishing how many people haven't transitioned over with the UFC from spike tv to FX/FOX.
only 4 shows on fox.... friday nights on fx... and fuel in 36 million homes.
Add to this, the fact that the fan base created alot of buzz for ufc on fox 1 and 2 which blew back in their face with their friends, unlces, and fathers making fun of them for watching this shit.
and all this this took place during a transition from one network to the other. Fox failed big time... switching networks is is a challenge in itself but fox created all these extra hurdles which was ridiculous.
