It was announced with great fanfare last week that the UFC had brokered a deal with the Fox Network that would have them televising four live cards a year. Yes, Fox, not Fox Sports Net, but the channel that brings you the NFL, Major League Baseball and ?The Simpsons.? Fox has come a long way since the days of ?Married with Children? and ?The Garry Shandling Show? and the UFC has come a long way since the days of small underground and unsanctioned cards. Their first telecast takes place on November 12th, which just happens to be the same date as Manny Pacquiao?s pay-per-view bout against Juan Manuel Marquez.
Of course, this set off the immediate debate of just how much this ?free? UFC show would affect the pay-per-view figures of Top Rank and the ?Pac-Man.? It turns out, perhaps not too much.
Bob Arum, CEO of Top Rank, told Maxboxing last Friday afternoon, “Well, I thought we?d be going head-to-head with them and therefore, it would be a huge battle but instead, it?s a pretty good situation. They?re going to go- and I?m using Pacific time- and show two of their fights from six to seven on Fox and then start our telecast at six o?clock but Manny doesn?t go into the ring until about 8:30. So they?re going to direct people over to the pay-per-view and those are people that we wouldn?t ordinarily attract because there?s very little overlap between UFC [and boxing]. So we have the opportunity now to pick up, with their help, a good number of the UFC fans.”
For years, Arum, among others in boxing, spoke optimistically about returning the sport to the terrestrial airwaves, where they once played to huge audiences on networks like of CBS, NBC and ABC. As they eventually made the deal with the devil and started paying the huge license fees of the premium cable networks like HBO and, later, Showtime, the sport has become more and more marginalized to the fringes with fewer transcendent stars in recent years.
When asked about the UFC deal, Arum commented, “The real problem is that they took a network deal which doesn?t pay them nearly as much as premium television does and so, yeah, we would like to be on network television but certainly not have that as an exclusive deal which they?ve done. In other words, you look closely at this deal, only four of their shows a year and there just one-hour shows on network television.” The veteran promoter pointed out that the UFC will still keep their best match-ups on pay-per-view. “So four times a year, they?ll be doing a show on Fox, which is pretty good but they had to give them an exclusive in order to do it.”
