Earlier this week, Spike TV President Kevin Kay told Sports Illustrated that Bellator would be moving from Thursday to Friday nights in the fall season which begins in September.
The debut of Bellator on Friday nights on Spike TV will begin with the second show of the fall season on September 13th and the main card will air from 9 p.m. ET to 11 p.m. ET.
The kickoff the the fall season will take place six days before on Saturday, September 7th and will double as the live finale of Fight Master.
The move back to Friday night has nothing to do with what Bellator did on Thursday nights earlier this year but it has to do with the NFL being on Thursday nights in the fall according to Bellator MMA Chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney.
“I have been pretty straight forward about it and has Kevin,” Rebney told TheMMAReport.com. “Our demo, the demo that watches Bellator on Spike is almost duplicative of the demographic that watches the NFL. Now, that is a very good thing when you are talking to advertisers because its about the best demo on the face of the earth. It’s not a good thing when the NFL is going right up against you for nine of the eleven weeks that you are going to be doing fights.”
“There is no embarrassment in saying we made a strategic decision to get out of the way of the juggernaut that is the most successful televised sports event in the history of U.S. television, which is the NFL. We made a decision to get out of their way and the options were: we looked at Wednesday’s, we looked at Friday’s, we looked at Saturday’s and decided for a variety of reasons that we would go with Friday night. Friday night has typically been a combat sports night for many years in the U.S.”
The move to Friday night does not mean that this is a long term decision for the promotion and their television partner, Spike TV. Rebney stated that Thursday night was a good night for them but he does not want to battle the NFL for viewers.
“We will see how that goes. It doesn’t mean we are going to stay on Friday’s forever. It doesn’t mean that Friday is our new home for the long term but it does mean for the fall season, we will do great events and honestly I think its the most stacked tournaments we have ever had in Bellator. It’s going to be an amazing season. It has a huge number of new big names that we have obviously had some great acquisitions over the past couple of months. The talent development team has done a crazy job of acquiring new talent.”
“It wasn’t as if we all sat down and said ‘hey Thursday’s wasn’t the right night.’ Thursday’s were great for us. We were doing over a million viewers per event between the first run and the second run. It was a great night for us and Dixie [Carter]. TNA Impact was an incredible lead but you look at the NFL and that is a fighter that you don’t necessarily want to get in the cage with.”
In the past twelve months, Bellator has been on Friday and Thursday. The Summer Series will be on Wednesday and the first show of the fall season will be on a Saturday. Rebney is not concerned that he will lose viewers because of the change in date and time since they are not changing to a new channel like another organization is doing.
“I don’t have that concern. Look, we are on Spike. We like other in this space, we have not bounced from one network to another to another network and to a third. We are on Spike. That is our home and that is our long term home. A change of days I think Spike does an amazing job of promoting the show and directing viewers to exactly what time and what day to watch the show. But it is Spike and it is the home for MMA. I think fans will find it.”
“It will be interesting to see how it plays out and my hope is that we can maintain or enhance the amount of people that were watching our shows last season, which was great. It was a great way to kick off on Spike. I don’t have that concern. I would have that concern if we were transitioning from Spike to a different network but I don’t have that concern. Just moving date and times.”
Time will tell if the decision to move to Friday will work for Bellator and if they are able to have the same viewership that they had earlier this year on Thursday.