WSOF-NBC Sports Full Story!

NBC Sports (formerly Versus) has signed a three-year deal with the Las Vegas-based World Series of Fighting Organization for six shows per year.

The WSOF ran a debut show on 11/3, from Las Vegas, broadcast on NBC Sports. The show was a time buy. Numbers were significantly lower than the station used to get with the WEC, let alone what they were doing in 2011 with UFC. The 198,000 viewers, while lower than the 270,000 that boxing averaged on the station (and way below WEC, which ranged from 300,000 to 1.44 million), is still a higher number than all but a few events that the station carries. 

To their credit, going in, between all the expenses of signing fighters, having to run in a city where they had little shot at selling a lot of tickets, and buying their way onto TV, they went deep in the hole financially. The only way to make it today in MMA unless you are UFC, unless you’re doing small shows and paying fighters nothing, is to get a TV deal that covers costs. Since NBC Sports, as Versus, had a history with both WEC and later UFC, they are used to paying a certain level for shows. As we’ve seen with plenty of companies, even when having a TV deal that pays, they manage to spend far more than that deal pays and wind up out of business. The key here is to keep costs below that number, but have enough in the way of name fighters to at least draw an audience. Their first show was entertaining, but in running Saturday nights they are going to be running head-to-head frequently with UFC events. 

This new deal begins with a show on 3/23 from Atlantic City at the Revel Casino, with a scheduled main event of Anthony Johnson vs. Andrei Arlovski. Johnson and Arlovski were both winners on the first show and the two biggest names with the promotion. Johnson fought at welterweight in UFC, but missed weight on a few occasions, and then moved to middleweight, where he also missed weight. He fought as a light heavyweight in the first WSOF show. Johnson was gigantic fighting 170-pounders, as he’s about 208 in shape, or the size of a normal middleweight. He would be way undersized as a heavyweight, although Arlovski hasn’t been a top level heavyweight in years. 

It’s going to be tough since virtually all the marketable talent is in UFC, and most of the second level of talent is in Bellator. Just the fact that they had to put their two biggest stars, from different weight classes, together for a first show main event makes me wonder about the matchmaking going forward. Johnson would be in UFC, but was fired for missing weight on too many occasions. 

Other matches announced for the first show are Marlon Moraes, who beat Miguel Angel Torres on the first show, facing Tyson Nam, who beat Bellator’s bantamweight champion Eduardo Dantas, on a non-Bellator show on 8/25 in Rio de Janeiro; former UFC fighter David Branch vs. former WEC champion and Pride star Paulo Filho; former UFC fighter Josh Burkman vs. Ryan LaFlare and former Dream star J.Z. Cavalcante vs. Justin Gaethje, plus Igor Gracie will appear.

The deal was said to have been completed a few weeks ago but wasn’t officially announced until 2/4.