NYT Story On UFC vs. Bellator!

The New York Times ran a story on the UFC vs. Bellator angle. The story noted that Ari Emmanuel did the negotiating for the TV deal with FOX. The deal was for $700 million over seven years. The story said UFC had gone to Spike wanting a 50 percent increase in rights fees (roughly $33 million to $50 million) plus UFC wanted 50% ownership of Spike TV, which was turned down. They said that Bjorn Rebney, when hearing that Spike was going to lose UFC, contacted the network. They ended up making a deal where Viacom purchase controlling interest in Bellator from Rebney and his investors for $50 million. The key is that Spike owns it, doesn’t pay a rights fee for it (although they do fund it) and if Bellator takes off, they don’t have to worry about escalating rights fees or losing it to a rival station. They also share in PPV money, merchandising and overseas deals, which they didn’t with UFC. Philippe Dauman, the President and CEO of Viacom, said that Spike built UFC from nothing. White called that line, “the most pompous, arrogant thing to come out of someone’s mouth.” A few weeks back, which must have been right after he heard Dauman said this, he cut a promo on Dauman pointing out how Spike takes credit for the vision in seeing UFC before anyone else did and building it when UFC only got on the air in 2005 as a time buy. However, Spike did put them in the perfect time slot, right after Raw, to establish them faster than they would have ever been able to if put somewhere else. White categorized Bellator going against UFC as equivalent to a high school football team going against the NFL.