Nearly nine months in the fight business, and George Burger is still without a fight name. Something menacing, like “The Assassin” or “Killer,” would be at odds with his easygoing demeanour, although the president and CEO of The Fight Network does have a handshake-an efficient one pump affair, mercifully-that could be his signature submission move. He’s also pretty darned tall. And that surname has definite potential: “The Big Cheese” perhaps?
Frankly, thinking of a name hasn’t been a priority for the one-time Alliance Atlantis executive since arriving at The Fight Network in September. He’s been too busy plotting the three-year-old channel’s evolution from a small Canadian startup into a global brand. It established a U.K. beachhead earlier this year by purchasing The Wrestling Channel (subsequently rebranded The Fight Network U.K.), and in addition to proposed joint venture agreements in both the Netherlands and Germany, the channel is also “actively pursuing” carriage deals with cable/satellite operators in Australia and New Zealand. “We’re planting the flag in one territory after another,” says Burger.
All of which is a mere prelude to the main event: cracking the U.S. market. In June, the network hired “cable heavyweight” Nory LeBrun as executive vice-president of U.S. affiliate sales and marketing. He’s charged with getting The Fight Network into 40 million U.S. homes within three years, a key part of its overall objective of 100 million homes worldwide by 2012.
LeBrun, who operates a company called Two Blue Rhino, has previously secured pre-launch financing and carriage deals for several major specialty services, including CNN, CNN Headline News, the Food Network and, most recently, the Gospel Music Channel (which now boasts 40 million subscribers in its third year of operation). Speaking via telephone, waiting to board a flight home to Atlanta after “three good meetings” regarding The Fight Network in New York, LeBrun likens the upstart channel to the Food Network back in 1992.
“I remember taking a call from the guys who were starting [the Food Network]. They wanted me to come work with them, and I said ‘Are you guys crazy? 24/7 food? Isn’t there enough of that on public broadcasting?’ Then I realized how big the advertising market was, and that people were starting to eat out more, cook a lot more. It really made sense that there was a 24/7 destination [for foodies].” By the same token, he argues, the smattering of fight coverage-particularly the rapidly growing discipline of mixed martial arts (MMA)-offered by U.S. channels like Versus, Spike, BET and Fox Sports World is nowhere near enough to satiate fight fans’ appetites.
“There’s universal knowledge of the need to address this particular sport on a 24/7 basis,” he says. “No one has said ‘I’m not going to take a meeting with you, we have plenty of [fight programming] on a part-time basis on four or five other networks.’ The cable operators and the telecom operators and the DBS people, they know this is a demographic, an audience and a business that they have to address.” LeBrun suggests that The Fight Network could have a carriage deal in place with a U.S. cable/satellite company by the end of the year and no later than the first quarter of 2009.
Global domination might seem a tall order for a niche service with no deep-pocketed media conglomerate in its corner, but nobody gave Rocky much of a chance against Apollo Creed either. In fact, says Burger, what distinguishes The Fight Network from other sports channels dabbling in combat sports is right there in its marketing slogan: “All fights all the time.” “Right now, we stand as the only [media] brand in the world that focuses on fight sports,” he says. “The Fight Network has a potential market in almost every territory in the world.”
And like any 21st century media company, its product offering encompasses more than its broadcast operations. There’s a recently revamped website, TheFightNetwork.com; a Sirius Satellite Radio channel called Fight Network Radio; and a syndicated call-in radio show, Live Audio Wrestling (The LAW), which airs on terrestrial radio stations in Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver every Sunday. There’s also a small merchandising arm, plus mobile content offered through Canadian carriers Telus and Bell Mobility, as well as Sprint, Cingular and Verizon in the U.S. The mobile suite is comprised of “Fantastic Finishes” (the last two minutes of a fight), “Knockout News Hits” and “Knockout Girls.”
“We’re completely platform neutral,” says Burger. “We look at those elements [TV, radio and mobile] as essentially concurrent. They feed each other.” And, he adds, The Fight Network’s three main content pillars make it accessible to a broad audience: Its wrestling content appeals to preteen and teen viewers, its MMA programming is a draw for the 18- to 34-year-old crowd, while boxing pulls in the 25- to 49-year-olds. “We’re providing access to these three diverse demographics,” Burger says. “It’s a great edge for us because [we’re] not overly dependent on one particular category.”
But with roughly 45% of The Fight Network’s content dedicated to MMA (35% is devoted to boxing and the remainder to wrestling and other sports like kickboxing), the sport that was once infamously called “human cockfighting” by U.S. senator turned presidential hopeful John McCain, is clearly the cornerstone of the network.
A hybrid of various martial arts disciplines, MMA is touted as America’s fastest growing sport. And while it may not be the anything-goes blood sport that its detractors portray it as, it is a contest where offences like fish hooking (colourfully described in one set of rules as “inserting body parts such as the fingers into bodily crevices such as the mouth or nose”), small joint manipulation, eye gouging and intentionally kicking to the kidney area are punishable not by immediate disqualification, but a warning.
Not surprisingly, in a world where a Google search for fight videos produces a raft of websites bearing names like GorillaFights.com, FightingFools.com and FightingVideos.org, MMA is big business. A recent cover story in Forbes magazine, “Ultimate Cash Machine,” focused on the Las Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)-which, much like wrestling counterpart WWE, has become synonymous with the sport. On the verge of being counted out when it was bought by casino moguls Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta for $2 million in 2001, UFC is now valued at $1 billion and is said to account for as much as 90% of all MMA revenue.
It has also spawned a series of competitors. One, ProElite, recently signed a multi-year broadcast deal with the American network CBS, bringing the expressions “rear naked choke” and “ground and pound” to middle America. The first prime-time Saturday broadcast of ProElite’s EliteXC fight division attracted 2.7% of U.S. households according to media reports. While that was down from the 4.1% of households that regularly tuned in for the network’s “Crimetime Saturday” block, ratings among males 18-34 were up a whopping 271%. And, wow, guess what audience advertisers are forever complaining they can’t reach through traditional media?
Right now, advertising is The Fight Network’s only apparent weakness. It attracted a mere $346,000 in ad revenue in 2007, up from $329,000 the previous year. By comparison, Leafs TV, despite having 100,000 fewer subscribers than The Fight Network (287,845 for Leafs TV versus 381,182 according to 2007 CRTC documents), attracted $2.3 million in advertising last year. (On July 23, The Fight Network laid off eight people in what Burger called “a bit of a rationalization” he says was not linked to its financial performance).
Sam Vaccaro, associate broadcast manager with MediaCom in Toronto, says the network’s content is too edgy for most mainstream advertisers. “Because of the graphic and sometimes violent nature of its programming, it’s not the right environment for the majority of our advertisers,” he says.
Burger contends the network has a “more than reasonable” amount of advertising, and Chad Midgley, VP of new-media sales and merchandise, says it recently signed 12-month contracts with clients including MVP Nutrition, Cintron Beverage Group (a maker of energy drinks), equipment manufacturer Everlast and the Canadian magazine Naked Eye. Major marketers remain conspicuously absent, though Midgley says the network is encouraged by recent U.S. sponsorship deals with UFC by the likes of Burger King and Bud Light. “All those companies that six months ago wouldn’t touch the product, the UFC has opened those doors and we’re back at the table with a lot of those companies,” he says.
Right now, though, Burger wants to talk ratings. Striding over to his computer, he calls up a Nielsen Media Research ratings report from the week of June 16 that shows The Fight Network with an average minute audience of 1,400. That’s up to 500 from 300 a year ago, he brags, and tops among a group of 11 digital sports channels that includes well-branded, well-financed entities like the NHL Network, Leafs TV, Raptors NBA TV, Fox Sports World Canada and ESPN Classic. As of July 20, the network had finished in the top three among the group of 11 channels for 15 straight weeks.
“These are all well-known brands,” says Burger. “Among all of them, we’re the top-rated. Regardless of whether the Leafs are on or not [a portion of the NHL team’s regular-season games are now carried on Leafs TV], we’re always among the top two or three. And sometimes we’re in first place.” Plus, he adds, rival networks like Fox Sports World typically have more than twice as many subscribers (Fox Sports World had 992,643 subscribers as of 2007 according to the CRTC).
Counters Vaccaro: “Even though you’re trying to reach that younger male target, how much can you really get on a station that’s still very small in terms of overall audience?”
For their part, MMA promoters like Montreal’s TKO Championship Fighting are thrilled to have The Fight Network in their corner. “The Fight Network is covering MMA like it should be covered by every other network,” says TKO president and CEO Stephane Patry. “The emergence of networks like The Fight Network that support MMA is playing a big role in the growth of our sport, [but] I think the biggest challenge for us is being covered like hockey, boxing and the other major sports.”
TKO stages five promotions a year throughout Quebec, drawing crowds anywhere from 10,000 and 12,000 people to arenas like Montreal’s Bell Centre.
The events are also carried on pay-per-view and the French-language sports channel RDS, while Patry recently signed what he describes as a “mega deal” with French conventional broadcaster TQS to show MMA events during Friday prime-time beginning Sept. 5. (A monthly show, to be called TKO Friday Night Fights Live, is planned for 2009.) TKO broadcasts on RDS currently attract about 150,000 viewers, says Patry, and he expects the TQS broadcasts to attract as many as 800,000 people. “It’s a huge step for us,” he says of the broadcast deal. “It’s going to mean for TKO what [U.S. broadcaster] Spike meant for Ultimate Fighting Championship. Spike is the one that started it all; it’s the biggest boost MMA ever got.” Spike and UFC renewed their broadcast deal, which includes UFC fights and The Ultimate Fighter reality show, late last year.
The Fight Network’s footprint includes roughly 470,000 households in Canada now, says Burger, and another 8.5 million in the United Kingdom, where it is carried free-to-air on BSkyB. The service is distributed on major cable and satellite services in Canada, including the Vidéotron and Cogeco cable networks in the fight-hungry Quebec market-where there is also an application before the CRTC for a French-language counterpart called Le Reseau de Combats.
Contributing to the subscriber growth was a much-discussed 2007 campaign from Cossette Communication Marketing that featured a bespectacled “Joe Average” trying to pick fights with everyone from parking lot attendants to construction workers. “Bet you guys can’t wait to get home and kiss each other. A lot,” he taunts construction workers in one spot. “Does this bus go to your mom’s house,” he asks a burly guy waiting for the bus in another. “Because I’m going to go have sex with her and she hates it when I’m late.” (Lest the spots inspire viewers to mimic such limb-endangering behaviour, a disclaimer appears at the bottom of the screen: “Dramatization. Do not attempt.”) The ads appeared on local avails on U.S. cable channels like CNN and Spike, and earned Cossette a Gold Lion in the film category at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes last year.
To Burger, the campaign underscores The Fight Network’s willingness to spend on the product, whether through high-profile ad campaigns or program investments. “We’re spending well beyond what a typical Category 2 [channel] would spend in Canada [including $1.6 million on programming in 2007 according to CRTC], but I think it’s obvious we’re not a typical Category 2 channel,” he says. “We’re building the basis for a worldwide operation. The only challenge for us is to make sure we build revenues, because we have a really great handle on costs.”
He later adds: “We believe, rightly or wrongly, that there is an extremely substantial upside. This is a global brand, not a Canadian brand.”
Just call him “The Optimist.”
