Bellator
Scott Coker bullish on Bellator's future despite lower-than-expected ratings for "Dynamite 1" event on Spike
Sep 29, 2015 - 5:20:09 PM Scott Coker bullish on Bellator's future despite lower-than-expected ratings for "Dynamite 1" event on Spike

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Bellator's "Dynamite 1" event on Sept. 19 was promoted as one of their bigger "tent pole" events, a card which they hyped heavily due to its unique nature and three-tiered set-up. Unfortunately, the show drew just 800,000 average viewers to Spike.

However, Bellator President Scott Coker thinks that, despite this show coming under the 892,000 average viewership under his regime, it's part of the overall story of the year, which he believes has seen them moving in a positive direction.

"Well, listen, we had some heavy competition that night," Coker said of the ratings during an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. "Were the ratings lower than they were with Kimbo Slice? Yeah, they were. But I look at the ratings as an overall ratings for the year, and we're still up 34-percent from before I took the helm, and our paid attendance is up 78-percent since I took the helm a year and a couple months ago.

"So this is a brand that's definitely made a big change, and just the philosophy of working with the guys inside the company now has changed. Working with Viacom, that relationship has changed. Even with Spike, the relationship has changed. We're all on the same page, there's a lot of congruency here, and we're going to do a lot of great things. And think about this: it's only been a year, pretty much. Right? It's been a year, and we're doing some fantastic things here in mixed martial arts. Give me another year, give me two more years, we're going to make some good things happen."

Penick's Analysis: It had to have been at least somewhat disappointing for them given what they had on the card and what they probably expected coming in. Still, the right move is to focus on the positives as they move forward. There are things on which they can and need to improve upon, but they've certainly done some good things to garner the increases they've gotten. Of course, they're also still figuring out their identity as an MMA product, and so there's still some conflicting philosophies behind what they're trying to be. They've played the freak-show fight card with Kimbo-Shamrock, they've brought in and promoted names who have been big in the past but have varying levels of relevance in 2015, and they have a number of high level guys who may or may not be getting short shrift to those other interests because they're not already big names. These are all things that can be figured out, and the hope is that they'll continue to get a better sense of what works and what doesn't as they hit 2016 and beyond. "Dynamite 1" was an underperformer from what they likely hoped it would be, but it's not a condemnation of the entire product.