Earlier this week it was announced that Strikeforce closed a deal with Shine International in an effort to expand into the global market. According to the Strikeforce's February 2, 2010 press release, "Virgin Media Television’s Bravo in the UK, Turner in Latin America, FX in Portugal, Ukraine’s Megasport, Seven Network Australia and Dahlia TV in Italy have all purchased STRIKEFORCE’s library of TV programming." This is a big move spanning across Europe, Australia and Latin America for the American based promotion that currently finds itself #2 behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship. This deal is not as robust as the UFC's deal with Flash Entertainment as Strikeforce has sold it's library of footage and rights to air the next two years worth of live fight cards, but currently do not have any public plans to host events outside of the states.
Strikeforce is starting to play ball. They have the best heavyweight (and possibly the best p4p) fighter in the world in Fedor Emelianenko, Cris "Cyborg" Santos, Dan Henderson, and a number of fighters people want to see. Combine Strikeforce's growing talent pool with this new and relatively broad international television distribution deal, and you have a company looking to make sure that their brand is viable as mixed martial arts makes a run toward being one of the biggest sport in the world.
This type of expansions is smart because there is very little that Strikeforce has to do programing wise. From what has been made public there are no clauses that add extra fight cards to Strikeforce's schedule. It is just a sale of content and future programing rights. In order to make the best use of this deal Strikeforce needs to make sure all of it's champions are undisputed (if possible) and actively defending their titles. (Alastair Overeem especially!) If this can happen, Strikeforce could be come the promotion of choice for a number international MMA fans who want consistent programing with a fair amount of title defenses. The UFC on the other hand has so many stars that it is easy for them to have a major event that people want to see with out any title defenses. Strikeforce does not quite have this luxury at the moment. (Challengers events not withstanding.)
As far as current promotion supremacy goes, the UFC is still far and away on top. Last weeks Strikeforce: Miami event on Showtime sported a total viewership of approximately 517,000 people. This is only one-forth the amount of viewers that watched the UFCs free counter programming rebroadcast of UFC:107 Penn vs. Sanchez on Spike TV which had over 2,000,000 viewers. So, Strikeforce is in the ring, but at the moment they are Sanchez (a great fighter) and the UFC is Penn (currently dominant).
The payouts for Strikeforce Miami seemed a bit more competitive than usual with Nick Diaz and Robbie Lawler making $100,000 for their winning performances. These kind of base payouts will make Strikeforce more attractive to very well known fighters (but, not mega stars) who for one reason or another are not competing in the UFC.
The global expansion battle between Strikeforce and the UFC is like a race to the moon. Strikeforce is loading their ship to launch, but the UFC has already left the atmosphere. What is exciting about this is that it might not matter who gets there first, there might be enough space for both promotions to operate on a large global scale. It would be amazing if that were to occur and facilitate an annual "Dynamite" style event where UFC and Strikeforce could face-off in non-title mega fights. A scenario like that would definitely create a global scene where mixed martial arts could rise to the top as a whole. Still, the reality of it is "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," and not to many folks want to share it.
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Alvin Benjamin Carter III is an MMATorch Specialist columnist focusing on the business and statistic side of the sport of MMA. He trains in SanDa / Shan Shou (Chinese Kickboxing) and MMA. He also has a business background in music production, management, and clothing. He has launched two companies which cater to niche markets, giving him experience in examining trends and attitudes that can affect a particular business model, which he applies in his weekly column for MMATorch to the sport of MMA.
