The Forest from the Trees
May 14th, 2008 by John Philapavage
Rampage vs. Griffin is going to draw a lot of buys on pay-per-view.
The internet fan base of mixed martial arts that reads blogs and news sites on a daily basis is going to hate the UFC’s Ultimate Fighter show no matter what.
These aren’t concrete facts, but they are most likely to be true if you read this article a year from now. I probably wouldn’t because it will fall under what most MMA posts end up being – dull highly opinionated talking points over matters that only a small concentrated percentage of the fan base care about. I mean, look at blogs these days. Blogs I do, in totality, respect even. Evan Tanner? My neighbor doesn’t care about Evan Tanner. It’s cool that you are such a fan that you care if Tanner makes it back to a certain level, or writes a MySpace note, but is he really worth debating about? How about the goofiness of DREAM of World Victory Road? Couldn’t we all just post on one site that everyone agrees to send new hardcore fans to a note reminding them that Japanese MMA and Pro Wrestling are closely related, less sports and more entertainment, and controlled by the mafia of that country? I mean, I’ve read this stuff for years and frankly I don’t care about any of these guys unless they’re fighting live on my TV with an issue that might make me want to pay for it if it’s not free.
Which brings me back to the original point - once every 4-5 days I’ll shoot through this blog and the headlines on RSS feeds of many others. I rarely read any of the articles anymore. I’ve stopped reading newsletters as well. The amount of relevant information and debate can be consumed in a five minute sitting in a week. Here it is for you:
-The UFC makes millions upon millions of dollars from Spike TV for producing TUF. They use it to promote new unknown fighters, of which they’ll sign several, to contracts that will barely total a fraction of what Spike pays in rights fees. So UFC is a business, and they make money. MLB, NBA, and the NFL do the same thing.
-A percentage of new fans are made from this show and then buy UFC PPVs. They are promoted heavily during TUF, and there is usually a coaching tie-in on the show for an upcoming fight. Those PPVs on average get over 500,000 buys at between $45-55 per buy. Major companies also pay to sponsor both the PPV and the Spike show annually.
-TUF makes money for UFC by itself. TUF makes fighters names to the casual fan, who makes up a huge percentage of UFC paying customers and doesn’t know any MMA media exists. Everything feeds the business and locks out other MMA from gaining a foothold. It’s a branding thing.
There ya go. Someone post this on a blog, and then commit it to memory and erase it. It’s as irrelevant as most of the talking points that get batted around day in and day out. Blogs are like the UFC shows. There are too many UFC cards in a year, but it’s done because they make money. Blogs could probably get away with posting one daily update and maybe one op-ed a week. They don’t because the more they get read that much more if they separate it all. So UFC and say, Sherdog, really aren’t that different.
See you in a month.
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Today's chalkboard (4/14/08) | FightOpinion.com - Your Global Connection to the Fight Industry. said:
[...] MMA OpinionThe Forest from the Trees [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Hywel Teague [Fighters Only magazine] said:
Ouch, sounds like someone is suffering a severe case of burnout
May 14th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Brandt DeLorenzo said:
As much as I enjoy reading many of the MMA blogs out there, it’s getting redundant anymore. It’s the same story posted over and over on different sites with little commentary and complaints regarding the same issues every year (or season) about a sport that is not understood by many of it’s hardcore fans.
It’s not just my site, other sites will see entire stories reposted on other sites with a sentence or two of “Here’s what blah blah blah had to say about blah blah blah.” That’s not a story, that’s just a repost. I don’t complain because the authors who wrote the original piece still get the credit and the story still gets posted to other readers, but is it really necessary just to get that extra story to fulfill some quota of daily updates? It’s blatant overkill which has caused me to just stop posting site RSS feeds in the sidebar of MMA Opinion anymore and focus primarily on editorial stuff.
Zach Arnold posted up a good article a while back about the few main MMA sites and the many sites that dissect the news and provide commentary. Unfortunately I can not find the article after 20 minutes of searching and I forget the title so I can’t directly quote anything that was said. Basically we need a better system with MMA blogging. More people should work together and create big news blogs if that’s their focus in the blogging world. Sam Caplan seems to be on the right track, but I personally don’t enjoy the layout of his site (nothing against it, just a personal opinion) and it’s too cluttered for me to really effectively use it for anything more than reading a few of the top stories.
I feel that MMA Opinion is good for the “one a day” op-ed story to talk about basically anything and everything, even if it’s old news, just to provide a new and relevant talking point without complaining about the latest episode of TUF or how Bill Goldberg has a big stupid head. Whether anything is “new” or “relevant” to the readers, well, it’s really up all of them to decide to continue reading or move on to another site.
It’s only been a year or so since many of the sites popped up and within a couple years, many of them will die out and the big guys like MMA Junkie and Sherdog will always be around.
Hopefully MMA Opinion will be around for a little while as well.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:29 am
hulk69 said:
very good “post” john. very accurate indeed.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:30 am
John Philapavage said:
Hywel-
I burned out sometime in Jan./Feb. I’m not sure if there’s a word for it now
I do still love MMA and have enjoyed watching MMA in 2008 though (Brandt has HD-Net, though some of it is hard to get through). I think Brandt’s thoughts are a good follow up from a different voice who also has talked with me at length about the subject.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Curtis Clontz said:
B
Did you happen to catch the Bob Costas special on HBO recently? It talked about journalism, and after this I think you would be interested.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
John Philapavage said:
Curtis -
Brandt didn’t catch it but I did. It was actually on Brandt’s DVR for a few weeks but wouldn’t have caught his eye. Your speaking of the Deadspin/Clevland Journalist segment I’m guessing. The whole COSTAS now special was fascinating. I personally see both sides and point-by-point go back and forth on it. I think FightLinker would be the equivlant of what they were examining with Deadspin, which oddly enough is a site I’ve never been to considering I follow sports closely and have for 20 years.
Unfortunately though, I’d assume Brandt didn’t see it because I’ve never known him to watch any of the HBO Sports stuff i leave on his DVR for weeks.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Curtis Clontz said:
John,
I thought the show was very good. I liked how they had both sides of the argument there to debate. I agree with both sides in different points. There is a lot of good things that go on, but at the same time there are many more bad ones.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:08 am