The Triangle Choke: Bjorn Rebney Interview
Scott Dryden talks to Bjorn Rebney, the Founder & CEO of Bellator Fighting Championships
Bjorn Rebney has quickly put the Bellator Fighting Championships on the map. Rebney, a former sports agent, has brought a unique philosophy with a season based tournament style format which will be aired to the masses beginning in 2010. Not only does Bellator have TV clout, Rebney also has instilled credibility with the fighters as he ensures they will be treated fairly and compensated based on performance. Following the announcement of the major television deal, Rebney spoke with ProFighting-Fans Editor-in-Chief Scott Dryden:
SD- Speak about the 1st season and the champions that were crowned from it.
BR- Last season was a magical launch pad for us. It was a contest that I had in mind for a number of years, creating an organization where fighters could control their own destiny and objectivity reigns instead of the subjective-controlling aspect of typical match-making that most fight organizations use. I believed that the concept would work. I knew that the fans would respond to it. I came into MMA as a fan who wanted to see some of that ambiguity eliminated. It worked. Every guy that won was able to move forward, there were no replacement fights. The ratings were great, the fans response was great. We were on an all Spanish language network on ESPN but the response came through beautifully. It really transitioned over to the general market in terms of sports fans. It was a real success. Eddie (Alvarez) was a favorite and he won. Hector (Lombard) was a favorite and he won. Joe Soto came out of nowhere and won the Featherweight World Title and is now one of the top ten ranked in the world. Lyman Good won our 170lb title. I don’t think many people, unless you are a northeast-based or a hardcore MMA fan, knew who Lyman Good was. All of them truly established themselves. It was exciting for us. ESPN was a great partner to work with. I say that genuinely as we are not doing anything with ESPN now so there is no reason for me to say it. They gave us instant credibility.
SD- Talk about your background in sports management and how you got involved in MMA.
BR- I have been involved in the fight business since the very beginning of the 1990s. I first really jumped into the fight business when I was representing Oscar De La Hoya about a year and half after he won his Olympic Gold Medal. I grew up in a family where my grandfather was involved in the boxing industry as a manager and a promoter and my uncle was an attorney for fighters for years and is still an attorney for the California Boxing Hall of Fame. I just grew up around it. When I got out of grad school and got my law degree, I practiced law for a very short time. Then I got an incredible opportunity to put my passion for sports where I went to work with Leigh Steinberg representing athletes. Most of my focus was on the marketing aspect of the athletes and not as much on the representation. I was doing all of the marketing for Oscar De La Hoya which transitioned into contract negotiations for him. It really opened my eyes to all of the different drivers in the fight business. From there Sugar Ray Leonard came wandering into my office when I was still working with Leigh Steinberg, quote-unquote Jerry Maguire. Ray wanted representation as well and was interested in trying to make a comeback. The comeback didn’t go very well but the marketing synergies I was able to put in place were really powerful, with the Dunkin Donuts of the world and some other folks. Then I ultimately ended up leaving Leigh Steinberg and the group and formed my own boxing promotion company with Ray. I took all the expertise I had gained over the years representing Oscar and all of my experience with my family and putting it into play in forming Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing where he and I were partners. We had the highest rating fight program four straight years on the ESPN family of networks; Sugar Ray Leonard presents Friday Night Fights. All along while I was involved in the business that just happened to be my business; that is where the pay checks came from but my passion was MMA. At the time I can remember getting VHS tapes of Japanese events, watching Rickson Gracie which dates me. That is what I dug. My buddies and I would get together, grab some beer and pizza and watch the early UFC events. That is what I would pay to go do, the pay-per-views, the VHS and now UFC DVDs and I just loved it. I was a lawyer, I understood the legal aspects, I understood the marketing aspects, I had promoted over 60 fights that were broadcast nationally and internationally so I said if I’m ever going to have a chance to do something I love and get paid for it, this is it. The opportunity was there and I was in a financial position to take advantage of it. That is when I started building Bellator.
SD- For season two you have an amazing opportunity from a television perspective. Speak on that.
BR- You took the words right out of my mouth. It is an amazing TV deal. We were fortunate. We had a good season with the concept/format playing itself out well. The ratings were strong and the fan response was good. If you go back 2-3 years ago when I first started presenting MMA to ESPN, I got a good response because I had experience as a producer/promoter who had great success with the network and brought in sponsors, etc but they wouldn’t touch it. I was pitching it right when the UFC started their deal with Spike TV on The Ultimate Fighter in 2005. Guys would sit in meetings and say they watch it themselves but it will never see the light of day at ESPN. Then slowly but surely those barriers came down. Then finally we got our opportunity to be the only promoter to sign an exclusive with any member of the ESPN family. The magic is that once those 12 episodes of season 1 were finished, the dynamic changed. We were in a situation where people who wouldn’t previously take a meeting suddenly were calling us to take meetings. From a content perspective, TV networks, whether they be cable or network or Spanish language, are driven by their desire to have competitive programming to draw a specific audience. Coming to someone telling them 'I can put on a fight every five weeks, will you televise my promotion;' it just doesn’t have any meat on the bone. Coming to someone and telling them 'look I have a format that is objective, tournament-based and the ratings will continue to rise as the tournament progresses,' got a lot of people interested. A lot of people have been congratulating us telling us you have this huge reach with 82 million homes on the Fox Sports Network every Thursday night for half the year and you have NBC late night and Telemundo, but what a lot of people fail to realize is that is only half the equation. The other half is that I had to ensure that we would avoid becoming another carcass on the side of the road of MMA. I had to structure a deal with our distribution alliance that ensured that there was a light at the end of the tunnel business-wise that would give us the opportunity to be cash flow positive in short order which was the right business decision. We are thrilled with the size of the distribution, we are thrilled that we are live in primetime from 8-10 PM for 24 different events over the next 11 months but at the same time we are equally thrilled that we were able to put a business model in place with our cable partner and our network alliance that will allow you and I to be having conversations a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now where Bellator will still be in play putting on great fights and tournaments.
SD- The topic of discussion regarding demographics is 18-34, it’s my opinion that MMA needs to reach a broader base to compete with the main stream sports. What are your thoughts on that?
BR- I could not agree with you more. I’m 44 years old and I have to tell you that all of my friends that are my age watch it, live it, know the fighters are going online checking the rankings, etc. It is easy to say 18-34, but I think our demographic dramatically exceeds that both north and south. I have nephews and step kids who are living it. They are wearing MMA t-shirts & buying the merchandise. They know Chuck Liddell, Rampage Jackson, Anderson Silva; they know who is fighting and when they are fighting. Now they are starting to know Eddie Alvarez and Hector Lombard. My step son comes home and says we were goofing off in gym and I put a triangle choke on. The vernacular is coming common place. I can tell you the demographic is south of that. We are out there doing market research and believe it's north of that as well. There are 35-50 males predominately who are watching it as well. I also know for a fact through a lot of the responses at live events - 35% of our audience was female. I don’t have the data to tell you what it was from a television perspective but of course we were on a very unique niche platform our 1st season. Going forward we will have this data and it will be very interesting to see what are demographics are comprised of. It’s a great demographic to have and it makes our jobs much easier in terms of selling to sponsors knowing we have a stranglehold on the 18-34 demographic, but it is much broader than that.
SD- Speak about your philosophy in terms of how you treat the fighters and how that differentiates you from other organizations.
BR- I come from a different place than many fight promoters. I spent the vast majority of my career representing athletes either in a legal capacity negotiating contracts or as a marketing representative securing sponsorships and marketing deals. So I have a keen understanding of what most fighters are looking for. When you boil it down its pretty straight forward; I don’t mean simple but their desires are pretty straight forward. They want to fight and have some control of how much money they make and they want to be on national television. Sure there is the faint picture of wanting to be a champion but if you are in the fight business and your goal isn’t to be the champion - you should find another line of work. In terms of the 3 core drivers those are really it; fighting, being on television and generating a substantial income. When I was creating Bellator from a design and philosophy perspective, I thought of it as a guy who represented athletes for a number of years. I knew if we could provide a platform for fighters where the matchmaker behind the desk is taken out of the equation, where they are never going to be in a position that after a bloody 3 round fight where their hand gets raised, they thank their family, trainer, sponsor, etc. then turn to a promoter and start begging for a title shot. I knew if we could create a dynamic that was about their destiny being in their hands, where they knew exactly how much they are going to make depending on if you win or not, they are guaranteed that if they win they will appear on national TV three times within a 90 day period, where the road to the championship is clearly outlined and if you become champion there is not going to be that funky interim champion or this or that. Your title defenses are made by who wins the challenger series. They have to earn a title shot. There are no set up fights or easy defenses. Most fighters that we have talked to, recruited and sat down with loved it. They look at me and say this is what I’ve been waiting for. For a fighter it is simple; they know they can dictate if they are going to get a shot at the title, they control how much money they make and they control how often they are on national television. It also works in regards to what makes us unique, the tournament format. The whole objectivity and removal of the matchmaker, as in comparison to football, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf you name it; they will follow the same exact philosophy. That is you compete to win a championship and if you win you ultimately get there. Imagine if you will for a second that the NFL season is about to start. The commissioner of the NFL stood up at a podium and he said you know what, the Giants are in New York and New York is a very important market to this league. The Dolphins are in Miami and Miami is also a very important market to this league. So this year’s Super Bowl is going to be the Dolphins against the Giants, any questions? You would think he has lost his mind. We accept it in boxing and in MMA because that is the way it has always been done. It has always been the biggest disconnect to me in the fighting sports is that so and so is fighting for the title and no one knows how or why. My hope is we have designed a philosophy that is very fighter-friendly and if you believe you can be the best and win a title then Bellator is for you.
SD- Speak about next season’s format.
BR- Season two starts on April 8th and will feature four tournaments running simultaneously, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight. Each of those will be a challenger series to determine the #1 challenger in each division. The winners will face the current champions. The price point on each of the tournaments will still give the fighters a chance to earn over 6 figures in 6 months. In the interim, the champions will compete in super fights which will be non-title bouts. Much like what BJ Penn does when he goes up to 170 pounds or what Anderson Silva does when he goes up to 205. It will allow our champions to stay busy and compete in front of this huge distribution audience. In season 2 you will see the 4 tournaments going on which will result in 4 challengers who will have earned the right to fight for the title and during that same promotional season. As a fan, you are primed and cocked to watch the matchups and eventually the championship bouts as the season goes along. The championship fights will take place during season 3 which kicks off on August 12th. Simultaneously, we will have our first heavyweight tournament to determine the champion as well as the 205 pound division.
SD- Thanks Bjorn, we look forward to next season live on Fox Sports Net.
By Scott Dryden
ProFighting-fans.com MMA Staff Writer & Editor-in-Chief