From where Showtime Sports’ Ken Hershman is standing, mixed martial arts is delivering, growing and has a promising future on the premium network.
Showtime aired 10 Strikeforce-branded events in 2009 (including the promotion’s Challengers series). Strikeforce/M-1 Global “Fedor vs. Werdum,” scheduled for June 26 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., will be the eighth event to air on the premium pay channel in 2010, and eight more are expected per the yearly agreement. In total, Hershman said Showtime would likely produce around 45 live event broadcasts between boxing and MMA by year’s end. Hershman, who’s been with Showtime since 1992 and has headed its sports group since 2003, clearly has a vision for mixed martial arts on the network.
Why MMA?
In 2007, Hershman was looking for the next big thing. Specifically, he sought unique programming that would draw in a younger demographic.
“What we’ve seen with the Showtime demographics is we tend to be an older-based service with who our subscribers are because it’s expensive to buy through (the cable packages) to get to Showtime,” Hershman said. “What we saw with MMA was the ability to attract that 18-to-34 demo with a product that’s relevant to them.”
In the last three years, Hershman says Showtime has grown from 13 million to 18 million subscribers. For a $11-$13 average monthly fee, viewers are offered a carefully balanced lineup of theatrical films, original series like “Dexter” and “Weeds” and sports programming. MMA became a part of that package in 2007, and again in April 2009 with Strikeforce.
Hershman said it’s difficult for the network to determine exactly what MMA’s contribution has been to its latest subscription boom, though he doesn’t doubt the addition of the sport played a vital role in it.
“Strikeforce has been an important part of it,” he said. “To me, it’s part of the story and it has to be a part of that five million.
“From a subscribers standpoint, it’s been a hit,” Hershman added. “From an acquisitions standpoint, it’s been a great driver of our business in our 18-to-34 demo. Our business is about getting subscribers and keeping subscribers, and to do that, you need to give them programming that they’re interested in and that they value and that they want.”
Ratings
TV Ratings are a solid gage in determining a program’s growth and popularity, but Hershman said he’s not beholden to ratings alone because Showtime doesn’t hinge on advertising sales for its income.
“I don’t need to deliver the 1.9 rating to Proctor and Gamble like other advertising-based broadcast and cable television networks,” he said.
Which is why Hershman was disappointed when recent reports suggested that Strikeforce “Heavy Artillery,” which aired May 15, had fallen short of expectations with 308,000 viewers while a rehash of UFC fights airing on Spike TV in the same time slot garnered about 875,000 viewers. (Spike TV is available in 98 million homes to Showtime’s 18 million.)
According to reported ratings (Showtime does not release its numbers), “Heavy Artillery” was the second lowest rated of the six events the premium network aired thus far, falling 107,000 homes below the series’ average. The highest rated event was reportedly Strikeforce “Carano vs. Cyborg” in August 2009, which garnered 576,000 viewers and peaked to 856,000 during the final bout.
“No, it wasn’t a bad rating,” Hershman said of the May 15 marks. “Ratings are just one part of what we look at to evaluate the success of a genre of programming or a particular piece of programming. We really got to almost half a million viewers for the show (during the final bout), which out of the (mostly male) audience that would be interested in mixed martial arts -- we’re half male and half female, so we’re going from 18 to 9 million and then we’re getting half a million on any one Saturday night. That’s a pretty good number for us.”
In addition, Hershman said the network doesn’t have to necessarily place emphasis on an initial airing’s rating to determine its overall success.
“Ironically, whether they miss a particular show and watch it on Monday instead of Saturday, it has the same impact for us because they’ve gotten to experience the show and they enjoyed it -- unlike the ratings-based broadcast or cable network, where they’re selling ads against that one airing,” Hershman said. “They don’t want you to necessarily watch it on the Monday when the audience will be much smaller and the ad rates will be lower.”
Then just how do Hershman and Strikeforce monitor a Strikeforce show’s success?
“I look at it as the penumbra of success,” Hershman said. “For us, we need to have our viewers and subscribers engaged. They have to be interested. They have to be commenting on the show. They have to be signing up to get the shows, and MMA is one piece of the puzzle to get them in and keep them in. Any one individual show rating is not what we judge success or failure by. We judge success or failure by the amount of PR attention we’re getting, by the amount of viewers we’re getting, by the amount of subscribers we’re getting and the number we’re keeping. That’s our business model.”
The Strikeforce Relationship
Much has been made of Strikeforce’s relationship with Showtime and what the promotion likely had to sacrifice in the way of control to forge an agreement with the premium channel. It’s a new type of arrangement in a sport with a history forged in going it alone.
Between 1993 and 2005, MMA promotions had little interaction with TV networks. As the prime example, when Zuffa purchased the UFC brand from Semaphore Entertainment Group in January 2001, it inherited a relationship with the production company ConCom, which oversaw a majority of the live pay-per-view events in the promotion’s first seven years. When Zuffa’s deal with cable-television outlet Spike TV expanded in 2005 to include live “Fight Night” events outside of the Spike-produced “Ultimate Fighter” reality series, Zuffa hired ConCom and additional sub-contractors to produce the event broadcasts under its sole direction.
With mixed martial arts’ brief eight-year history on television, fans are mostly familiar with and have grown accustomed to the UFC’s model, an all-inclusive operation that seemingly allows the promotion to control virtually every aspect of its product with little to no disruption from others before handing it over to broadcast partners.
The Showtime-Strikeforce production dynamic is different. While the promotion runs the actual event, Showtime Sports produces all of the Strikeforce and Challengers telecasts on its channel, which includes the selection of its broadcast announcing team, among other presentation details.
Hershman said this arrangement is the norm in television, and just as the NFL creates its own schedule, oversees its teams and holds its games nationwide, the various networks are able to pick and bid for which games they want to broadcast.
“I’m not sure what television network would ever just accept product from some supplier without understanding and agreeing to the quality they’re getting,” Hershman said. “I will tell you that just like any television network, whether it’s a scripted show, whether it’s a sport event -- nobody takes just what’s given to them. I do not shy away from the fact that I’m intimately involved in conversations with Strikeforce about what’s going to show up on Showtime … and anyone who thinks that’s wrong or improper doesn’t understand the television marketplace or the business. To suggest that we shouldn’t be involved in those conversations is so naïve, it’s laughable.”
Just how much Hershman and Showtime are involved in the promotion’s planning prior to the event -- and particularly its matchmaking -- has been scrutinized by fans and critics alike. In recent months, some have gone as far as accusing Showtime of meddling in Strikeforce’s overall vision by dictating or changing bout selections. Some suggest this also slows down the promotion’s ability to promote its cards with the same strong advance notice that the UFC has down to a science.
In the early stages of the relationship in 2009, two separate managers informed Sherdog.com that the main card fights Strikeforce had proposed were vetoed by Showtime. However, in the last six months, no other instances have been reported to Sherdog.com.
When asked if he’d ever turned down an MMA bout presented to him for broadcast, Hershman answered, “I’m sure there has been.”
This might paint an incomplete picture of the process, though. While Hershman wouldn’t go into the mechanics of how the two companies sign off on event lineups, the Showtime vice president suggested that the majority of cards presented to the channel are accepted in whole.
“It’s extremely rare that we’re not on the same page,” Hershman said. “It is the rare exception.”