Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney: “It’s getting closer to what I had in my head a few years ago.”

Added on Mar 01, 2011 by John Petit in

UFC & MMA

Chicago’s Bellator Fighting Championship’s has turned a corner if you ask CEO Bjorn Rebney. In two years they went from having their events on ESPN Deportes on Monday Nights, to Saturday night on MTV 2. Some thought Bellator was already singing its swan song, but in the past few weeks they have signed Patricio “Pitbull” Freire, Rick Hawn and even Marlon Sandro.

Rebney says they saw the low points coming, and he says thats part of building of a business and growing is a big part of their model. He said “I was very cognizant of hitting those numbers and getting to that next jump-off point quickly, because there aren’t a whole lot of businesses right now where you can go two or three years deficit financing, always looking for capital and never making money.”

Rebney says all of these situations were planned, “When I went out and got the investment capital to do this, I projected when we’d hit cash-flow break even, when we’d have the big TV deal for multi-years and that alliance, and this is on that schedule. I don’t know if it’s a matter of it hit when I expected it, or it hit when it had to, but one way or another, the square peg went into the square hole in terms of the dynamics of our business.”

Bellator signed there last tv deal with FOX, and the shows ended up being hard to find for fans. Now they will have the flexibility to air events to avoid other MMA events happening on Saturday nights. On a night Bellator is the only national event, it will air at 9 pm ET. But if the UFC has a show on the same night, it will move up to as early as 7 pm ET. Rebney said “It’s been the consummate partnership from a creative perspective. We produce the show, we sign the fighters, we’re the organization making it happen, but they’ve been awesome from a creative perspective, with marketing, P.R., etc. They’re highly involved, and their involvement is a very good thing. They have an amazing amount of experience under that umbrella in the MMA space, reaching this demo, programming to this age group. They’ve been spectacular. I’ve worked in television as it relates to fighting sports for almost 20 years now and I’ve never worked with a group as fluid and cooperative than these guys.”

Late in the season last year there was a super fight on the horizon between Bellator’s Eddie Alvarez and Strikeforce’s Gilbert Melendez, but Bjorn couldn’t get the deal done. Rebney said “I probably took my CEO hat off and handled it too much like a fan. I probably could have stepped back a little bit. I was so enthusiastic about it. Eddie wanted the fight, Gilbert wanted it, and I wanted it. At the time, I had total flexibility. Anywhere, anytime it didn’t matter. It was so exciting for me to think as a fan that we could get these top guys to match up. But Scott didn’t want the fight. If I were him, I wouldn’t want the fight, either. He never responded and it never got off the ground, but it’s still a fight I’d love to see. Eddie has his hands full with Pat Curran. Pat has the uncanny ability to shock people, but I’d still love to make that fight. I think Eddie Alvarez beats any lightweight in the world right now.”

All thats in the past, and Bellator is concentrating on the new season and all the new changes. He said “It’s exciting. We’ve had enough time to step back, plan and orchestrate it the way we want to. I think we have a compelling dynamic for fighters. You sign with Bellator, you’re going to be on Saturday night on prime time reaching nearly every home in this country. This is what we’ve been looking for: same place, same channel every single week. We had the time to put it into motion. It’s not perfect but it’s getting closer to what I had in my head a few years ago.”