For Spike TV, a shifting combat-sports stategy in its post-UFC era

If you ask Spike TV President Kevin Kay why he decided to sign a multiyear deal with a kickboxing organization, he’ll tell you it’s simple, really.

There’s no detailed research behind it, no intense demographics studies. None of that.

“I love kickboxing,” Kay told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “That’s the true answer.”

The question is, do fight fans love it? More specifically, will the same fight fans who tuned in to Spike TV in droves to watch the UFC also tune in to watch an entirely different sport just because it contains some of the same familiar violence?

That’s what Spike TV seems eager to find out with its aggressive approach to combat sports programming. Call it the “Moneyball” philosophy, if you like. When the UFC left Spike TV for a deal with FOX in 2011, it left a major hole in Spike TV’s lineup. It tried to replace the UFC with Bellator MMA, but filling in for the industry leader is no easy task for an upstart fight promotion. So what do you do if you can’t replace what you’ve lost? One option is to recreate it in the aggregate.

With the addition of the GLORY kickboxing organization this fall, Spike TV hopes to have the combat sports audience covered from all angles. It already has MMA events and MMA reality show programming thanks to Bellator. It has pro wrestling – complete with occasional appearances by MMA fighters – thanks to TNA wrestling. Soon it will also have kickboxing thanks to GLORY.

And while Kay knows that not all fans will be equally intrigued by all three, he is hoping that his network can capture a greater share of the overall audience by casting a wide net over the combat sports-loving population, and using the success of one brand to help the others.

“I think we know that mixed martial arts fans come here, and the more combat sports we can offer them the better,” Kay said. “Whether it’s running spots on Bellator to help GLORY, or running spots on GLORY to help Bellator, to cross-promoting on TNA where that’s possible.”

The success of this approach hinges on a theory that’s been tested in various ways, yet not conclusively proven just yet. Will the same people who get excited about MMA also get just as excited about kickboxing? Will pro wrestling fans slowly become MMA fans, and vice versa? Some overlap in these demographics seems inevitable, but can a network increase it through cross-promotional exposure?

Kay seems to think so. That’s why Spike TV has been looking to add a kickboxing organization to its roster for some time now, he said. It experimented with K-1, Kay said, but, “It didn’t go that well, quite frankly.”

“How do I say this politely?” Kay said of K-1. “We never saw the same people there twice. It just didn’t feel like an organization that had the same resources, the same funding, the same roster and the same production values as GLORY.”

But even adding the best kickboxing organization it could find was akin to operating on a hunch for Spike TV.

“We didn’t actually do any research around it because I think it’s just a gut [feeling],” Kay said. “I like kickboxing. I love MMA. I get to run the place. On some level, that’s always part of it. You program with your gut.”

According to Kay, it will likely take “six months to a year” before the ratings for GLORY can tell him if his gut was right. It won’t air every week, like Bellator, but will probably run on a monthly schedule once it starts up in the fall, he said. The early response from fans has been mostly positive, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a wave of goodwill will translate into viewers. The difficulty lies in convincing fight fans that a completely different sport – one that’s aesthetically similar, but with athletes who are mostly unfamiliar to MMA fans – is worth a shot.

“The reaction on most of the MMA sites has been overwhelmingly positive,” Kay said. “‘Free kickboxing on American TV is a great thing’ is something I’ve been reading over and over again. MMA fans are largely also kickboxing fans. One thing we know about MMA fans is they like standup and they like knockouts. And GLORY – there is some statistic that [Spike TV Senior Vice President Jon] Slusser showed me the other day – I think about 80 percent of GLORY fights have ended in knockouts. That’s pretty stunning.”

Viewed from the outside, this seems to signal a shift in Spike TV’s sports strategy. Back when it had the UFC, its focus was single-minded. It had the colossus of the MMA industry, which meant that it saw no problem with handing over the keys and airing hours of UFC fights, back to back to back.

Now, with the UFC gone and Bellator still working to gain a foothold, Spike TV seems to be trying for a broader appeal. It’s hoping that it knows combat sports fans well enough to know what they’ll be interested in even before they do.

What it doesn’t know yet is whether it’s right, and whether fans of one sport can be converted to a similar one. That’s where the gut feeling comes in. That’s where Kay and Spike TV are operating on faith, and depending on fight fans’ love of head kicks and knockouts to prove them right.