Fox Sports Latin America to broadcast Bellator
Bellator MMA chairman and chief executive Bjorn Rebney Credit: Bellator
Fox Sports Latin America and Bellator agreed to a muti-year partnership that gives the network exclusive broadcast rights to the MMA promotion's content, both parties announced Tuesday.
The deal begins in October with Bellator's library of fights and other programming and will be shown in all Latin American countries, including Brazil.
“Fox Sports Latin America has been looking for the premier mixed martial arts organization to partner with, and Bellator is the perfect fit," said Carlos Martinez, President of FOX International Channels Latin America, in a statement. "We are thrilled to make Bellator the widest distributed MMA promotion in Latin America and Brazil, reaching more than 50 million homes from day one."
Here's where it gets interesting. Fox Sports also is the television broadcast partner of the UFC, with content regularly airing on Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2 and Fox. Bellator's majority owner is Viacom.
“We’ve now taken a monumental next step forward in the evolution of the global brand that is Bellator,” Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney said in a statement. “To have partnered with Fox Sports, Latin America’s largest and most powerful sports network is the perfect fit for Bellator in this incredibly vital region. This is just the beginning of what Bellator and FOX Sports International will build into the largest worldwide alliance in combat sports history."
Bellator live events won't be broadcast in Latin American countries until 2015. The annoucement also said that Bellator will begin hosting fights in these countries then.
The deal puts Bellator in 50 million homes across Latin American, about half of its reach in the United States with its Spike TV deal.
However, Fox Sports Latin America will show the Tito Ortiz-Rampage Jackson pay-per-view bout on Nov. 2 in California.
