In a somewhat surprising move the World Series Of Fighting promotion have announced their intention to hold a pay-per-view event in the second half of 2015.
On top of that the promotion have also revealed that they will be sharing 50% of the net profits from the PPV with the fighters who compete on the show.
“Until now, one of the main things holding this sport back from becoming even bigger than it is today has been fighter compensation and the inability of the sport’s top athletes to earn on par with top-level professional athletes in other sports,” WSOF President Ray Sefo said in a statement.
“If fighters can’t earn a fair share of the money at the top, the fighters lose hope or become disenchanted with the sport, which impacts their commitment to training and preparing properly for title fights. That is about to change. Thanks to this major step we are taking, now fighters will train harder than ever to become a champion, giving the fans some epic championship bouts to enjoy.”
It’s a great idea in theory, but the obvious question mark here is whether a WSOF pay-per-view would be profitable in the first place.
At present the promotion draws less than 300,000 viewers for it’s shows on NBC Sports, so it’s going to be tough for them to convert enough of them to become paying customers in order for such an event to break-even, let alone make a profit.
WSOF do have some notable names on their roster though, such as Rousimar Palhares, Jon Fitch, Jake Shields, Melvin Guillard and Yushin Okami to name but a few.
All good fighters, though not necessarily needle movers on the ratings front, especially from a PPV perspective.
Even the UFC is finding it tougher to sell PPV’s these days, so it’s a curious decision on WSOF’s part to throw their hat into this particular ring, but it could be that they see this as a way to bring more credibility to their organization and could help to entice other well known fighters to join their ranks in the future.
In other puzzling WSOF news it’s been announced that the promotion’s next upcoming WSOF 15 event has been pushed back to November 15th which means it will now go head-to-head with both UFC 180: Velasquez Vs Werdum and Bellator 131: Ortiz Vs Bonnar.
According to WSOF it was NBC Sports who made the decision to switch dates for their event which will be headlined by a middleweight title fight featuring Dave Branch Vs Yushin Okami.
