Bellator 45 Rating The Second-Highest Of Season 2, Does This Mean Bellator Is Here To Stay?

I’ve talked about Bellator for some time now, but with the recent end of their fourth season, I’ll have to wait about a month before I get more Bellator. However, I can say that it definitely looks like I’ll be getting more Bellator for the foreseeable future: after weeks of up-and-down ratings, Bellator’s season four has found some great stability in recent weeks. And with the ratings of Bellator 45 now in, it’s very clear that Bellator is finally clicking with the MTV2 audience. Here are all the details.

We head to the one and only Sherdog for news of Bellator’s strong end to Season Four. According to their report, the live broadcast of Bellator 45 averaged 264,000 viewers. This is a decline from last week’s Bellator 44, but that show boasted an astounding 325,000 viewers. In Bellator’s key demographic of Men 18-49, Bellator 44 saw the second-largest average audience in MTV2 history. Bellator 45’s rating places it as the second most-watched Bellator event of Bellator’s Season Four.

I’m very glad that Bellator posted up a pair of back-to-back awesome ratings for their last two Season Four outings on MTV2. From the start, I was pretty skeptical about the MTV2 network. I felt it was too obscure, and its audience just wouldn’t click with the kind of live, weekly MMA product that Bellator offered. When it was announced that Bellator had signed on with that network as opposed to a rumored deal they had with the FX network, I even openly asked if Bellator “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory”. I’m very glad to admit that I was wrong.

Bellator may not have the instant, lightning-fast growth that comes with a larger network (and thus a larger budget), but maybe slow and steady will win this race. EliteXC became a major power in MMA almost overnight, and they were gone just as quickly. The same goes for the very short-lived Affliction promotion. These are key examples of promoters spending money they don’t have in anticipation of making it all back plus more once their ratings and buyrates come in. Bellator is not a perfect promotion, but I can already tell that they’re not making the same kinds of mistakes as those other companies.

Looking forward, I think Bellator and MTV2 can have a very positive relationship so long as the one-month dry spell doesn’t cause viewers to lose interest. And if Bellator continues to deliver solid ratings on MTV2, who’s to say that they won’t get picked up by a larger network?

As I said, the overnight successes don’t tend to last very long in the MMA game. Anyone with millions of dollars can buy a cage and sign away big-name fighters, but it takes tact, cunning, and patience in order to craft a legitimate long-term MMA organization. Unless things change drastically, Bellator is setting itself up as a viable long-term promotion. And not only is that type of foresight very refreshing, it’s awesome that it’s being applied to a promotion like Bellator. With its unique tournament format, its dominant champions, its hungry upstarts, and its penchant for highlight-reel stoppages, it looks like Bellator isn’t going anywhere. And I don’t want it to.