UFC To Debut "El Octagono" In Effort To Tap Latino Audience
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UFC Hopes To Tap Into Hispanic
Audience With Debut Of "El Octagono" |
UFC will debut on Galavision Saturday night "El Octagono," an hour-long weekly series that marks the league's "most vigorous effort yet to tap a wider Spanish-speaking audience," according to Lance Pugmire of the L.A. TIMES. The series will include "fighter interviews, highlights and [MMA] education for Latino fight fans who traditionally have flocked to boxing." UFC fighter Kenny Florian: "We know they support Latino fighters in boxing, and now it's just about giving them more awareness about our sport, and showing them how exciting our fights are. Awareness has been the main obstacle." Pugmire noted UFC until now has "devoted most of its energy to attracting the 18-to-34-year-old (usually white) males," while boxing promoter Bob Arum is "making a bundle of cash on his [PPV] 'Latin Fury' cards." Arum stages the fights "in Mexico, pocketing live gate and Mexican television rights revenue." Arum said that endeavors like "El Octagono" fuel "speculation that interest in UFC has reached a plateau." Arum: "If this sport was so booming, this wouldn't be happening." But UFC officials said that they are "only seeking to widen the [MMA] audience by pointing Latino viewers" to the new series (L.A. TIMES, 5/5).
FREUDIAN SLIP? EliteXC President Gary Shaw, in response to Viacom Chair & CEO Sumner Redstone's "criticism" last week of CBS' deal to air EliteXC MMA events in primetime," said, "I thought it was an off-the-cuff remark. I don't think he meant it as it came because Sumner Redstone owns Spike TV." The net has cable rights to UFC, and SI.com's Josh Gross wrote one "could argue that the success of the UFC on Spike led directly to CBS becoming the first major broadcast network to carry MMA live in prime time." Redstone "may have had an unwitting hand in the rise of, what he coined, 'socially irresponsible' programming on terrestrial TV" (SI.com, 5/5).
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