Reality television pioneer Mark Burnett and ESPN recently joined forces behind “The Contender.” Canceled by NBC after a one-year run in prime time, “The Contender” has been resurrected as a multipronged property jointly owned by Mark Burnett Productions, DreamWorks Television and ESPN. In addition to another season of the reality show, to air next spring, ESPN will air at least one boxing card, scheduled for this Friday, starring “Contender” fighters from the first season.
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| Mark Burnett says his series is bringing boxing to a bigger audience. |
Burnett chatted with SportsBusiness Journal staff writer Andy Bernstein about the show, the partnership with ESPN and the state of boxing.
How much interest do you think the upcoming “Contender” fights will generate, compared to major prime-time pay-per-views?
Burnett: It could generate more if you consider we have 10 million people just in the U.S. who watched “The Contender,” and even more worldwide. “The Contender” fans are more than just the core boxing fans. There are many new people who really enjoyed our way — a Rocky-esque kind of way — of telling the story.
When you launched “The Contender” you talked about taking on the boxing establishment. Is that still your intention?
Burnett: It’s not really taking on the establishment. I think it moves way beyond that. It’s more about creating a televised viewing experience for the public. Clearly, in “The Contender” our fights were seen by as many as 10 times the people who watched the last Oscar de la Hoya fight, so our numbers are astronomical compared to normal boxing, championship boxing. So we have a big fan base. I think the fights are very exciting to watch. There was less posturing around the ring and the number of punches thrown was very, very high compared to a lot of other boxing you tend to see.
Do “The Contender” fighters need to fight other fighters to have real impact?
Burnett: Well, I think the first part of it is they’ve already had a bigger impact than any other boxer in the last decade. … The impact championship boxing has is so small. The most recent championship fight, you couldn’t find it in newspapers.
However, having said that, yeah, of course they’re going to fight outside of “Contender.” … There’s no reason to not do that. It makes way more sense when way more people want to watch our fights than other fights. I mean, people care about these characters.
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| “Contender” fighters Peter Manfredo Jr. (left) and Sergio Mora will get a rematch. |
Another example for you — and this is all real stuff — at a recent championship fight in Vegas, three of our guys went, and more journalists and fans stopped when our guys entered into the press conference than the actual boxers who were fighting. They’ve just become little stars, and that’s just because of the TV exposure. You feel like you know if Sergio [Mora]’s mom was riding the bus before he won the belt. You thought you really knew Alfonzo [Gomez]’s parents were always in the locker room. You knew Peter Manfredo’s little girl so well that when she said, “Daddy, you’re not done yet,” you knew it really mattered.
How do you feel about the ratings of the show and some of the criticisms of it? Were you happy with the first season?
Burnett: Yeah, I was really happy with it. I think it would be really hard to improve the quality of the show. ESPN just wants the same. I mean, they wouldn’t have bought it and sought after it, they wouldn’t have believed it was so valuable. The important thing to me [was] that final fight was exciting, which really proved the other fights weren’t creating the excitement through editing — they were just exciting.
How will the business model differ with ESPN than with NBC?
Burnett: It’s not different. In terms of natural gross number of viewers, I don’t think we’ll be doing 10 million viewers a night during the season. But, quite frankly, if we’re doing 4 million viewers a night on ESPN, it’s a huge success and the transactional quality of those viewers is really high. Let’s face it, the whole future is selling tickets to fights and pay-per-views. And therefore, the more fans who are willing to transact in that way are better for us. And I think that’s the propensity of an ESPN core viewer. I mean, I know ESPN very well. I worked on the first X Games at ESPN, and the Eco-Challenges was a huge part of the programming. … Mark Shapiro, obviously a big player at ESPN, he and I went off together on a rafting trip to the Grand Canyon and we talked this through. That’s why he got involved, and it’s clear to me they’ll make a great partner. They are a business partner. They’re not just a licenser of our show, they’re a business partner. And I think it’s a real great alliance for Jeffrey Katzenberg and myself, Sly [Stallone] and [Sugar] Ray [Leonard] to be partners with ESPN.
What ancillary revenue opportunities do you expect to pursue?
Burnett: We certainly have had a whole lot of interest from overseas. First of all, “Contender” was a very profitable business, a very profitable business. We pre-sold to many countries. We have a large Internet success. We’re already talking to all our sponsors again, and the deal with ESPN, as you saw, is we are handling all the TV commercials for our partnership, and integrations because that’s the very idea of the partnership. No one’s going to be arguing about who has what TV spots and integrations. It’s all one pocket, basically, a very intelligent way of handling it. And toward the ancillary part, we’ve got a lot of interest, which isn’t done yet, of various formats. So in other words, Contender UK, Contender South America, the same kind of show in other countries.
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| Burnett and co-executive producer Sylvester Stallone have a new partner in ESPN. |
How does the advertising split work between you and ESPN?
Burnett: We sell all the units. But we’re a team, so that means that we’re not keeping that money, it’s a partnership. It’s just a different way of looking at it. It makes a lot more sense for us to have one group selling this. We might as well work together on it so at least the sponsors speak to one group and know what they’re getting and the money, which in the end is the business, is shared between ESPN and us.
Does ESPN get a cut of ticket sales as well?
Burnett: Yeah, they’re a partner in the overall business.
When you went on the rafting trip with Shapiro, did he fall out at all?
Burnett: I pushed him out of the raft. Actually, the funniest part — if you know Shapiro you’ll laugh so much — was we had a gun fight on the river rafting. You know those big pellet blaster things? We had such a good laugh, it was really, really good fun. But I’ve got to give that boy some more camping lessons. I mean, I’m the “Survivor” guy, that’s all I’ve done for the last few years. I’ve been getting out of a sleeping bag every morning for six years.
Look for more of this conversation in our sister publication, SportsBusiness Daily, located at www.sportsbusinessdaily.com.
