For the last several years Bellator MMA has been putting on weekly events during their season featuring a number of tournaments in separate weight classes. When Scott Coker took over as the President of the company back in June, fans knew that there would be sweeping changes made to the event structure of the organization.
Today, those changes were officially announced as Coker told MMAJunkie that the future of Bellator will no longer include seasons or tournaments. Instead, Bellator will move forward beginning in January with one event per month, as well as four marquee events featuring major bouts with the promotion’s biggest names.
Here is what Coker said about the change today:
That’s going to be our season. We’re going to do 16 instead of 26, but the fights will be much larger, and the venues will have time to promote and really make it an event and not just a weekly TV show.
To me, I think that we should be on Spike TV and building the next wave of stars in front of 100 million households. There will be a time probably in the future where we can definitely go back to the PPV business, but for the foreseeable future, I see us as a Spike property.
Tournaments are not completely dead in Bellator, however, as Coker did state that he would be willing to hold one in the event of four top tier fighters vying for a No. 1 contender spot in a specific division.
It will be interesting to see how Coker’s Bellator progresses over the next several months beginning with their new structure in 2015.
