UFC Looking to Buy G4 Cable Channel, Spike Execs Prepare to Move On



In a blockbuster development, the UFC is in talks to buy an ownership stake in the G4 cable channel, according to published reports.

On Wednesday, New York Times TV reporter Brian Stelter tweeted that a source had confirmed that "Comcast is meeting with UFC today about possible sale of a stake in G4." Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal furthered the developing story, saying the UFC is in discussions to "buy control" of the network.

In recent days, sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity told MMA Fighting that Spike, which has been the home of the UFC since 2005, is essentially preparing for life without UFC, and that it will move the Bellator promotion on to the channel in 2012.

For the last several days, the internal belief within Spike had been that G4 would ultimately become the UFC's home for The Ultimate Fighter and other broadcast events. The scope of the deal, and that cable channel ownership was in the works, comes as something of a surprise, even though in the past UFC president Dana White has spoken of the possibility.

G4 is currently owned by Comcast, the parent company of UFC television partner Versus.

While nothing is close to final, Spike is no longer aggressively seeking to renew its deal with UFC, practically ensuring that the promotion will find a new home for its Ultimate Fighter series, along with other UFC programming.

Several Spike employees are openly referring to the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter as "the last season," and as MMA Fighting reported recently, Spike executives have been on site at recent Bellator events, familiarizing themselves with the promotion. According to a source, it's likely that Bellator will return to weekday events, possibly on Thursdays, so as not to directly compete with UFC. Bellator's current broadcast deal is with MTV2, which like Spike, is owned by the media conglomerate Viacom.

Even if the UFC buys control of G4, it will have some work to do to build up the struggling network, which is available in just 59 million homes. By contrast, Spike is available in 99 million. At the end of 2010, G4 was removed off DirecTV, a move that could be reversed given the UFC's strength as TV's premier pay-per-view provider, a business that directly benefits DirecTV.

Barring what now seems like an unlikely and costly contract extension, the UFC's deal with Spike will come to an end in 2011.


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this could be sweet... it would be good to centralise it all on one chan rather than versus and spike and ion etc... =\
hopefully they will expand g4 so that its available other places... like fucking australia please!
they have awesome stuff like attack of the show, jump city seattle, american ninja warrior, etc...
if we could get it here in australia i would hook that shit up in a second son!

First of all this comes as no surprise to me at all. I have no doubts about UFC/Zuffa/Dana's ambitions. It wouldnt surprise me if they bought DirecTV too eventually. And Bellator, well it's a question of time before it is a sub league to UFC if they get a SpikeTv deal. I have no illusions about UFC not wanting to create a NBA/NFL-like organisation called UFC that will be THE organisation for MMA. Wait they already did that... Well you see what I mean

ps. how about a universal network so that the whole world can watch it? MMA is after all popular outside of USA too p,p,p,please?!

the ufc is expanding at a crazy rate...
it seems every week they come out with more huge news...
now they are adding flyweight and bringing in 5 round main events...

Do we have That shit in Holland or europe too?