“Blue Mountain State” exposes the biggest drawback of free UFC fight nights

The UFC has a huge fan base, no doubt. It’s filled with everyone from the die hard fan who saw the older UFC’s live in the front row while sitting next to Mask Lewis, to the relative new comer. Any fight club knows that getting more fans and followers is key. It’s what pays the bills after all. So it makes sense that the UFC would want to give free programming on Spike TV every now and then to let people get a taste of the sport. However, as we all know there is one drawback to having free content and that is … it’s not free. Without the PPV buys the program has to be paid for SOMEHOW right? Of course it does, so enter in advertisement, we get to watch a free night of good fights all for the low cost of having to watch some target commercials for a little bit. Pretty sweet deal right?

Well if you were watching UFN 20 last night, you weren’t just subjected to the standard commercials, you were also subjected to countless amounts of references to “Blue Mountain State”, the new TV show on Spike TV about college kids on a football team partying every day. Now I will admit. It worked on me, I watched BMS and it was actually quite entertaining. But this is not the point. The point is, this commercialization stick was not only brought out but they freakin beat us over the head with it until our brains were hemorrhaging BMS sneak peak clips. I swear to God. Mike Goldberg would be in the middle  of commentating a fight and would literally stop mid-sentence to promote BMS. “Looks like Nate Diaz is going for the straight left and don’t forget to watch the premiere of Blue Mountain State coming up right after this match.” Ok I get it Spike, you want us to watch your show, you can leave me alone now.

Now look, I get it. I am totally fine with commercials and advertisements. If that is what it takes to allow us free fights then I say bring it on. The point I’m making is that the way BMS was promoted really brings to light what we have to deal with to get free programing. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it was JUST commercials of the show when there was down time in the fights, but it wasn’t just that. They would play extended clips of either BMS or Legion during the fighter walkouts which many fans at home like to see. They also took like a good ten minuets of the show in between fights to interview the cast of BMS, I mean seriously. My message to UFC? Pull back a little bit on the plugging. I’m not saying I want you guys to lose money, I am just saying if UFN 20 was the first MMA match that I had ever seen, I most likely would not have come back because of all the plugging. If your goal is to get more fans then this might be something you want to think about you know .. food for thought.

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