Bellator: Landing Punches In Europe

Ahead of Bellator 285, we caught up with the promotion’s European head, David Green, to talk about finding a happy home in Dublin and the mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion’s ambitious European expansion plans.

“We’ve had some great success in Europe, and we probably would’ve done more had it not been for Covid. But when you look at what we have done, I still think it’s quite impressive,” says Green ofBellator’s European track record, before reeling of some of the organisation’s most recent accomplishments in the region.

“We’ve built a very regular business in Ireland, which had two sell out shows within three months of each other in November and February. We just did our first big show in Paris, sold out the arena in Bercy. Moscow was absolutely amazing and the whole experience of going out there for the first time, building the brand, building the channel, the product on TV and then having a successful show was really interesting.”

Despite acknowledging “the door being somewhat closed” in Russia, Green goes on to hint that the organisation is likely to announce fight cards in new cities in Europe and beyond in the near future, potentially before the year is out.

“There are a few places we’ve got slightly under the radar and then there are places we probably should have been by now, like Scandinavia, and we haven’t been there yet. I’d love to bring a show to Australia. There are a few places on the bucket list.”

Appointed to the role in September 2018, the former CEO and founder of now defunct UK mixed martial arts promotion BAMMA says that making the Bellator “as big as possible” outside of its traditional US heartland is his goal. Even with the difficulties presented by Covid, looking back over the last couple of years there’s good evidence to suggest he’s already delivering on that mission.

With MMA only legalised in France in 2020, in October of that year Bellator became the first promotion to hold a major MMA event with the country. Not content to simply beat rivals to the punch, the organisation returned with a second sell-out event in Paris’ Accor Arena earlier this year. The main event that night was a heavyweight title fight between incumbent American champion Ryan Bader and French national Cheick Kongo, both of whom have competed in the upper echelons of international MMA for over a decade.

Similarly, the promotion will visit and sell out the 3Arena in Dublin for the third time within the space of 12 months in the staging of Bellator 285. Like all the promotion’s recent European events, it’s a fight card littered with both hometown heroes in Leah McCourt and Peter Queally and well-known international stars like Benson Henderson and Yoel Romero.

The organisation’s third visit to the Irish capital makes it Bellator’s most visited location outside of the US. Described as a “happy home” by Green, he remains conscious of never taking success for granted, instead always looking for “marginal gains” everywhere he looks. “It’s just about making it better for the fans. Making the experience better. Whether that be the fights, the amount of fights, the depth of fights.I really don’t think you can fault the product that we’re bringing to Dublin in terms of fights. I mean, that card is incredible.”

To give some context to the Dublin and Paris events, of the 17 fight cards that Bellator is scheduled to put on in 2022, five of them will take place in European capital cities. Compare that to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), where just three of 43 events will take place on European soil, with two of them in London, and there’s an argument to suggest that the underdog promotion is ahead on the scorecards within the region as a whole.  

“They’ve got that name recognition and they were the first mover, which is great for them,” Green says of the UFC before adding, “I think our job is to just drive awareness towards Bellator and in some markets we do better than those guys and obviously some markets we’ve got a way to go but we’re doing a pretty good position.”

Despite the encouraging headlines generated in the last couple of years, holistically the gap between the two organisations remains vast and Green is reluctant to dwell on comparisons with the world’s premier promotion for too long, instead wanting to focus on the company’s own strategy and satisfied to play the role of “a very strong second with the UFC in our crosshairs.”

“They way I like to think about it there’s much more room for us to grow,” he explains. “I certainly don’t see us as trying to get close to the UFC. I just think about Bellator and our growth. And you can see that in the microcosm of what’s happened in the UK over the last five years. So many people know more about it and that’s because of the BBC, and some of the coverage we’ve gotten and the talent that’s come through from here. And that’s really the job we’ve got to do in different markets.”

Signed in 2021, something that Green admits to being “a leap of faith” on the BBC’s part, before being renewed for a further year in February 2022, Bellator’s ongoing agreement with Britain’s biggest broadcaster is a significant milestone for both the promotion and the sport as a whole.

“This year they decided to take the chance of putting all of the European shows live on BBC Three with their own broadcast team,” Green says of the constantly evolving partnership. “That’s what I’m trying to do a lot more of, working with the channels and really developing the product, localising the product for different channels, that’s very important. So that’s a great example of how well it’s working. We’re working hand-in-hand with them and developing something that obviously works for us and, crucially, works for them as well.”

Aided by a plethora of homegrown talent in the UK, plus some major international additions to the Bellator roster and riding the wave of ever-increasing interest in the sport, the promotion has undoubtedly made some significant moves in recent years and looks set to double down on its efforts those to come.

Asked how big Bellator could be in five years time, Green is rightly optimistic given the journey so far. “Certainly in the UK, I think it could be really interesting. Having that free-to-air exposure is really good for what we can do with the brand and we’ve seen the benefits there. I think it could be really big,” he says.

“Everyone’s trotted out the well-known phrase, ‘MMA is the fastest growing sport in the world’, but they’ve been saying that for 20 years and it’s getting a bit tired. That said, I do have to remind myself how exciting it is to work in a sport that is still in its infancy. It’s pretty much only been around this century. You can’t say that about many sports. So, there’s room for growth within MMA anyway, and it’s our job to make sure that Bellator is that the top and throwing punches, and I think we are. There are two big MMA promotions in the world and we’re certainly one of them.”