Even writing out that headline for me has yet to really make this whole thing “real” to me, as it seems like some sort of strange joke talking about World Series of Fighting airing on NBC. World Series of Fighting currently airs on NBC’s fledgling sports network, NBC Sports Net, which, well, it’s kind of like Fox Sports 1 in that no one wants to watch it. So the leap from a barely-viewed cable network to broadcast television is a huge one, but apparently one that World Series of Fighting is going to be doing in 2014, twice!
This news even comes from a strange place of Huffington Post, but it seems to be true. [source]
In 2014, however, WSOF will make an even bolder move toward mainstream America, when its events will air nationally on NBC.
“Next year we’re gonna have two shows that are gonna be on the mothership of NBC,” adds Sefo. “They are starting to promote WSOF on there, which reaches millions of millions of other people that probably don’t know much about the sport or have never seen it.”
As we’ve seen in the past before you don’t need a stacked roster to make it onto broadcast television and you don’t need the best in the world to pull in the ratings on broadcast television, which for World Series of Fighting is a good thing, but then again, who will they book? More importantly, all of this talk about being a UFC “feeder league” might end with World Series of Fighting encroaching upon UFC’s turf on broadcast television.