Scott Coker Addresses UK Fans Seeing Children’s Program Instead Of Bellator 206 Headliner

Scott Coker addresses the unfortunate situation where fans in the UK had to watch something other than the main event of their big Bellator 206 event.

It appears that this event was a big hit for the Viacom-owned promotion in the United States. However, overseas, they are dealing with many who were not happy about how it ended.

British MMA fans stayed up to watch the show on Channel 5 and were just about to see the headliner. However, the channel switched over to an episode of the children’s program, ‘Peppa Pig.’

Scott Coker Addresses

Following the fight, Bellator President Scott Coker talked about the situation at the Bellator 206 post-fight press conference. At first, he had Bellator senior vice president of marketing and communications Dave Schwartz give an answer. This is where an explanation was given.

“It’s government regulation that at 6 a.m. that content was not suitable so they had to switch to children’s programming,” Schwartz said. “‘Peppa the pig’, yes.”

“I think that when I think about the replay, I think that we can probably work it out,” Coker said (H/T to MMAFighting). “But it’s six in the morning on a Sunday there and we won’t be able to work this out until Sunday our time, Monday their time. But we are working on it.”

Coker’s Plan For A Fix

Coker detailed that the situation quickly became a mess. He noted that Bellator tried to fix the situation while thinking it was a technical issue. They quickly found out it was something far bigger mandated by the government.

The exec said he has a plan to deal with this sticky subject going forward:

“Believe me, when it switched over there were a lot of texts going back and forth and they all were not friendly. We were trying to fix it, we thought it was a technical glitch. But it wasn’t, it was a governmental issue. I can promise you the next time it’s not going to happen. We’ll keep it down to five fights instead of six — like we normally do — and we tried to overdeliver for the fans and we just went over. It’s an unfortunate situation.”

It’s no stretch to say that Bellator 206 was arguably their most stacked card on paper, and it actually delivered on that hype. unfortunately for some of their UK fans, the main event could not be viewed.

Will this harm the promotion’s chances of catching on more in Europe?