In the days leading up to Bellator’s historic Bellator 200 event, which takes place May 25 in London, we’re counting down 10 of the biggest moments in the promotion’s history. Today, we take a look at Viacom’s purchase of Bellator and the promotion’s move to Spike TV.

In October 2011, Bellator announced it would move its event broadcasts from MTV2 to Spike TV. While that announcement was eye-grabbing, it wasn’t nearly as consequential as the reason behind the move. Viacom, the owner of Spike TV (now Paramount Network), purchased a majority stake in the promotion. The announcement came two months after the UFC ended its relationship with Spike TV when it signed a seven-year deal with FOX to start in 2012.

At the time Viacom bought into Bellator, Spike TV had been broadcasting UFC programming, including “The Ultimate Fighter” franchise, since 2005. The cable network held on to the rights to the UFC fight library through 2012. That deal prevented the network from broadcasting Bellator events until 2013.

The way Viacom saw it, the purchase made perfect sense.

“As we realized that our relationship with UFC was likely to come to an end, our Viacom mergers and acquisitions folks, and us, started to have conversations with MTV2 about getting invested in a mixed martial arts promotion and become owners as opposed to renters,” then-Spike TV president and current Paramount Network President Kevin Kay told USA Today Sports. “You’re building value in something that you own, and you own it for the long term. You’re not in a constant state of negotiation.”

Bellator founder Bjorn Rebney, who remained CEO of the promotion until June 2014, said at the time that the sale provided stability for the fight promotion.

“It puts all of those cornerstones of ownership in place for us,” Rebney said. “Which is something that’s been so seriously lacking in the MMA space with so many different companies, including Strikeforce and the IFL and Affliction and all the different failures that have occurred. … It alleviates those issues.”

The move boosted Bellator’s footprint from 80 million households with MTV2 to 100 million with Spike TV.

The promotion’s first card on its new television partner was Bellator 85. That event, the first card of Bellator’s eighth season, featured two title fights and the first two matchups of that season’s light heavyweight tournament. In the first title fight, featherweight champion Pat Curran defeated Patricio Freire. Lightweight champion Michael Chandler beat Rick Hawn in the other championship bout. In the tournament matchups, Jacob Noe beat Seth Petruzelli and Mikhail Zayats topped Renato Sobral.

Kay described the ratings for the event as “fantastic.” The fight card averaged 938,000 viewers. That number dwarfed the promotion’s previous best figure of 325,000 viewers for Bellator 44. Viewership for the event peaked during the Curran vs. Freire bout with nearly 1.2 million viewers.

Spike TV underwent a brand change to Paramount Network at the start of this year, and Bellator’s broadcast partnership continues with the rebranded network.

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