RIO DE JANEIRO – To all the MMA fans in the U.K., get ready: August is a big month for you.
That's when the UFC's deal with ESPN expires, and that's when the UFC could score a new TV contract that could significantly impact the number of events the regions hosts.
Right now, the U.K. is promised one event in 2012. But depending on the TV negotiations, a second could happen before year's end.
"We know fans there are eager," Marshall Zelaznik, the UFC's managing director of international development, today told MMAjunkie.com while in Rio De Janeiro for Saturday's UFC 142 event. "We're working on it."
The U.K. hosted three events in both 2007 and 2008, and it became the first real international-expansion target for Zuffa. But the number dwindled to just two shows in 2009, and a single event in both 2010 and 2011.
While the U.K. shows fewer and farther between, countries such as Canada and Australia hosted more. But Zelaznik said the U.K. could get a reprieve in late summer. One show is already promised for the third or fourth quarter (details TBA), but he said there could be a second.
"The thing that's happening in the U.K. is that our ESPN rights expire in August, so we're in deep negotiations with television networks, and depending on where those go, there might be a real interest in the new partner to say, 'Bring another event,'" said Zelaznik, who recently relocated from the U.K. to the UFC's Las Vegas headquarters. "We're committed to making that mark bigger and bigger (in the U.K.)."
And though some fans have taken the limited offerings as a sign the UFC is ditching the U.K.'s expansion plans, Zelaznik said that's not the case.
"The U.K. can easily take three or four events per year," he said. "We have no doubt it."
For the latest on the UFC's upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.
