The management of Paramount Global, which owns the Bellator MMA league, has officially notified its employees that it will close the Showtime Sports television channel it owns at the end of this year and exit the sports industry, which means the cessation of sports broadcasts, including boxing and mixed martial arts.
According to Paramount’s CEO, Chris McCarthy, the company will reallocate freed up resources toward more storytelling to attract more subscribers to the Paramount+ streaming service.
Specifically, Showtime Sports president, Stephen Espinoza, who was once involved in promoting the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight, as well as overseeing Bellator MMA broadcasts, will be fired from his position.
At the moment, only Bellator 301 remains on the American league’s schedule, which will take place on November 17 in Chicago, and will likely be the last event in the organization’s history.
The main events of the event will be a welterweight title fight between Yaroslav Amosov and Jason Jackson, as well as a lightweight unification bout between Sergio Pettis and Patrick Meeks.
The tournament is also supposed to determine the second finalist for the light heavyweight grand prix, which will be the winner of the fight between Alexander Shabliyy and Patricky Freire, but it looks like the organization won’t have time to finalize the contest and draw the one million dollars before the end of the year.
The PFL league will reportedly be the new owner of Bellator MMA.
Source: https://fighttime.ru/news/item/32912-prodazha-ligi-bellator-podtverzhdena-ofitsialno.html?rand=19907
