Going Broke for MMA
I’m an asshole TV junkie. Looking at me, you’d never know my addiction is television. You might think it’s drink spilling, floor mopping, or heart breaking, but never TV watching.
Yet here I sit, one screen open to type this critical ode to subscription overload. One background screen open to play bushcraft videos on YouTube (#JoeRobinet). And my phone screen always teasing from the edge of the sofa, lighting up every five minutes to tell me that the internet needs me asap. I yearn for the simpler times. I vaguely remember this period, when there was just one TV and one remote.
Old timers make jokes about the dark days of having to leave the sofa to change the TV channel or adjust the volume. These days we don’t even have to lift a finger to watch something on one of our multiple screens.
We can literally speak our viewing desires aloud, and whichever lady robot is connected to our wifi, be it, Siri, Alexa, or Google, will retrieve and display our request on whichever monitor we prefer.
Looking back on my life, searching now to uncover the era in which my addiction to home entertainment began, I realize that it started with the mail system, the original subscription portal.
For a twelve year-old, I was probably ahead of the game when I signed up to be a member of the Columbia Video Club, and the Columbia Music Club, and even the BMG CD club. (I had a very generous mother.)
Too young to understand that I was rewiring my brain to expect high amounts of entertainment for low amounts of effort, I pushed onward to devour the next generation of subscription TV. I like to give myself kudos for blindly embracing the technological edge and signing up for a DVD delivery service called Netflix, when NO ONE ELSE gave two hoots.
And then, faster than I could open the mailbox to pull out another red envelope, everything had moved to the mystical ecosystem of the “online.” Of course, the TV addict that I am, I gleefully devoured all available subscriptions: [digital] Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, eventually, even Hallmark Movies Now. (I love pretty-people-romances.)
And of course, cable was still there, dutifully taking my money while bitterly lurking in the background, wondering why I kept leaving the input HDM1 for the input HDMI4. (“Hey buddy, it was for the Chromecast.”)
The next significant signup for me was UFC Fight Pass. These awesome jerks at the UFC employ the upfront payout versus the traditional monthly fee of most subscription plans; a clever way to keep you from remembering how much of your annual income they are siphoning. For their purposes, the only monthly charge they want you pondering is UFC PPVs.
Staring at the Fight Pass signup page, I probably hesitated for a prolonged forty-five seconds, my worn credit card dangling from my trembling fingers. But ultimately, the rich access to combat sports from around the world proved enormously convincing. Not to mention access to the killer UFC library.
For a fan who arrived embarrassingly late to the game, circa 2010, (but in earnest, by 2013) point-and-click entry to the legendary UFC wars of the early decades was truly indispensable. And so, with that final digital buy-in, I felt I had truly covered all of my TV bases. Basic cable for the boring stuff, tier 2 cable for sports, specifically for UFC on FS1, and the four-turned-five entertainment subscriptions for everything else.
And then Ronda Rousey went and joined WWE. There went another of my nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. I swore I’d cancel after Wrestlemania, but she kept getting great matches. What can I say? I am a true Ronday Rousey fan, hence my entry to MMA fandom starting in 2013.
Then for the hundredth time, I thought, “okay ya’ old TV junkie, that’s the last one; everything is going to be alright now.” I rejoiced at the notion of saving money for the essentials like food and shelter and string cheese. But new subscription services continued sprouting. I thought they’d be easy to ignore. Until Bellator began hosting big fight cards exclusively on DAZN. Oh lord.
The ridiculous spelling and pronunciation of this, the latest combat sports platform to hit the market, was not enough of a deterrent to keep me from using my real email address to sign up for a free trial.
Unsurprisingly, I never cancelled this subscription either. Because then DAZN went and signed frickin’ Canelo Alvarez for an eleven-fight deal. For the value of his new DAZN contract, Canelo can buy a day of Netflix for the entire United States of America.
Let’s do the math now. Broken out by month, I’m spending about seventy dollars in subscription fees; just for content that I watch on my stupid TV. Add to that, those overpriced MMA and boxing PPVs hitting us multiple times per month. That’s almost $135 every thirty days. Forgot to add the price of cable, including internet, which is critical to sustaining this entire circus. Now I’m looking at almost three Benjamins a month.
In full disclosure, I also subscribe to the LA Times Sunday paper. And Care/of for dumb vitamins that probably just get ejected through my system every day. I actually feel "healthy" by taking vitamins, but holy moly, I pay too many people for too many things. When shamed to include ButcherBox, a delicious and worthwhile frozen meat subscription service, I cry over how many of my greenbacks are singlehandedly sustaining the US economy.
So now I’m here crying to you, but wholly entertained at every hour of the day, and with a full belly. The media experts contend a la carte TV is the way of life now. And despite the sales pitch of a la carte TV providing a lower overall cost, when assembled together as one monthly fee, home entertainment is actually more expensive than it has ever been. At least now, after all these subscriptions, and all these fees, I finally have the whole fight world at my fingertips.
Not so fast. The UFC recently signed a new US TV deal, leaving Fox, for ESPN. And instead of airing their Fight Night cards on cable, for which I already pay, or on their proprietary digital platform, UFC Fight Pass, for which I already pay. The UFC has decided to stab me in the soul and restrict those bouts to the new ESPN subscription service called F*** MY LIFE.
It’s actually called ESPN+, but I hope by now you understand my frustration. I’d love to declare that I will not engage. However, the UFC’s debut fight on the $4.99-a-month platform is Henry Cejudo versus TJ Dillashaw for the flyweight championship. How do you not go free trial for that?
Suckers like me cannot resist the trap of subscription-based home entertainment. But something will have to give. Tune in here after UFC Fight Night: Cejudo vs. Dillashaw to find out under which bridge I will be calling home. So long as said bridge has decent wifi, I suppose it doesn’t matter.