\n<\/p>\n
Charlotte \u2014 Yet another decent PFL event arrived on Friday, with PFL Charlotte once again drawing criticism not for its fights, but for the difficulty fans had finding them.<\/p>\n
With the main card expected to air on ESPN following prelims on the ESPN App, things quickly went sideways as the Savannah Bananas game went over its allotted time. ESPN, however, killed the ESPN App stream, airing the movie Dodgeball, while the PFL main card apparently went to ESPN 2, not that viewers were aware, until it finally switched back to the main ESPN channel.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a situation that PFL CEO John Martin has been frequently frustrated by in recent months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s live TV,\u201d Martin admitted, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press following the event. \u201cWe work collaboratively with ESPN. When you\u2019re in the live TV business and you have prior programming that runs over, that\u2019s a little bit unfortunately the nature of live TV. But bouncing us around in between all of the networks though is just maddening, quite honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain tonight I was getting texts from friends of mine like \u2018the app ended, it doesn\u2019t tell you where to go.\u2019 They didn\u2019t know to go to EPSN2 where we started, we had to rearrange some of our fights just to try to accommodate just so we could start the main card on the primary ESPN.\u201d<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help that the PFL Charlotte card had such a strong build, with early fights exceeding expectations, only for the main card to get off to a rocky start.<\/p>\n
\u201cIssues and problems continue, but we can\u2019t use that as an excuse. My own opinion of the card tonight was, the star of tonight was the undercard. There were some amazing fights on the undercard, and the main card was a little more uneven.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the PFL\u2019s merger into Jake Paul\u2019s Most Valuable Promotions underway, however, Martin does see a silver lining.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still love being on EPSN, they are the juggernaut in sports, and I think with our announcement with MVP, maybe we have an opportunity to talk with them and try to reset a little bit- what they may want, what we may want. I\u2019m hopeful for that. So we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin was also pleased with the turnout at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may have set a gate record for PFL, which obviously we\u2019re MVP now, but for PFL events, we had a really, really strong gate,\u201d he stated.\u00a0Martin was also impressed with the crowd engagement in Charlotte, and admitted that while he knew it was a great sports town, \u201cI didn\u2019t know it was a really, really great MMA town. So that was a pleasant surprise for me.\u201d<\/p>\n