Fox Sports Triples Air Time for IFL

The International Fight League (IFL) and Fox Sports Net (FSN), a division of the FOX Broadcasting Company and News Corp, today announced the addition of 10 hours of broadcasting time for the IFL World Team Championship, which will be held on four dates this fall. This marks a significant increase from the three hours FSN carried for the initial events this past spring. The IFL, the world’s first mixed martial arts league in a team format, will launch its first full season in the first quarter of 2007.

"The audience numbers that the IFL was able to generate in the spring were extremely impressive, and reflect the amazing growth not just of interest in MMA, but in the IFL as a television property," said Michael Feller, FSN Vice President of Programming. "This additional 10 hours for the fall is a reflection of our belief in the product in a time slot which will be very effective for our business partners, our audience and the sport.”

“We are very excited to be able to return to FSN for our fall World Team Championships,” said IFL president Gareb Shamus. “Our free TV broadcasts on FSN, showed that millions of MMA fans were excited about the IFL’s quality sports and entertainment programming. We believe this success is just the beginning. Our fans can’t wait to see our new 8 team single elimination tournament in its entirety.”

FSN will break each of the IFL fall live events up into a series of one hour shows to be broadcast in a set Sunday night time slot beginning on Sunday, September 24 at 6:00pm. FSN will also produce a special two hour “Best Damn Sports Show Period” featuring the IFL on Monday, October 2 at 8:00 p.m. and a two hour special on New Year’s Eve at a time TBD. The complete broadcast schedule will follow.

IFL’s televised shows are produced and directed by Emmy award-winning producer Peter Lasser, who has worked on several Olympic telecasts as well as with ESPN, NBC Sports, NFL Films and FSN, among others.

The fall IFL broadcast schedule on FOX Sports Net will be:

Sunday, September 24 6:00*
Sunday, October 1 6:00*
Monday, October 2 8:00 (Best Damn Sports Show Period, Two Hour special)
Sunday, October 8 6:00**
Sunday, November 12 6:00**
Sunday, November 19 6:00***
Sunday, November 26 6:00***
Sunday, December 31 6:00 (Two hour championship finals show)****

*- Featuring matches from Sept. 9 Portland, Ore. event
**- Featuring matches from Sept. 23 Quad Cities, Ill. Event
***- Featuring matches for November 4 event (site TBD)
****- Final event at site TBD