Shannon Knapp says Invicta not in dire straits following PPV refunds

Image courtesy of Shannon Knapp

Invicta FC president, Shannon Knapp, discusses TV deals and finally being able to say 'I told ya so' regarding the success of the promotion.

This past Saturday night showcased another solid Invicta FC card, but technical difficulties still managed to find their way to the all female promotion, headed up by Shannon Knapp. Following on the heels of a very successful debut year that offered three great events, Saturday's card would be their first foray into the PPV realm. Sometimes success can come back to bite you, as Knapp found out, when the PPV server run by Ustream collapsed under the weight of too many avid fans trying to buy the event.

The price of the event was a very affordable $7.95, which netted the buyer 12 fights with the main event being a five round affair for the Invicta strawweight title. Unfortunately, as stated in an interview with MMAJunkie.com, Ustream's CEO, their PPV servers were not up to snuff, and a decision was made to refund all monies paid for the card. Knapp, who has run a tight ship from the beginning, and has taken her organization forward with continual growth, is unperturbed. We spoke to her recently and got her thoughts about the future of Invicta.

Satisfaction with the numbers

I've been bouncing off the walls. I take something like that very seriously, when someone says I'm not telling the truth. You have to pride yourself on your character and your foundation, and I think that's what separates us from a lot of other businesses. For someone to say that I'm lying, that doesn't feel good. Now that somebody else can confirm that we did well ... we busted up their servers. To have the owner of Ustream say that he had never seen anything like it, well, it's amazing.

TV deal

Hopefully we move from here to a more stable platform, a broadcast partner. This incident has certainly put a little more pep in my step to want to do that. We have a good product that people want to watch. We need to give them a stable place to watch it on. It definitely makes you stand up and say, 'I need to switch some stuff up.' We're in dialogue with a handful of potential broadcast partners, so when we do secure something, I'll let everyone know. I won't reveal any names right now, because nothing is concrete, and it's unprofessional to reveal information before any deals have been made.

Sense of urgency to secure TV deal

We're doing amazing things right now. Our numbers are great. Everybody forgets that we haven't even been in business for a year. Our first show was at the end of April, 2012. Are we in dire straits? We're only out $7.95 [laughs]. Seriously, I don't think this put us in dire straits. If it was a do or die situation, like some journalists are suggesting, we would've inflated the price of the event. We're doing fine.