Short History and Facts.
The once leading promotion in stand-up fighting Thai- & Kickbox SuperLeague ran from 2003 to 2006. It was the first combat sports promotion to bring an event series of world class stand-up fighting with live television. It was also one of the first combat sports promotions to live stream events on the internet (for free) and was at the time on the cutting edge of website technology with a complex and extremely informative website portal bringing the fans weekly news, updates, articles, interviews, highlight videos and with a self-updating ranking system of the ten best fighters in each weight category.
In short: SuperLeague was unique because it marketed a combat sport in an extremely professional manner with world class entertainment (fighting) being broadcasted live on TV on Saturday nights and a fan friendly website with extensive information about everything SuperLeague.
At the first event in Vienna, Austria in 2003 SuperLeague had fighters from 18 different countries kicking off with a bang what was later to be unofficially crowned as the true global number one fighting league for all nationalities within Thai- and Kickboxing.
During 2003 SuperLeague held events in Germany and Holland as well with more than 20 hours of broadcasted TV courtesy of DSF (Deutsches Sportfernsehen – today called Sport1).
In 2004 SuperLeague expanded into new territories (Italy and Switzerland) and came back to Holland and Germany and at the same time partnered up with Eurosport, the Pan-European television sports network, owned and operated by Discovery, Inc., Sky Italia and Fox Sports Australia upping the TV-airtime to 70 hours.
2005 saw a further expansion within territory and TV-partnerships with two events in Austria and one in Germany, Turkey and Portugal and new TV-partnerships with ATV (Turkey), U1 TV (Switzerland), TV Kosova (Serbia) plus a strong continued partnership with Eurosport. Total TV airtime reached 120 hours.
SuperLeague also contracted the global Thai- and Kickbox journalist and commentator Danish Thomas ‘Larsenator’ Larsen as the website Content Manager resulting in the creation of new daily content on the SuperLeague website.
Another major milestone this year was the partnership with IMG, a global leader in sports, events, media and fashion, operating in more than 30 countries which saw the inclusion of SuperLeague in the Trans World Sport, a weekly international television sports programme which is shown in over fifty countries with a household reach of nearly two-hundred million.
2006 saw a massive expansion with 17 TV-partners and 330 hours of airtime on five continents: RTL Klub (Hungary), Premiere (Germany), Sky Sports (Great Britain), Antena1 (Romania), Polsat Sport(Poland), SportKlub (Hungary), SportKlub (Serbia), NTVplus (Russia & Ukraine), BeTV (Belarus), Global Sport (Georgia), TPS (France), U1 TV (Switzerland), Bandsports (Brazil), TVA (Brazil), The Fight Network (Canada), FOX Sports (Australia) and ART (The Middle East).
SuperLeague was the first combat sports promotion which brought the events to the fans in Europe live on Saturday night.
Because of all of the above SuperLeague was the European key player to open up a market and in transforming the sports of Thai- and Kickboxing into mainstream with massive TV-networks accepting these sports as legitimate on the same level as other sports (football, tennis etc.) and with hundreds of thousands of people turning into fans via the exposure on TV, the technically advanced and informative website, the in-depth profiling and marketing of the athletes and the professionally produced events.
Now super promoter Austrian Marcus Bauer is bringing back the legendary fights to the internet for the fans to watch over and over again with some of the best fighters from five continents in three weight categories. The epic fights will be broadcasted on the official SuperLeague website on Saturday nights on a weekly basis: remastered, with new English commentary plus a brand new, technically up-to-date website with fresh, new graphics.
