PBR Pulls Programming From Dr. Phil’s Merit Street Over Payment Dispute; Move Spurs Verbal Spat Between Network & PBR CEO

Just 13 weeks into PBR‘s (Professional Bull Riders) TV deal with Dr. Phil McGraw’s Merit Street Media, the league has severed ties with the upstart network, launched in April with Christian-based Trinity Broadcasting cable network as a main distribution partner.

PBR, whose ownership is being transferred from Endeavor to TKO, announced the deal termination on social media earlier this week, claiming Merit Street breached its contract but failing to pay rights fees. As the two sides head to arbitration, the league has announced alternative TV distribution for its events.

“Merit Street agreed to work out its differences with PBR in a confidential proceeding which is ongoing. We were therefore surprised that PBR would publicly accuse us of violating our agreement when the facts are in dispute,” the company said in a statement. “And we are astonished that PBR has demanded that its programming be immediately removed from our network while discussions are ongoing. Merit Street will vigorously defend itself in the proceedings.”

In a followup interview, PBR CEO Sean Gleason took an issue with Merit’s poosition.

“They breached by failing to make their payments, we notified them of the breach and gave them the requisite cure period, plus some additional time,” he said. “They’ve made some statements, ‘we’re astonished’. For five weeks we’ve been talking about this particular problem, and if you don’t remedy it, we can’t keep doing this. We ended up subsidizing a significant chunk of production to bring our fans the Teams Championships that we weren’t getting paid for from anybody, and allowed them to continue on Merit Street.”

Gleason claimed that during the 13 weeks on Merit Street, PBR we had reached 2.4 million viewers, representing “31% of their total content, or viewership content.”

“We worked really hard for it to not get there. We over-delivered against our obligations. We were willing to make concessions that we offered up, and they were flatly rejected, and at the end of the day, don’t know what the reasoning is, but when you can’t fix it, you can’t fix it, you gotta move on,” he said.

In August, Merit Street Media laid off almost third of its employees.