By Steve Kim
Last weekend's bout at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York - which featured the welterweight unification bout between Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia - was one that did big television ratings, peaking at over five million viewers and averaging at 3.74 million (https://www.boxingscene.com/thurman-garcia-fight-peaked-51m-viewers-averaged-374m--114381).
The peak audience was the second highest for boxing on broadcast television since 1998 (including non-primetime), behind only August 2016’s Premier Boxing Champions Errol Spence Jr. vs. Leonard Bundu event on NBC which aired immediately following coverage of the men’s gold medal basketball game at the Rio Olympics.
The average viewership for the main event was up 19 percent over last June’s Thurman vs. Shawn Porter main event average, which CBS also televised.
So with those results, could there be more prime time boxing on 'the Tiffany Network' in the future?
Stephen Espinoza, the Executive V.P. and G.M. of Showtime Sports told BoxingScene.com on Thursday - "There has been thought to make CBS a more frequent, more regular thing. But we're also trying to approach this as sort of an extra special premium-level event. We really only want to go to CBS with the best of the best and keep it really top-tier premium and deserving of that kind of platform.
"So fights like that are harder to make, a little less frequent and sometimes unpredictable. So that's why we've approached it opportunistically but it may be time for us to consider departing from that strategy and locking in a couple dates a year."
The only boxing broadcasts with higher average viewership than Thurman-Garcia were the Aug. 2016 Spence Jr. vs. Bundu broadcast and the anticipated debut of Premier Boxing Champions, Thurman vs. Guerrero in 2015.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
