By Rick Reeno
With the exception of the finalized blockbuster between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, the ‘Al Haymon takeover’ has been the biggest topic of conversation in the sport of boxing
For months, there were strong industry rumors that Haymon was planning to branch out on his own, under his Haymon Boxing banner, and secure several television deals to showcase his voluminous stable of fighters. That plan was starting to come together in early January, when Haymon reached a financial agreement with Golden Boy Promotions to walk away from their company with just about every single fighter that he managed/advised.
According to several sources with knowledge of his business strategy, Haymon was able to secure millions of dollars from several hedge funds. How much money was invested in his venture? Nobody knows for sure, but the most popular number being reported is $100 million dollars – and some believe the actual dollar figure is much higher.
On January 16th, Haymon’s company held a press conference in New York City to announce a multi-year television deal on NBC. Haymon’s boxing series, called Premier Boxing Champions (PBC for short), will debut on NBC next Saturday night from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. At least 20 PBC events are expected to land on NBC and NBC Sports in 2015.
Then on January 26th, Haymon Boxing held a press conference in Los Angeles to announce a multi-year television deal with Spike TV, who plan to televise 33 PBC events over the next three years – with 12 of them coming off in 2015.
Last Wednesday, Haymon Boxing finalized another television deal – this time with CBS. The deal calls for a maximum of eight PBC events to get carried on CBS, and others will land on CBS Sports and CBS-owned Showtime.
Haymon is far from done.
Multiple sources indicate that he’s nearly wrapped up another television deal, this time with ESPN2, and there are indications that his PBC series is coming to Telemundo.
All of these television deals (with the exception of Showtime) are time-buys. In other words, Haymon is using those hedge fund millions to buy air time with various networks – with the hope of eventually recouping that money by way of sponsorships and advertising dollars.
During the last 18 months, Haymon has significantly increased his stable. He now manages/advises over 170 fighters and that number is rapidly building.
Based on the matches already announced for Haymon’s upcoming events on NBC, CBS, Showtime and Spike, he is matching his fighters against each other in competitive bouts.
There are many in the boxing industry who strongly believe Haymon is attempting to replicate certain aspects of the UFC’s business model – based on the obvious pattern of staging PBC cards that are entirely comprised of fighters contracted to Haymon Boxing. Like the UFC, Haymon’s company has set up their own website with a variety of professional writers providing articles and coverage on Haymon-managed fighters and PBC events.
Dana White, President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC], applauds what he calls a “very ballsy move” by Haymon.
“First, that’s a huge compliment [that Haymon Boxing is being accused of attempting to replicate the UFC’s business model] because when we first came out everybody was just sh*tting on us and saying ‘this is ridiculous, this will never work, that will never work,’ etc. I don’t like to be negative but if I had to be negative about something I would say that the time buys on TV is tough because it’s hard to go in that direction and then go the other way - unless the fights rate through the roof, and then he’ll do well,” White told BoxingScene.com.
“But let me tell you what. Al Haymon comes out of nowhere and starts doing this. There are guys who have been involved in boxing for years and haven’t done anything for the future of the sport of boxing. And I absolutely commend him for what he’s doing. It’s easy to look on the outside and try to poke holes in what someone else is doing and say it wouldn’t work. That’s what everybody did to us and look at what happened with us. So who knows, maybe he can do this and pull it off. But props to him for trying.”
White believes Haymon could have likely scored a television deal, or two, without going through the very risky process of purchasing the time himself.
“I think he could gone in and negotiated a television deal, whether it was with Spike, who are doing a whole block of combat sports. There’s a lot of other networks out there where he could gone in and negotiated a deal. At least he would have been getting paid something. It’s a lot better than going in and buying the time yourself. Buying your own time is tough,” White said.
“On the flipside, guys have done it. Rob Dyrdek, the kid is a f***ing genius when it comes to television. He started Rob and Big on MTV. Then he had Fantasy Factory and now he has Ridiculousness, which is killing it. He just started a company called Skate League...he's a pro skater. He started a company Skate League and he originally bought the time on ESPN and now he has a deal with Fox. So it can be done.”
However, White admits that it’s going to be very tough to recoup the millions of dollars that Haymon is aggressively spending from the opening bell. For next Saturday’s main event at the MGM, millions of dollars were spent on the purses. According to sources, just Robert Guerrero – without calculating in the other salaries for the night - is said to be getting over $2 million dollars for his main event fight with Keith Thurman. Haymon’s company is also sparing no expense with getting the word out through advertising and also brought in high priced TV commentators like Marv Albert.
“It sure is [tough to secure advertising without proven numbers]. Even when the UFC had the proven numbers [it was tough]. Let me give you an example. Even before the UFC did The Ultimate Fighter, we did a deal with Fox. Do you remember The Best Damn Sports Show Period? We did a fight inside the Best Damn Sports Show Period and it killed it. The numbers were awesome. We blew it out of the water and did the biggest number that show ever had - and we still couldn’t get a television deal and we definitely weren’t getting advertisers. Even when our numbers were proven it was still a battle. It takes years to build your credibility and prove that you have some staying power before people will jump in and get behind it,” White said.
“What I think what’s different [when comparing Haymon to the UFC] is that we didn’t take the guns a’ blazing approach that he took. If you know our story, we started off small. We did a show at the Taj Mahal and sold 4,000 seats and had maybe 5,200 people in the building…a gate of $125,000 dollars. And then we started to build the sport and get out there. But, probably four or five years in we had probably blown $45 million dollars. When you go guns a’ blazing like that, in the first year with the way he’s doing it, he’s going to blow a lot of money. He’s going for it. He’s coming in guns a’ blazing and I wish him all of the luck in the world.
“What it’s really going to come down to and what it’s all about are the fights. People want to see great fights. If you’re a fight fan, whether it’s boxing or MMA or whatever it is – you want to see great fights. You want to see guys who go out there and put on a show. That’s what you’re forfeiting your Saturday night for. Because when you think about it, you have to compete with a ton of other things – whether it’s a new movie that comes out or you want to take your family out on a night that week. You have to compete with a lot of things – a lot of other sports on TV, a lot of new movies coming out, etc.
"What I realized is, what people want to see are amazing fights. Arturo Gatti, even when he wasn’t a champion, he still signed a big deal with HBO – because people wanted to see Arturo Gatti fight because it was awesome, it was exciting. As long as these fighters who fight for Haymon go out there and put on great fights, the matchmaking is done well and the fights are good – who knows how successful he can be.”
There is a growing number of insiders who believe Haymon is positioning himself to shut out the competition by cutting off their ability to secure TV dates. And by signing up the majority of the ranked fighters in key weight divisions, he is also cutting down the pool of opponents that his competitors can secure for their own televised programming.
Some promoters, like Top Rank and Golden Boy, are safe from Haymon’s maneuvers. Golden Boy has a TV deal with Fox and they also co-promote cards in Mexico on Televisa. Top Rank has a TV deal with UniMas, co-promotes cards in Mexico on Azteca and there are heavy industry rumors of a television deal being finalized with TruTV. And, both of those promotional powerhouses have a strong alliance with the biggest American television player in boxing, HBO.
If Haymon’s strategy is to eliminate his competition, White would advise him against it.
“You don’t want to put everybody out of business. Everybody thinks that I’m anti-competition and want all of these other guys to go away. It’s not true. The guys that we bought out were going out of business. The guys that we moved in on were hurting and going under. We gave them a number for their company and ending up with the contracts and their video libraries. We own the biggest Mixed Martial Arts library in the business. It’s not like we went after guys and tried to take them out. They were going out and we went in and bought them,” White said.
And regarding HBO, who cut their business ties with Haymon in early 2014, White says they are never going to be eliminated from the boxing equation regardless of how successful Haymon’s venture will become. As long as HBO continues to push forward with boxing, White expects the network will continue to create new stars.
“HBO is so powerful in the boxing game. I think HBO has been the gold standard for many years in how they promote their fights and they have such a unique platform. Let’s say I want to go out there and promote my fights – all I get is 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and 60 second spots are hard to come by and super expensive. But on HBO, I’ve seen them run 4 minute promos on a fight and they are unbelievable in the ways that they do it, and they educate you on who the fighters are and they make you excited to tune in and watch a guy that you might never have heard of. They have a very unique platform, they have a ton of money and nobody is ever putting HBO out of business when it comes to boxing, unless they are just done with the sport and just want to get out of it,” White said.
If there was one television model that Haymon should examine, White would tell him to look no further than USA Network’s Tuesday Night Fights. The very popular boxing series ran on the USA Network from 1982 until 1998.
“I would have to say the greatest television model, other than ours right now, other than our Fox deal – the greatest television model in boxing history is USA Tuesday Night Fights. If you go online, USA Tuesday Night Fights came out with a box set with the greatest knockouts and things like that – and if you look at the names who fought on Tuesday Night Fights, on free TV every Tuesday night, it was a who’s who from boxing. That was probably the greatest television model, other than ours, in the history of combat sports. And ours is way better because we have a ton of more programming than Tuesday Night Fights did, but Tuesday Night Fights delivered big, really good fights. [I used to] watch it religiously. It created a lot of stars for pay-per-view,” White said.
Another issue that Haymon will quickly encounter is keeping a happy shop. White is all too familiar with the tough task of keeping a large stable of fighters happy and more importantly active. As Haymon’s stable continues to grow, the likelihood of unhappy fighters will increase.
“It’s not only about keeping them happy either; it’s about keeping them active. When we first bought the UFC, when we first got going we had about 30 fighters under contract…maybe less. And then we got bigger and the company started to grow and now we have almost 600 fighters under contract. The thing is, like you said, it’s tough to keep everybody happy. Imagine you have almost 600 fighters under contract and we have to keep all of these guys happy and we have to keep all of these guys active so they’re making money. It’s tough to do. It’s not as easy as it looks,” White said.
In closing, White says it’s going to be tough venture to pull off – but at the same time he doesn’t rule out the possibility of Haymon making it successful,
“That’s a lot of money [he’s spending] and it’s hard to make back on TV. That being said, never say never. Everybody doubted us when we started and said we couldn’t do it and said everything we were doing was ridiculous and look at where we are at today. When you have a guy who is smart enough, works hard enough, makes the right moves – they can do anything,” White said.
