Arum Defends Viewership Numbers For Top Rank's ESPN Shows In June

Bob Arum isn’t as disappointed as some people invested in boxing over viewership figures from the shows his promotional company has provided ESPN during the past two weeks.

With few live sporting events televised this month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many industry insiders expected ESPN’s viewership to be higher for boxing shows the network has aired live on Tuesday nights and Thursday nights since June 9 from MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas. More people are home during the pandemic, which theoretically expands ESPN’s viewership potential, but boxing fans’ most common complaint has been the quality of fights ESPN has aired in its four telecasts thus far.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the highest peak audience ESPN has attracted was the 609,000 who tuned in toward the end of the Shakur Stevenson’s sixth-round knockout of Felix Caraballo on June 9. Stevenson-Caraballo, a junior lightweight fight before which the unbeaten Stevenson was listed as a 100-1 favorite, was boxing’s first televised main event from the United States since March 13.

The average audience for that show was 397,000, the highest average of the four Top Rank cards ESPN has aired the past two weeks.

Viewership dipped significantly for ESPN’s second main event June 11, as a peak audience of 392,000 watched Jessie Magdaleno’s 10th-round disqualification victory over Yenifel Vicente in a 10-round junior lightweight bout. That show drew an average audience of 311,000.

Viewership went back up for ESPN’s subsequent broadcast, which was headlined by Mike Plania’s 10-round, majority-decision upset of Joshua Greer Jr. in a junior featherweight fight June 16. Peak and average viewership for that five-fight telecast was 503,000 and 350,000, respectively.

“The ratings I thought were very good for the first show,” Arum told BoxingScene.com. “For the second show, not so good. For the third, the numbers were pretty good. But again, the ratings with an ESPN show does not tell the whole story because not included in those ratings are ESPN Deportes, which probably does at least half, if not 60 percent of the [viewership] that ESPN does. All of ESPN Deportes’ audience is Hispanic, and a lot of them choose to listen [in Spanish] and watch on ESPN Deportes.

“Secondly, unlike a Showtime show and unlike even a FOX show, the number of people who watch ESPN in bars and restaurants is enormous. You go into many bars and restaurants – not high-end restaurants, but, you know, good restaurants – they always have ESPN on. And therefore, hundreds of thousands of people are watching the fights in bars and restaurants. So, the fact that number of people who are watching on ESPN through Nielsen appears sort of low, it doesn’t account for people who watch outside of their homes, away from their televisions sets.”

Many bars and restaurants in the U.S. remain closed for indoor dining and drinking.

ESPN’s fourth Top Rank show of June worsened Thursday, when the main event – a 10-round junior welterweight bout between Jose Pedraza and Mikkel LesPierre – was postponed the morning of the card because LesPierre’s manager, Josie Taveras, tested positive for COVID-19. Junior lightweight prospect Gabe Flores, who easily out-pointed Josec Ruiz in what was supposed to be the 10-round, co-featured fight, helped produce a peak audience of 382,000 for a five-fight show that averaged 305,000 viewers.

Broadcasting lower-level undercard fights during three-hour and four-hour shows hasn’t helped maintain audiences, either. ESPN has aired entire cards because its executives want any live sports programming it can offer its roughly 85 million subscribers in the United States.

“These undercard guys who used to go on before people even started filing into an arena, now you’re seeing them on TV, for better or for worse,” Arum said. “I find it fascinating.”

Arum also acknowledged the difficulties his matchmakers, Bruce Trampler and Brad Goodman, had finalizing fights because so many boxers have been unable to train properly. Top Rank also has been limited mostly to boxers who live or at least train in the United States and Puerto Rico while making matches due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions for fighters who would need to enter the U.S. from foreign countries.

“When we first kicked this off, Bruce and Brad were having terrible problems trying to make fights,” Arum said. “They’d call up managers from all over and they said, ‘Oh, we’d love to be on the show. But our fighters aren’t ready. They haven’t been in the gym.’ I mean, that is the reason why it’s been so difficult, because a lot of these kids were locked down, they couldn’t get into a gym, there were no gyms open and that sort of stuff. So, to make matches in that sort of environment is really a hell of a lot of work. People ask, ‘How come they weren’t matched with better opponents?’ Well, there weren’t any better opponents.”

ESPN will air another Top Rank card Tuesday night. Australia’s Andrew Moloney (21-0, 14 KOs) will defend his WBA world super flyweight title against San Antonio’s Joshua Franco (16-1-2, 8 KOs) in the main event of a five-fight telecast set to start at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. 

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.