By Steve Kim
There is no dearth of televised boxing in the States, currently, both on regular and premium cable outlets and now on terrestrial networks. At last count you had HBO, Showtime, ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, UniMas, FoxSports, CBS Sports Network, Telemundo, NBC Sports Network and Spike, among others, who are scheduled to televise a regular slate of fights in 2015.
Is this a boxing renaissance or was the death of the sport - as Mark Twain might say - greatly exaggerated?
"I never believed that boxing was not popular," said Bob Arum, the head of Top Rank, who's company on Monday morning announced their deal with TruTV that begins in May.
"I believed that we have groups in the United States that are growing like the Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians - that love boxing, they love to see boxing. So I never believed that boxing was on the downgrade.
"I think that it had a lot of difficulty in attracting sponsors and one of the reasons was because obviously - it's boxing - and there's violence when these guys fight. Companies didn't want to be associated with the sport because it could result in injuries to the participants but there's no question that boxing attracted a very large audience. So the sponsors have gotten over some of their squemishness and I think you'll see more and more boxing on television and it won't be time-buys. It'll be actual payments for putting talent on."
Most of the deals secured by Al Haymon for his PBC series on various networks do not come with a license fee but was put on through air-time that was purchased by Haymon and his investors. Top Rank will be getting money from the network to put on these cards.
"Yeah," quipped Arum,"we don't have any hedge funds backing us."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com
