By Edward Chaykovsky
Stephen Espinoza, head of Showtime Sports, says Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Andre Berto was never under serious consideration to get showcased on CBS as a network television event.
Espinoza confirms that Showtime explored that possibility but found out very quickly that it wasn't going to work from a financially position, because most of the ads [if not all] for the week of September 12th were already sold back in May.
Fans were furious when Mayweather-Berto was announced as a Showtime Pay-Per-View event, with a price tag of $74.95 for high definition. Espinoza attributes some of that anger to numerous reports which suggested that Mayweather-Berto was a 'done deal' for CBS.
"There was consideration given to CBS, not quite as much as the rumors had suggested. There wasn't that long of a process though, it sort of got blown out of proportion," Espinoza explained.
"But the reality is, the TV business operates on a different timetable. Network TV operates on a timetable of six to eight months in advance - so whether you are talking about sponsor budgets, talking about ad time - most of the stuff for the fall is already settled by May or June of this year."
"It's almost unheard of, to have a big time event that you would sell ads for on an eight or ten week process. So there was exploration done, but it became clear pretty quickly that it wasn't going to be viable on the timetable this fight had. If we were selling a Mayweather fight for next May, then that's a different story and that could have worked. But to find sponsors, sell ads in the third quarter of the year when most of the ads were sold back in May, it just wasn't practical."