First Boxxer show to be broadcast on BBC ‘sooner than you think,’ says Ben Shalom
“It’s been a long time coming to be fair, so I’m happy,” said Ben Shalom just hours after announcing that Boxxer was linking up with the BBC as part of a new TV deal. “The feedback has been very good.”
Shalom’s previous contract, with Sky Sports, expired earlier this year, with a final show featuring super middleweight contender Callum Simpson boxing at Barnsley’s Oakwell Stadium for a second time.
“It’s a multi-fight, multi-year deal,” Shalom said of the BBC pact.
“A lot of our fighters want to be pay-per-view stars, and we just made that route a lot easier.”
Shalom is set to announce a second broadcast partner for the pay-per-view side of the business in the coming weeks.
Announcing the deal to their 10.6m followers on X, BBC Sport headlined: “BBC Sport will show live Boxxer fights – The new broadcast deal will see action shown on Saturday nights across BBC TV and BBC iPlayer.”
It continued: “Saturday night fights on the BBC! Watch live across BBC TV and BBC iPlayer, with additional behind-the-scenes content on BBC Sounds, the BBC Sport website and social media.”
“BBC are our exclusive free-to-air partner, we will have a different pay TV partner for pay-per-view, but it allows us to build the pay-per-view stars more quickly,” said Shalom.
Asked when the next announcement would come, Shalom said: “That will be quite soon, but we wanted to do BBC first.”
There are still a lot of unknowns about the deal, including when the first show is and what fighters will appear. Shalom, who wanted to focus on the triumph of getting the BBC involved back in boxing again, would not confirm whether September 27, as reported by the Daily Star, was accurate as a launch, but said the first card would be “sooner than you think.”
Asked whether Boxxer was involved in Chris Eubank Jnr’s November rematch with Conor Benn in November, as they were when Eubank – represented by Boxxer – defeated his rival in April at Tottenham Stadium, Shalom said: “[It’s the] same as last time.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.