Does Top Rank have a new TV/outlet deal in the works?

Lance Pugmire and Steve Kim have suggested something is in the works... Lance Pugmire: Arum has been impressed, and as the 85-year-old has fortified his stable with nearly 10 new fighters since the Olympics — including a gold medalist from Brazil and Ireland’s wildly popular Michael Conlan, who’ll debut at Madison Square Garden on St. Patrick’s Day — several in the sport are expecting a television deal to be announced shortly. “We absolutely have a plan to exhibit these guys, but until it’s signed and sealed and done, I’m not going to discuss it,” Arum said. http://www.latimes.com/sports/boxing/la-sp-sn-boxing-shakur-stevenson-oscar-valdez-bob-arum-mayweather-20170307-story.html Steve Kim: “I’ve been in boxing – this is 51 years – and I tell you this: That the next 10 years will be the biggest for boxing during my entire connection with the sport,” said Arum, who’s still very spry in his mid-80s. “I’m not going to get into it but I’m telling you – when the announcements are made, you’ll understand.” “Well, I have a plan but I’m not able to reveal the plan,” Arum hinted. Kim speculates what that could be.... While he didn’t want to get into details over what Top Rank has in store, logic would dictate that it would involve modern technology, namely the ability to stream content over such devices as mobile phones and tablets. There is more and more cord-cutting taking place with cable/satellite television and how people are now watching television is evolving. “I mean, you can blame somebody else but you’ve got to blame yourself. See, I remember when fighters were much more relevant, when they were performing on a regular basis on over-the-air networks and, then HBO came along and offered us twice the money – or sometimes more – to go to premium networks and over-the-air networks found that the premium networks were getting all the good fights. So they dropped out because they weren’t getting good fights and it was our fault because we didn’t have the foresight to realize that, by going to the premium networks, we were limiting our market.” “Also exposure because an over-the-air network like CBS had a hundred million homes and an HBO had barely thirty million,” pointed out Arum, who, for years, has promoted pay-per-view cards such as “Latin Fury” and “Pinoy Power” to fill in the gaps when an HBO or Showtime did not have the desire or budget for his fights. Over the last couple of years, Golden Boy Promotions has begun to stream fight cards and has its own in-house production crew to create content that is pushed on various social media platforms and YouTube (which is also now being utilized to stream cards live). “I know what we have to do and what we’re doing. We’re doing a feature now on Shakur and I really believe, within three or four months, the whole future of boxing will change appreciably,” stated Arum, on Friday. “And part of that is the necessity to take your athletes and have people understand who they are, so they can identify with (them). If you have faceless guys, nobody can identify with them.” http://ucnlive.com/bob-arum-bullish-future-boxing/