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I'm surprised so many are against this. Yeah, its King running it, but it is still a lot more exposure. And think about it, even if it is just weekly Friday Night Fights type shows, we'll never get pre-empted for ****ing log rolling or cycling or whatever bull**** ESPN2 likes to do now.
And who knows? King could possibly bring forth a couple decent sponsers. Though I'm not super wild on the idea of King running the network, it could be a lot worse. As far as worrying that all his cards would be on PPV...I doubt it. He'd have less reason to need PPV. There's this misconception that promoters like charging fans at home $50 a pop to see the big fights. That's actually not the case. Promoters basically have to do that because they can't get good enough sponsorship. The amount the promoters gets from PPV buys is nowhere near what they could make from sponsors.
And really what are HBO and Showtime besides just really extended PPV channels anyhow? We have to pay extra every month to get them. Imagine this, King gets his network going and it grows. They start having fights like they have on HBO for "free" on that channel. Then say they keep doing the $50 PPVs for big fights. We'd still save in the end. Premium channel packages cost upwards of $12 extra a month on satellite dish, even higher for cable. That'd be a savings of $144 and up, which is almost 3 whole PPVs. Yeah, not a huge savings, but significant enough I think.
And, since the HBO level fights would now be on a Boxing channel, which isn't a premium channel, this increases potential viewers. So then, that increases the audience, which could lead to a higher rate of people willing to buy the PPV. If you've got a bigger audience, you can afford to lower that PPV price.
And hey, even worst case, if King's channel is just an avenue for King to promote his fighters and display them, is it really that bad? At least it'd be competition for HBO and Showtime. Competition makes everybody have to work harder.
Check out the WWF. 5 years ago, wrestling was easily the highest rated cable show, by far. Vince McMahon bought out his competition and then what happened? No competition meant the WWF didn't have to try hard. That meant a weaker product. Competition is what fueled the WWF.
That's an element boxing needs, networks competing to want to host the bigger fights.
Though, this still isn't "the answer" to the problems in boxing, it certainly isn't that bad of an idea.
And who knows? King could possibly bring forth a couple decent sponsers. Though I'm not super wild on the idea of King running the network, it could be a lot worse. As far as worrying that all his cards would be on PPV...I doubt it. He'd have less reason to need PPV. There's this misconception that promoters like charging fans at home $50 a pop to see the big fights. That's actually not the case. Promoters basically have to do that because they can't get good enough sponsorship. The amount the promoters gets from PPV buys is nowhere near what they could make from sponsors.
And really what are HBO and Showtime besides just really extended PPV channels anyhow? We have to pay extra every month to get them. Imagine this, King gets his network going and it grows. They start having fights like they have on HBO for "free" on that channel. Then say they keep doing the $50 PPVs for big fights. We'd still save in the end. Premium channel packages cost upwards of $12 extra a month on satellite dish, even higher for cable. That'd be a savings of $144 and up, which is almost 3 whole PPVs. Yeah, not a huge savings, but significant enough I think.
And, since the HBO level fights would now be on a Boxing channel, which isn't a premium channel, this increases potential viewers. So then, that increases the audience, which could lead to a higher rate of people willing to buy the PPV. If you've got a bigger audience, you can afford to lower that PPV price.
And hey, even worst case, if King's channel is just an avenue for King to promote his fighters and display them, is it really that bad? At least it'd be competition for HBO and Showtime. Competition makes everybody have to work harder.
Check out the WWF. 5 years ago, wrestling was easily the highest rated cable show, by far. Vince McMahon bought out his competition and then what happened? No competition meant the WWF didn't have to try hard. That meant a weaker product. Competition is what fueled the WWF.
That's an element boxing needs, networks competing to want to host the bigger fights.
Though, this still isn't "the answer" to the problems in boxing, it certainly isn't that bad of an idea.
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