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Originally posted by md40022
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So, there's a lot to unpack with this....
First off, the paydays that boxers have been receiving have been going up while the TV numbers have been going down. It's been like that for a while and obviously that was a problem waiting to happen. The problem is though, it's a tough cycle to break. Of course the fighters are going to go where the most money is. You can't fault them for that. So if one or two individual promoters start to offer less money, they are screwed. But at the same time, if all the promoters keep putting out these gigantic paydays while the TV numbers just aren't there then eventually the networks are going to pull away.
HBO is an incredibly well run company and they saw where this was heading years ago. Regarding Showtime, it is widely known that the Wilder vs. Breazeale fight was their death. If you recall, that was around the time that DAZN was supposedly offering insane money to Wilder for a fight with Joshua. Showtime (Espinoza) stepped up and went wayyyyy deep into their pockets to pay Wilder for that fight. If you remember, that fight was not a PPV and frankly there wasn't much interest in it. The rumor is that Showtime took a major loss and immediately after that Espinoza's bosses cut his budget big time. If you look at the before and after of the date for Wilder / Breazeale, Showtime only did a small fraction of the fights that they normally do from that point forward. You also saw quite a few PBC fighters fight less and less. Showtime execs weren't giving Espinoza the budget anymore from that point forward. It's also why some really ridiculous fights ended up on PPV (ex: Ruiz / Arreola).
So who is at fault here? Espinoza was ****** for ponying up insane money for a Wilder fight that nobody cared about, but at the same time what are you supposed to do when DAZN is backing a truck full of money into Wilder's driveway? And since then, DAZN's no pay per view policy has went out the window and their monthly subscription fee seems very hard to justify given their lack of quality fights (and now their big fights ARE going to PPV).
Boxing fans loved to dump on Dana White for not paying his fighters, but when the purse money for a major boxing event totals $30-$40 million and the purse money for a major UFC event totals $5 million and on top of that the UFC event is doing just as good if not better TV and gate numbers? That's why UFC is thriving and boxing can't hold down spot on a network.
One very basic piece of business advise that I've heard before is this.... Never start your business with a model that you cannot sustain. And what is meant by that is if you start your business with the best prices and the best deals thinking that it will attract customers (DAZN with their no PPV) you are going to alienate those exact same customers when you realize that you aren't making any money and you have to raise prices. Also, if you start your business spending like a mad-man thinking you will essentially buy customers (PBC with signing every fighter on the planet AND paying for major network TV slots) if you don't hit a grand slam homerun then you are going to be in major financial trouble. Virtually all promoters broke that very basic rule with how they entered the game and/or how their platforms entered the game.... It was recipe for disaster....... Again, fighter purses have been going up and promoters had to keep matching that $$ to stay competitive with competing promoters, meanwhile TV numbers have been going down. This was a recipe for disaster. Just a matter of time.
As for "what's next".... I'm not overly optimistic. Somebody earlier in this thread mentioned NBC. Put yourself in NBC's shoes. WHY would you possibly do that? You went down that path with PBC once before and then pulled the plug because it wasn't profitable. What changed on PBCs end or in boxing that would make you think trying that again would be any different? One thing about Showtime, whether you love them or hate them, they worked hard to stage a good event. It was a top notch production as far as the broadcast itself is concerned. Putting in A+ level production like they did, is an investment. And when the investment isn't worth the return anymore, you pull the plug. So could PBC link up with Amazon? Umm yeah, I guess. But I'm assuming that Amazon is going to want to take a look at PBC's business model because at the end of the day, Amazon is going to want it to be profitable for them. What in PBC's existing business model is going to make Amazon say, "oh yeah, we NEED this." Maybe Amazon gives them a test run for a year or two, but long term? I don't see how this would be anymore appealing to Amazon than it would be to all the other networks and platforms that are pulling the plug on boxing. I could see a scenario where maybe Amazon says here's a short term 2 year contract or here's a 10 fight contract or something and then they reevaluate from there, but barring some ridiculous changes made in the entire sport of boxing I don't see any long term ability to sustain that. Someone in an earlier thread said PBC is "having a great year." Umm, no they aren't. Yeah, they gave us some good fights but that is VERY different than success from a network's standpoint. Spence / Crawford = great fight for the fans. But when that fight is $50,000,000 in purses plus whatever money was invested in promoting the fight, plus whatever money was invested in staging and producing the event the network at the end of the day may not feel PBC is having as "great" of a year as fans thing LOL. As I said before, UFC stages the same type of event for 10% of the purse money.
The real solution here is all of the promoters getting together and saying we are cutting purses in half. That gives you a lot more money for the suit & tie wearing execs to see as profit and that's what keeps you on TV. All promoters would need to be on board with it though, because otherwise if one rogue promoter is still paying outrageous purses, it will sink the ship of those trying to cut down.... Truthfully, I don't like that solution because the fighters deserve the money more so than the corporate dorks but the reality is that the corporate dorks are the ones with the keys to the car.
PBC will probably get a short term "test run" with Amazon or maybe they'll link up with DAZN or some other platform and maybe that stops the bleeding for a little bit, but none of this is good. No individual promoter or company is responsible for this. Boxing did this to itself and all of the parties that be in boxing were either too ****** to realize it or they were just operating with the philosophy of, "all is okay right now, we'll deal with the impending problems when they happen." Boxing is dying a slow death as much as we don't want to say so. What's going to happen is one or two more of these platforms are going to pull the plug in the coming years and boxing is going to end up on some small time platform with very little money to invest. Production value will go in the toilet and the overall money will decrease. To take that a step farther, young fighters will go more towards MMA as boxing dwindles more and more. I don't think this is the actual death of boxing, but it is yet another IV tube that we have to hook up to the sport that's already on life support.
First off, the paydays that boxers have been receiving have been going up while the TV numbers have been going down. It's been like that for a while and obviously that was a problem waiting to happen. The problem is though, it's a tough cycle to break. Of course the fighters are going to go where the most money is. You can't fault them for that. So if one or two individual promoters start to offer less money, they are screwed. But at the same time, if all the promoters keep putting out these gigantic paydays while the TV numbers just aren't there then eventually the networks are going to pull away.
HBO is an incredibly well run company and they saw where this was heading years ago. Regarding Showtime, it is widely known that the Wilder vs. Breazeale fight was their death. If you recall, that was around the time that DAZN was supposedly offering insane money to Wilder for a fight with Joshua. Showtime (Espinoza) stepped up and went wayyyyy deep into their pockets to pay Wilder for that fight. If you remember, that fight was not a PPV and frankly there wasn't much interest in it. The rumor is that Showtime took a major loss and immediately after that Espinoza's bosses cut his budget big time. If you look at the before and after of the date for Wilder / Breazeale, Showtime only did a small fraction of the fights that they normally do from that point forward. You also saw quite a few PBC fighters fight less and less. Showtime execs weren't giving Espinoza the budget anymore from that point forward. It's also why some really ridiculous fights ended up on PPV (ex: Ruiz / Arreola).
So who is at fault here? Espinoza was ****** for ponying up insane money for a Wilder fight that nobody cared about, but at the same time what are you supposed to do when DAZN is backing a truck full of money into Wilder's driveway? And since then, DAZN's no pay per view policy has went out the window and their monthly subscription fee seems very hard to justify given their lack of quality fights (and now their big fights ARE going to PPV).
Boxing fans loved to dump on Dana White for not paying his fighters, but when the purse money for a major boxing event totals $30-$40 million and the purse money for a major UFC event totals $5 million and on top of that the UFC event is doing just as good if not better TV and gate numbers? That's why UFC is thriving and boxing can't hold down spot on a network.
One very basic piece of business advise that I've heard before is this.... Never start your business with a model that you cannot sustain. And what is meant by that is if you start your business with the best prices and the best deals thinking that it will attract customers (DAZN with their no PPV) you are going to alienate those exact same customers when you realize that you aren't making any money and you have to raise prices. Also, if you start your business spending like a mad-man thinking you will essentially buy customers (PBC with signing every fighter on the planet AND paying for major network TV slots) if you don't hit a grand slam homerun then you are going to be in major financial trouble. Virtually all promoters broke that very basic rule with how they entered the game and/or how their platforms entered the game.... It was recipe for disaster....... Again, fighter purses have been going up and promoters had to keep matching that $$ to stay competitive with competing promoters, meanwhile TV numbers have been going down. This was a recipe for disaster. Just a matter of time.
As for "what's next".... I'm not overly optimistic. Somebody earlier in this thread mentioned NBC. Put yourself in NBC's shoes. WHY would you possibly do that? You went down that path with PBC once before and then pulled the plug because it wasn't profitable. What changed on PBCs end or in boxing that would make you think trying that again would be any different? One thing about Showtime, whether you love them or hate them, they worked hard to stage a good event. It was a top notch production as far as the broadcast itself is concerned. Putting in A+ level production like they did, is an investment. And when the investment isn't worth the return anymore, you pull the plug. So could PBC link up with Amazon? Umm yeah, I guess. But I'm assuming that Amazon is going to want to take a look at PBC's business model because at the end of the day, Amazon is going to want it to be profitable for them. What in PBC's existing business model is going to make Amazon say, "oh yeah, we NEED this." Maybe Amazon gives them a test run for a year or two, but long term? I don't see how this would be anymore appealing to Amazon than it would be to all the other networks and platforms that are pulling the plug on boxing. I could see a scenario where maybe Amazon says here's a short term 2 year contract or here's a 10 fight contract or something and then they reevaluate from there, but barring some ridiculous changes made in the entire sport of boxing I don't see any long term ability to sustain that. Someone in an earlier thread said PBC is "having a great year." Umm, no they aren't. Yeah, they gave us some good fights but that is VERY different than success from a network's standpoint. Spence / Crawford = great fight for the fans. But when that fight is $50,000,000 in purses plus whatever money was invested in promoting the fight, plus whatever money was invested in staging and producing the event the network at the end of the day may not feel PBC is having as "great" of a year as fans thing LOL. As I said before, UFC stages the same type of event for 10% of the purse money.
The real solution here is all of the promoters getting together and saying we are cutting purses in half. That gives you a lot more money for the suit & tie wearing execs to see as profit and that's what keeps you on TV. All promoters would need to be on board with it though, because otherwise if one rogue promoter is still paying outrageous purses, it will sink the ship of those trying to cut down.... Truthfully, I don't like that solution because the fighters deserve the money more so than the corporate dorks but the reality is that the corporate dorks are the ones with the keys to the car.
PBC will probably get a short term "test run" with Amazon or maybe they'll link up with DAZN or some other platform and maybe that stops the bleeding for a little bit, but none of this is good. No individual promoter or company is responsible for this. Boxing did this to itself and all of the parties that be in boxing were either too ****** to realize it or they were just operating with the philosophy of, "all is okay right now, we'll deal with the impending problems when they happen." Boxing is dying a slow death as much as we don't want to say so. What's going to happen is one or two more of these platforms are going to pull the plug in the coming years and boxing is going to end up on some small time platform with very little money to invest. Production value will go in the toilet and the overall money will decrease. To take that a step farther, young fighters will go more towards MMA as boxing dwindles more and more. I don't think this is the actual death of boxing, but it is yet another IV tube that we have to hook up to the sport that's already on life support.
md40022
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