Comments Thread For: Paramount Global To Shut Down Showtime Sports; Network Will No Longer Broadcast Boxing

[md40022]

We saw this in microcosm in the build up to Fury - Whyte as the Daniel Kinahan fall out began. Top Rank effectively filtered out anyone who was likely to ask a difficult question. I know it's trendy to attack the so-called "mainstream media" these days but they at least employ people who are capable of asking relevant, direct and concise questions. The unlettered, leading questions YouTube content creators ask are often embarrassing.

Great point about the YouTubers. I don't want to mention specific names here, but so much of the YouTube content is more or less just glorified cheerleaders following their favorite fighters around with a camera, "hey, Adrien Broner, what's your favorite color? What's your favorite food? Are you going to the club tonight? Whoa!!! you heard it here first, AB is going to the club tonight!!!!"

It's either that type of stuff or it's someone overly aligned with one promoter and just saying how great their fighters are while how terrible all other fighters are.

It's truly embarrassing.

Perfect example though, back during Mayweather / Pacquiao, Floyd did an interview with Rachel Nichols who I believe was working for CNN at the time. It was on live TV and she asked him some questions about his domestic violence accusations. Floyd and his team didn't like the questions and then if you recall, Rachel Nichols was denied credentials to access the fight as well as denied pre and post fight interview access. And at the time, Rachel Nichols was a very, very well known reporter and journalist who had worked for CNN and ESPN and covered at least the NBA, possibly even other major sports. Denying her access all because Floyd's feelings got hurt, was absolutely insane. Any piece she wrote or any TV spot she did regarding the fight was going to get a ton of clicks and views because she had a major platform. And boxing turned her away because of the questions they thought she might ask. Again, can you imagine the NBA, NFL and MLB no longer allowing ESPN access to any of their events because they all felt Stephen A. Smith talking too much crap about their teams and players? It would be absolute suicide, because Stephen A.'s crap-talk keeps people interested in those sports and keeps people tuning in. Yet boxing literally turns people away, someone like Rachel Nichols with a huge platform, and then they wonder why it doesn't have the mainstream appeal that it had in the 70s...... It's truly comical.

Now at the end of the day, with the example I used, them denying Nichols caused quite a bit of negative feedback and they ended up credentialing her at the very last minute. But for someone like myself or one of you, trying to start a legitimate website that gives honest coverage and writes honest pieces, they will deny you access in a heartbeat if your content doesn't kiss their butt enough and nobody would even know it because you don't have the same platform as someone like Rachel Nichols to call them out on.... I'm not saying that specifically is why boxing is dying. That list is too long to even discuss. But I will say denying media access to fights and fighters obviously hurts the average fan's ability to read up on fights and fighters and that hurts their mainstream appeal. That should be obvious, but boxing as a whole struggles with common sense more often than not. They'd rather have Ellie Seckbach running around with his cell camera asking their fighters what their favorite ice cream flavor is.... The whole thing is obnoxious.

[BennyBlanco]

Boxing has been dying for years. Best don't fight the best, it is all cherrypicking. Fighters looking for easiest paydays instead of testing themselves. Throw in the deaths from fight damage, the complete lack of commonality due to streaming and the internet, all the big networks now dropped the sport.

You clearly haven't watched boxing in years. The best ARE fighting the best. It's been happening for several years. There have been more undisputed champions crowned in the last few years than at any time in history. You can't get undisputed champions unless the best are fighting the best.

And putting undisputeds aside, the best are fighting the best. Wilder-Fury (which first happened back in 2018), Haney-Loma, Usyk-Joshua, Canelo-Bivol, Canelo-Plant, Tank-Ryan, Haney-Prograis, Spence-Crawford, just to name a few off the top of my head. Saying it's all cherrypicking just shows you haven't been paying attention.

Boxing has been niche for awhile now. Within a few years the sport will become less and less viable and in twenty years all of us "last generation"of boxing fans will left with only memories.

People have been saying the same thing for literally 100+ years. And yet there is more boxing on more platforms than ever before. Only internet trolls could turn that fact into "boxing is dying."

And only internet trolls could take a business decision by a financially struggling company (Paramount, which has lost 75% of its market value in just 3 years) and make it about boxing.

This decision says far more about Paramount than it does about boxing.

[BennyBlanco]

Boxing was at it's most popular when it aired for free on live TV. PPV is what made it a niche sport. Nobody follows it except for hardcore fans. Even PBC was talking free TV when they started. Now every show is a PPV. Sorry, greedy promoters did this.

This is a comically bad take.

Greedy promoters didn't make network TV abandoned boxing. Network TV abandoned boxing when a fighter DIED ON NATIONAL TV (Kim Duk-koo). Network TV did not want to be associated with that, and neither did advertisers.

So boxing went where advertisers were less important - i.e., cable - and where advertisers were irrelevant - i.e., HBO and Showtime. That wasn't because promoters were greedy. IT WAS BECAUSE NETWORK TV AND ITS ADVERTISERS DID NOT WANT BOXING ANYMORE BECAUSE IT'S BAD FOR BUSINESS WHEN A FIGHTERS DOES ON LIVE NETWORK TV.

And now people are still arguing that putting boxing behind a pay wall makes it smaller. AS IF THE BIGGEST AND MOST POPULAR SHOWS AVAILABLE AREN'T BEHIND PAY WALLS.

Pay wall didn't stop Game of Thrones from becoming huge.
Pay wall doesn't stop Netflix from being the most profitable media company in the world.
Pay wall doesn't stop Prime Video and Hulu from having some of the most popular shows around.

it's time to stop with the ****** narrative that having to pay for content makes it less popular. Have you seen the ratings on free TV lately? Not good.

[BennyBlanco]

I suspected since last year that PBC was done because they were hardly putting on any shows. And then 2023 rolls around and practically EVERYTHING is a PPV show. I was ignorant, though, that the money that dried up was Showtime money apparently. And PPV was the only way for them to work it for a little longer.

Showtime has done like 20 shows this year. Four have been PPV.

So how is "EVERYTHING" a PPV show now??????

[BennyBlanco]

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).

This is perhaps the ******est post I've ever read on this forum.

Showtime has been doing more fights in each of the last few years than they ever have. Espinoza says it at every press conference.

There are interviews out there in which he says 2021 was their biggest budget year and 2022 would be even bigger.

And then you start saying B.S. like blaming Showtime for Ruiz-Arreola PPV. THAT WASN'T EVEN A SHOWTIME PPV, IT WAS ON FOX. So how is that a Showtime budget issue?

[BennyBlanco]

As said, boxing killed itself when the top fighters and upcoming fighters went to HBO and Showtime and then the biggest fights were on PPV. HBO and Showtime doesn't have the reach of prime time networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox. Imagine if the NFL went off regular network and on only HBO and Showtime and then have their playoff games and Superbowl on PPV. The audience won't decline right away, but over the years? It will. Not to mentioned boxing is not a HS or college sport to replenish its participants like the other sports. It was suicidal to go to premium cable channels and limiting your audience.

BOXING DIDN'T CHOOSE GO TO CABLE. Network TV stopped being interest in boxing when Mancini killed a fighter in the ring on live TV. That's what networks and their advertisers stopped being involved in boxing. Cable was the only choice left for boxing to survive.

[Pigeons]

Showtime has done like 20 shows this year. Four have been PPV.

So how is "EVERYTHING" a PPV show now??????

The fights on regular Showtime feature matchups no one asked or called for.

[wrecksracer]

This is a comically bad take.

Greedy promoters didn't make network TV abandoned boxing. Network TV abandoned boxing when a fighter DIED ON NATIONAL TV (Kim Duk-koo). Network TV did not want to be associated with that, and neither did advertisers.

So boxing went where advertisers were less important - i.e., cable - and where advertisers were irrelevant - i.e., HBO and Showtime. That wasn't because promoters were greedy. IT WAS BECAUSE NETWORK TV AND ITS ADVERTISERS DID NOT WANT BOXING ANYMORE BECAUSE IT'S BAD FOR BUSINESS WHEN A FIGHTERS DOES ON LIVE NETWORK TV.

And now people are still arguing that putting boxing behind a pay wall makes it smaller. AS IF THE BIGGEST AND MOST POPULAR SHOWS AVAILABLE AREN'T BEHIND PAY WALLS.

Pay wall didn't stop Game of Thrones from becoming huge.
Pay wall doesn't stop Netflix from being the most profitable media company in the world.
Pay wall doesn't stop Prime Video and Hulu from having some of the most popular shows around.

it's time to stop with the ****** narrative that having to pay for content makes it less popular. Have you seen the ratings on free TV lately? Not good.

Your clown take is hilarious. Nobody is paying $80 per episode for Game of Thrones. That's what ran boxing from a popular attraction into what it is now.

[paulf]

The things you guys are talking about in this thread come down to the fact that boxing is not a unified sport - its a series of independent leagues that choose to copromote when it suits them.

NBA, NFL, FIFA etc call the shots when it comes to something like a reports credentials being revoked. Boxing is the Wild West - each league does what it wants and answers to no one.

People complaining about PBC fighters not fighting Top Rank fighters or vice versa.... it's always exhausted me. It's like calling for the UFC and Bellator champs to fight one another. Could it happen, legally? Yes. Will it? In there any mechanism to force it to happen? Fuck no. Top Rank and PBC have two great fighters and dont want to let their guys go to rival networks? There are four belts to choose from, and if they both want the same belt the sanctioning bodies will just make up two belts in that weight class.

It's a joke. Boxing in the United States is in a bad way because it's a poor product. HBO being gone effectively moved all the midsized promoters Dibella and Duva off TV entirely, and the major promoters get blank checks from promoters in exchange for exclusive agreements.

The UFC has 12 fights almost every weekend - 4 fights in the main card, 4 fights in the prelim, and 4 more in the free early prelims. Those 4 early prelims each weekend are always more competitive and exciting than any boxing PPV main card I've seen the past decade. Unless that changes..... boxing will continue to disappear from mainstream America.

[Tag, You're Hit]

Showtime has done like 20 shows this year. Four have been PPV.

So how is "EVERYTHING" a PPV show now??????

Well, "everything" wasn't meant to be literal. Most of the fights that weren't PPV were basically C or B level shows (no big names). They picked up the Tszyu fights, which was good.