TV Ratings for ESPN Friday Night Fights and HBO this Past Week

[mrpain81]

by John Chavez

Jul 22, 2010 -

One is big budget one is miniscule budget.

You'd figure that the amount of money spent would correlate to the talent within the card as well as the competitiveness of those match-ups.

This wasn't the case as Angulo and Bradley went into their HBO bouts as heavy favorites (Bradley opening up as a 10-1 favorite over Abregu).

Here are the television ratings as provided by Nielsen Media for this past weekend's bouts:

7-16-10 - ESPN2 - Friday Night Fights - Zab "Super" Judah vs. Jose Armando Santa Cruz - 625,000 live viewers

7-17-10 - HBO - Boxing After Dark - Alfredo Angulo vs. Joachim Alcine/Timothy Bradley vs. Carlos Abregu - 897,000 live viewers

Make what you want to of them.

They're considered an upswing by ESPN standards as the Friday Night Fights average has hovered around the 500,000 mark this year.

As for HBO, each year we see each "high" for the year as less than the previous year while each "low" for the year is lower than the previous year. It's nice to tout things as being rosy but the numbers do not lie, there is a downswing in the viewership in HBO boxing programming. I feel it's simply due to the repercussions of having too many PPV fights in 2007 and 2008 with much of the public not knowing who most of these new faces are.

Maybe it'll take some time for the ratings to climb back up to levels seen in 2005.

Maybe they'll never climb up to those levels.

Who really knows at this point.

http://theboxingtruth.com/article.php?id=1858

The HBO ratings were about average but the ESPN2 ratings are some of the highest for some time. Good for ESPN2 since they been stepping up with better fighters and match-ups.

[Stone Roses!]

Surprised by the ESPN numbers......

[mrpain81]

Surprised by the ESPN numbers......

For sure man.

This doesn't include the ESPN Deportes ratings or ESPN 3. Pretty solid for a boxing show that only pays the promoters 25k site fee.

[Heru]

Good... HBO needs to stop making these garbage mismatches, they set the standard.

Look at how Berto didn't want to face Mosley unless he got 50-50 because it would've been a paycut from the Quintana fight. I would embarass the HBO matchmaers while staying within the budget.

[futureofboxing]

Thanks for posting this Mrpain81 please post more ratings for future fights if you get the info.

[Stone Roses!]

For sure man.

This doesn't include the ESPN Deportes ratings or ESPN 3. Pretty solid for a boxing show that only pays the promoters 25k site fee.

Yeah mate. So what do you make of this in the long term though?

What positives can HBO and promoters take from it?

[Heru]

For sure man.

This doesn't include the ESPN Deportes ratings or ESPN 3. Pretty solid for a boxing show that only pays the promoters 25k site fee.

The site fee is negotiable.

HBO can definitely do better for the money they're dishing out. They're getting played.

[mrpain81]

Yeah mate. So what do you make of this in the long term though?

What positives can HBO and promoters take from it?

Well ESPN2 usually does from 400k-500k the last few weeks they been doing over 500k on a pretty decent upswing. HBO just needs to buy the fights we as fans want and tell the promoters if they aren't willing to make them to go PPV or Showtime. HBO has the biggest budget, nobody can compete with them but the idiots bid against themselves. If they got tough on the promoters we would see the fights we want, instead HBO wants to screw Showtime by taking their fighters and putting them in fights we don't always want to see.

These are the ESPN ratings for the last few weeks btw.

6/11/10 - ESPN2 FNF - 469,000 live viewers

6/18/10 - ESPN2 FNF - 511,000 live viewers

7/9/2009 -ESPN2 FNF -595,000 live viewers

7/16/2010 - ESPN2 FNF - 625,000 live viewers

[mrpain81]

The site fee is negotiable.

HBO can definitely do better for the money they're dishing out. They're getting played.

It's negotiable but 25k is the standard.

[$Bullsfam$]

Boxing is hurting itself in a lot of ways. The thing I took away most from that article was the part that said...

I feel it's simply due to the repercussions of having too many PPV fights in 2007 and 2008 with much of the public not knowing who most of these new faces are.

That's the problem. Manny & Floyd are the biggest names in the sport and it's the only fight the casuals care to see really really bad and it's not happening. And when they do have big pay per views, what the **** do they give us? Soto-Diaz on the ****in Pac-Clottey undercard, two over the hill fighters that don't have bright futures for people to look forward too. And even Hopkins vs Jones 2 which wasn't even successful but still the point, they gave us Litzau vs Rocky Jaurez? That's ****in pathetic.

What they need to do is start showing the stars that they want to make of tomorrow on the undercard. Give people fighters to look forward too. Get some rising stars of the undercard. Bradley vs Devon could of been big by now if those two were on huge PPV undercards. Golden Boy got off on a good note by putting Saul on their undercard of Floyd-Shane. I just wish more big PPV's would have undercards like the one were getting next weekend under Diaz-Marquez 2. That's a hell of a pay per view and well worth the money I just wish it was bigger then it is. I hope it does well.