Comments Thread For: Berto vs Ortiz Draws Biggest Rating For HBO in 2011

[RSBonos]

@mrpain81

Any idea how the Martinez, Gamboa and Sillakh FNF shows did?

[ShoulderRoll]

Thank god you not a promoter @ shoulderroll. we would of missed on the greatest fights in 2011. As far as Business, scared money don't make money, dummy.

You didn't get the sarcasm that I was posting as Bob Arum, did you?

[zzat]

It was foolish of Golden Boy Promotions to risk Victor Ortiz' career like that. What if he had lost? If I was the promoter I would have let Berto vs. Ortiz marinate for another year or two.

It doesn't matter what kind of rating HBO got. I am in the business of making money not pleasing the hardcore fans.

Signed,

Bob Arum

Dear Mr. Arum,

I jus wanted to sank you fer the making me so much money and fer making people believe I'm zhe greatest fighter in history. As fer GBP, I want to appologize fer signing wis zhem and you at zhe same time.

I will always let you choose my opponents because you know zhe boxing business better.

I hope the money we will get from zhe lawsuit will make up fer zhe one we're not getting for zhat fight we don't want to make wis you know who...

Yours
...

[switchsouthpaw]

**** letting a fight like this marinate. Berto needed it. Ortiz needed it and most importantly the sport was elevated as a result of it. HBO received it's highest rating for boxing programming all year. This fight was a win-win all the way around.

[onechance87]

Yeah mr pain,Where are the ratings for martinez and gamboa

[dans]

Awesome. Can you say "rematch"?

[mrpain81]

man i was just messing around. i already told you i appreciated your posts about the subject matter, and how informative it was for me. I had no idea how many viewers tuned in to the average BAD or world championship boxing event. I had always wondered how many people watched these.

Alright man no worries.

im sure they have misinformed us before, but i have to ask what would be the motivation for doing so?

Who knows really. There has been a lot of pressure the last few years from the fans and media that the HBO guys don't know wtf they doing. Hauser wrote that they might be getting canned so maybe they try to put out good ratings to release some of that pressure? I know they ain't doing it to impress their bosses since they probably get all the ratings on a memo every morning.

I bet if ESPN just dropped a little more annually in their boxing budget for promotion and what have you, they could be double those numbers in 3 years or so.

Yeah it's crazy that ESPN2 regularly does about half the HBO ratings and is on par with the SHO ratings but pays very little to the promoters. A few years back ESPN signed a pretty big deal with Main Events to pay them bigger TV fee's and they would also do a few PPV's a year. The problem is the fights they got on the air just weren't big enough names because the ratings weren't affected in a big way by Calvin Brock or Joel Julio.

[mrpain81]

I don't see how it would dissuade any boxing fans to stop watching all because of how many OTHER people are watching. I believe the numbers are legit too especially with the free weekend. that was GOLDEN for hbo - will probably help them get a bigger budget from corporate. but corporate knows how many peopel are REALLY watching anyway . . .

The ****ed up thing is around the 1999 HBO paid $100M for their boxing budget, that year DLH/Trinidad2x/Prince all fought on regular HBO. It was all down hill after that since we know the bottom line for a company is spend less and make more. The last time I read anything about their budget was around 1998 and it was $60M. Who really knows though, the Sopranos came out in 1999, maybe they shifted some of that money into doing more shows since the Sopranos was such a big hit.

[mrpain81]

@mrpain81

Any idea how the Martinez, Gamboa and Sillakh FNF shows did?

Yeah mr pain,Where are the ratings for martinez and gamboa

There's been a delay in getting the HBO ratings but this week hopefully Chavez gets all the past ones he missed. I've only been able to get the FNF ratings.

03/04/11 - ESPN2 - FNF's - 596,000 average viewers

Very solid number for that Friday night fights. People gotta remember that last year there was only 1 FNF's that did over 600k and the second best live viewers I saw was 595k.

This year Friday night fights got some real big numbers that I hadn't seen since I started trying to get a hold of the ratings for some years now.

January 7, 2011 - Prodvonikov/Herrera - 545,000 live viewers

1/14/11 - ESPN2 - FNF - 788,000 average viewers

January 28, 2011 - Arreola/Abell - 734,000 live viewers

I think it might have been some momentum carried over from the movie the fighter blowing up but who really knows.

[Picazo]

Impressive.