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HBO wasting money and overpaying, and bidding against themselves, for fights was something Thomas Hauser and Steve Kim, among others, wrote about for years.Pacquaio's purse is paid by Arum, but Arum is only paying money he knows he is guaranteed through HBO. Arum is not going to risk money he knows he's not guaranteed to make. If the PPV does not do well, HBO takes a hit. Top Rank is not putting themselves on the hook like that for each event. And their offers to fighters (like Pacquaio) are based on figures HBO will or will not pay.
No they did not, not in this manner. Hardly any of them ever talked about HBO possibly going out of business over it either. And HBO's budget, before Showtime became such a player, was triple or quadruple what it is today.
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Do you not realize, for example, that Arum already has a deal in place with HBO for exclusive PPV fights with Pacquaio? It's similar to Floyd's Showtime deal.
It was not forum chatter though, and definitely not this much whatsoever. Hardly talked about on the forums. At best, you had some chatter about a few fighters being overpaid. But never to the point where people were going 'oh HBO is going to go out of business'.Comment
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Espinosa seems not a very complicated guy. He just follows whatever Haymon and Schaefer tell him to do. But what this sport needs is a real boxing fan who will go out of his way to make the fights he and the fans want happen. Networks have the power, but Espinosa would rather make his buddies happy.Comment
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Thomas Hauser dedicated entire articles to the subject, and he talked in depth about the decline in the quality, budget and ratings of boxing on HBO.
One example:
-Sources say that the current annual budget for HBO Sports is approximately $75,000,000. That doesn***8217;t include the salaries of fulltime employees, who are listed on a different budget line. It does include salaries for ***8220;talent***8221; (such as Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant, and Bryant Gumbel), license fees, production costs, and marketing. Approximately $60,000,000 of that $75,000,000 total is spent on boxing. By way of comparison, Showtime***8217;s annual boxing budget is slightly more than $20,000,000.
-But mismatches still plague HBO. On April 12, 2008, the network televised Miguel Cotto vs. Alfonso Gomez as half of a doubleheader on HBO World Championship Boxing. Cotto entered the ring a 12-to-1 favorite.
-Three weeks later, Oscar De La Hoya was an 18-to-1 favorite over Stevie Forbes.
-On June 7th, HBO World Championship Boxing will televise Kelly Pavlik against Gary Lockett; a fight in which Pavlik is a 15-to-1 favorite.
-The primary problem with boxing at HBO today is that money is often unwisely spent. The network can cherry-pick the fights it wants. But too often, it picks rotten cherries. It holds the line on license fees for some fights with some promoters and then wildly overpays for others.
-But the fact remains that HBO spent close to $10,000,000 on licensing, marketing, and production for De La Hoya-Forbes. And the telecast generated the lowest points-per-dollar rating ever for a fight on HBO.
-HBO***8217;s dealings with Ricky Hatton are a case in point. Sources say that, in 2006, the network signed a three-fight deal that led to a $2,850,000 license fee for Hatton***8217;s fight against Luis Collazo; $2,850,000 for Hatton against Juan Urango; and $3,000,000 for Hatton against Jose Luis Castillo.
-There***8217;s something very wrong with the economic model at HBO Sports when the network pays a $2,850,000 license fee for Hatton-Urango and Versus pays roughly five percent of that amount for a doubleheader pairing Hatton-Lazcano with Malignaggi-N***8217;dou.
-Showtime paid a total of $4,200,000 for all three Vasquez-Marquez encounters. HBO frequently pays an amount in that neighborhood for one fight.
-By contrast, Versus paid a license fee in the low six figures (very low) for its May 24th doubleheader featuring Hatton against Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi against Lovemore N***8217;dou.
-HBO paid a $3,000,000 license fee for Joe Calzaghe against Mikkel Kessler (plus another seven figures for marketing and production). The fight garnered a 2.8 rating (the lowest prime-time HBO World Championship Boxing rating ever). HBO then paid a $6,500,000 license fee for Calzaghe vs. Bernard Hopkins, which averaged a disappointing 3.9 for the show.
To put these numbers in perspective, HBO also did a 3.9 rating for Jermain Taylor against Kassim Ouma, but paid $3,500,000. And it paid $6,500,000 for Taylor against Winky Wright, but that fight did a 5.9 rating.
Another example:
-HBO simply isn***8217;t giving its subscribers fights that fight fans want to see. One way of measuring that is ratings. Another way of measuring it is that fans aren***8217;t buying tickets to many of the fights that HBO televises. By way of example, Andre Berto vs. Carlos Quintana (for which HBO paid a US$2,150,000 license fee) sold 972 tickets.
-Taking into account fights that have been scheduled through the end of 2010, the fighters who will have appeared live most often on HBO World Championship Boxing and Boxing After Dark from 2008 through 2010 are Andre Berto and Alfredo Angulo with seven appearances each. Berto will be dealt with later in this article. Let***8217;s take a look at Angulo.
Alfredo is an entertaining fighter. He***8217;s a big strong guy who throws punches and gets hit. He had zero name recognition before he appeared on HBO. The network could have insisted that he go in tough. Instead, it was clear before the opening bell that each of his first three opponents (Richard Gutierrez, Andrey Tsurkan, and Cosme Rivera) was woefully overmatched. Then Angulo went in tough against Kermit Cintron and lost, so it was back to less threatening opponents (Harry Yorgey, Joel Julio, and Joachim Alcine).
Why are fighters like Alfredo Angulo consistently on HBO if they***8217;re not willing to fight the best?
Fighters, as previously noted, become stars by going in tough. But they have little incentive to go in tough when HBO keeps overpaying them to fight weak opponents. By way of example, Angulo turned down a US$750,000 purse to fight Sergio Martinez in November. Martinez would have been favored in that fight.
-HBO paid US$3,200,000 for a rematch between Chad Dawson and Antonio Tarver last year (their first fight drew 911 paying fans) because it wanted Dawson in its stable. Dawson-Tarver II sold 1,426 tickets. Then HBO paid millions more for a rematch between Dawson and Glen Johnson before Dawson lost to Jean Pascal.Last edited by Mitchell Kane; 06-11-2014, 02:28 AM.Comment
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More...
-HBO and boxing are at a crossroads. The first draft of the network***8217;s overall budget for 2010 was presented in July. It called for a US$15,000,000 reduction for HBO Sports; a cut in excess of twenty percent. Then, during the first week of September, Michael Lombardo (president of HBO***8217;s programming group and West Coast operations) further signaled senior management***8217;s displeasure with the status quo by instructing HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg to cut several million dollars from the budget for the last quarter of 2009.
-The key players in the drama that***8217;s unfolding are HBO CEO Bill Nelson, co-president Richard Plepler, and Lombardo. Sources say that these three men have been frustrated by the absence of a coherent overall plan for boxing at HBO.
-Nelson, Plepler, and Lombardo are unlikely to tell Greenburg where to cut $15,000,000 from his 2010 budget. That will be his decision. But if the $15,000,000 cut stands, most of it is expected to come out of boxing. There will be lower license fees, fewer fights, and, most likely, layoffs. It***8217;s possible that Boxing After Dark will be discontinued.
-Greenburg***8217;s decision to spend US$3,200,000 plus production and marketing costs on Dawson-Tarver II left a lot of people shaking their heads. Their first fight (on Showtime) had been twelve rounds of tedium that engendered a paid attendance of 911 (a true emergency number). The only reason they were fighting again was that Tarver exercised a rematch clause in his contract.
Dawson-Tarver II typified much of what***8217;s wrong with the decision-making process at HBO Sports. It was summer stock on a Broadway budget. According to records filed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, 1,426 tickets were sold. The live gate receipts totaled a meager $170,280. Something is very wrong when a network pays a license fee that***8217;s nineteen times the live gate for a fight that can***8217;t sell out a small hotel venue.Comment
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There's a reason people don't want to deal with Rob Arum and Oscar will find out why once again without Vaseline. ........Comment
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