Comments Thread For: Ratings Trend Suggests There Can Be 'Too Much Boxing'

[FeFist]

The problem is that not enough people have laced up a pair of gloves in their life. You look with popular sports, the people following it take part in the sport in some manner. People shoot hoops, people have a kick around, and people place touch football. There's some level of understanding and there's also a degree of continuity (teams date back many years).

I'd imagine boxing would be followed more if you had teams that people could support and it was common practise for people to hit the gym. As things stand, people are only interested in the huge events which is defeated by fights occurring week in week out.

[wlliam]

What the viewers need is a good opener to set the impression. Recognizable names to draw the viewers in.

Alot of the time, the 1st few rounds of a bout usually leave a bad taste in casuals mouths. Whats also hurting ratings is fighters with their newly adopted "conservative" styles stinkn the place up and turning off fans who had a completely different impression of them. Casuals want to see punches being thrown, they dont wanna see Lara running around, avoiding exchanges. They wanna see the Broner fron the Taylor, Maidan fights, not this defensive hugging machine that hes pretending to be.

I dont mind all the boxing on TV, ill watch. PBC should make their cardd like they were doing on Showtime in 2013-stacked! maybe the over saturation is intended to hurt PBC, that what it seems

[Divine Hammer]

The problem is that not enough people have laced up a pair of gloves in their life. You look with popular sports, the people following it take part in the sport in some manner. People shoot hoops, people have a kick around, and people place touch football. There's some level of understanding and there's also a degree of continuity (teams date back many years).

I'd imagine boxing would be followed more if you had teams that people could support and it was common practise for people to hit the gym. As things stand, people are only interested in the huge events which is defeated by fights occurring week in week out.

wrong wrong wrong. PBC isn't doing good simply because the majority of haymon's fighters are all mediocre coward chumps who are just unlikeable and very uncharismatic. that's the truth. not to mention majority of match ups are horrible, commentary is just BAD, production, marketing everything is BADDD. PBC doesn't excite at all.

boxing used to be big because it had larger than life personalities, exciting fighters and match ups that you couldn't miss. nowadays boxing has become a sport filled with nerds talking about the hit and don't get hit sweet science. they praise a coward floyd and ignore genuinely good fighters who are also very exciting like pacquiao, kovalev, ggg, rigondeaux, lomachenko, wlad, etc. etc.

boxing is DEAD because of the current nerd fans bringing it down and accepting and pushing boring al haymon/mayweather trash.

[big_james10]

I generally like this writer's blog and thing they are well-written and fair. However, this blog post is 2000 or so words of dribble. Boxing is a niche sport with a small fan base compared to football and basketball in this country. It has significantly fewer fans. Therefore, it is not going to get huge ratings of other sports show.

In addition, what we are seeing on PBC broadcasts as well as HBO and Showtime are not battles between the Number 1 and 2 teams in college football or basketball or Superbowl caliber contests. We are seeing an array of mismatches and fights between guys who are not very popular, even though they may be among the best in their weight class. The best fighters tend to avoid each other because of fear that they may lose. This includes fighters at all weight classes and the corruption in boxing doesn't help this situation.

There is no such thing as too much boxing. All of these guys are simply trying to make a living. They can only make a living by fighting. They will fight, whether they appear on television or not and they can make a lot more money fighting on television than they can off television.

In the fall, we will see 30 football games a week on television. Only five to six of those games will draw huge ratings. The games that appear on ESPN on Thursday and Friday nights are usually games between second tier conferences and doesn't draw big ratings. That doesn't mean that ESPN shouldn't show those games and it doesn't mean there is too much football.

To say that there is too much boxing on television is ridiculous. To say that there are too many boxing mismatches being shown on television (on HBO, Showtime, PBC broadcasts and others) is accurate.

[snoopymiller]

These ratings have little to do with "too much" boxing.

Ward-Smith never does big ratings even if it is on a weekend with no boxing.

Lemieux-Ndam never does big ratings on FS2.

Broner-Porter peaked higher than Garcia-Peterson.

[FeFist]

wrong wrong wrong. PBC isn't doing good simply because the majority of haymon's fighters are all mediocre coward chumps who are just unlikeable and very uncharismatic. that's the truth. not to mention majority of match ups are horrible, commentary is just BAD, production, marketing everything is BADDD. PBC doesn't excite at all.

boxing used to be big because it had larger than life personalities, exciting fighters and match ups that you couldn't miss. nowadays boxing has become a sport filled with nerds talking about the hit and don't get hit sweet science. they praise a coward floyd and ignore genuinely good fighters who are also very exciting like pacquiao, kovalev, ggg, rigondeaux, lomachenko, wlad, etc. etc.

boxing is DEAD because of the current nerd fans bringing it down and accepting and pushing boring al haymon/mayweather trash.

I wasn't referring to PBC. I was speaking of boxing in general and I am not wrong.

[sicko]

I do think having 3 Events on the same night now that is a bit much and I hope that never happens again. Same with Wilder fight and Walters fight at the same time on HBO and Showtime that was ridiculous! Boxing doesn't have enough fans as it is so when you try to split them and make them choose sides like that...EVERYBODY LOSE!

Who cares about ratings?

Yeah not sure when did boxing become about Ratings, Purse, Gate Numbers and all this stuff. I guess because Mayweather bragged about his PPV buys now everybody is trying to follow.

You're not going to get me to stop watching! Boxing needs to over-saturate itself! Boxing has fallen being Golf and Hockey in America so they need as much exposure as they can get. Then once you have more people attention then you can start to slow down and focus on maybe 1 Network and build from that.

I'm loving all of this boxing and it is going to be a Busy Summer as well with ESPN showing boxing!

[SHO_RULEZ]

I've been saying this for weeks. PBC has spearheaded an explosion of boxing programming across cable and network tv. Take last weekend. Mind you, this is WITHOUT HBO and SHO! They had an off week! You had PBC, BET, and FOX Deportes. I set the DVR to record all three. I didn't realize that the three shows were on simultaneously, so since I can only record 2 shows at the same time, the FOX recording was automatically canceled! So I missed that. Looking back, I would have recorded that slugfest and dropped Ward's BET sparring session !

But there was ANOTHER one that I missed! The Demarco show, which thankfully is relaying tonight! You see, its so many that you easily miss two or three! Man, they need to organize the clutter into ONE monthly show per network, with good bouts. That amounts to one (or two) shows week. PBC, HBO, SHO, ESPN. The little guys like FOX Deportes.

[Scipio2009]

Too many shows, on too many channels, at around the same time. People like to find it all in one place not go hunting for it.

"Going hunting for it" isn't the real issue, as demonstrated primetime shows doing well across platforms; the issue comes with all of the overlapping competing programming.

Stiverne-Wilder drew just over 1.2m homes; if you combine the viewing numbers Wilder-Molina and the HBO doubleheader, you get 1.2m-1.3m homes. you pull the HBO card and the boxing fan gets to focus in on one show, likely drawing in a bigger audience for Wilder-Molina than even the 1.3m combined homes.

Cotto-Geale, the first standalone major card after the massive Mayweather-Pacquiao build up, drew over 1.6m homes.

You pull the competing shows, and the boxing audience will gladly chase down shows whenever available (people not having access to channels like FS2 and CBSSports, generally, will keep those shows as hard for folks to get to.

With HBO likely not having much planned for the rest of the year (Kovalev in July, Golovkin in September, Cotto-Canelo PPV come October/November, and Klitschko-Fury will basically fill up HBO's schedule for the rest of the year), you'll end up with more standalone shows that draw strong viewer numbers.

Thurman-Collazo, Garcia-Malignaggi, Mares-Santa Cruz, and a host of other big fights will get put on, without other fights competing for eyeballs and deliver pretty massive ratings.

[Scipio2009]

why are folks still griping about the Frampton fight?

I've enjoyed the different card times and the sunday card the other day, but it does feel like a scatter gun approach. The battle of Ohio in Vegas, Frampton making his debut in Texas etc make it look like not much thought has gone in to their strategy.

I'd give it a year though before we draw any conclusions.

Carl Frampton is headlining his debut fight in the US, at a time that will allow for primetime viewing in his home country, against a come-forward Mexican fighter, on the border with Mexico, for a Chavez fight weekend, with the fight held in the very same building on the same day.

For all the talk of Golovkin rising to fame on his fabricated "Mexican style" (the new Golovkin looks nothing like the Golovkin who fought his first 20 pro fights), imagine how the Mexican and Mexican American fans would react to a fighter who naturally fights in a come-forward, paced but all action style.

For a US debut, outside of having his fight be the co-feature to Mayweather, I fail to figure for a more can't-miss stage that someone could put up for him (following this fight, and hopefully having 1.4m-1.7m homes see him fight, you can then move him to the Northeast, to pay off of that Irish tradition in the region; him being from Northern Ireland may complicate that strategy, but whatever).