PBC on NBC averages 2M viewers. HBO Championship Boxing averages 1.3M

[sicko]

To be fair PBC is Nationally Televised for Free so yeah Ratings should be higher

Regardless I think those are solid averages for both but I would like to see it grow. People are happy when HBO get over 1 Million Views but it was a time when HBO was pulling in 16+ Million Views for fights like Trinidad vs Whitaker, Lewis vs Vitali 13+ Million...

So watching people Celebrating 1-2 Million views for a boxing event is laughable to me because I do remember when Boxing was bringing in HUGE RATINGS now they're struggling to get better Ratings than Hockey and Golf

[killakali]

Spike TV is doing as well if not better than HBO Boxing After Dark. I think that's a good comparison to make because both cards usually show prospects or B to low A level fighters. I'll do that comparison later.

I haven't did the Bounce TV, NBCSN, ESPN, FS1 numbers yet. I'm going to try and do the comparisons over the next week or so. I'm trying to figure out how to do those because of the number of shows.

no you should compare Spike to HBO Championship Boxing. Fighters like Amir khan, Adonis Stevenson Andre Berto and Shawn Porter who have been on Spike are HBO championship boxing/showtime championship boxing equivalents and have been on those platforms

[djt117]

Yes. But raw numbers are raw numbers. For example, Crawford's last fight did roughly a million viewers. Figueroa last fight did 1.8M. So 800,000k people more people know who Figueroa is than Crawford. You want your fighters to get maximum exposure. PBC's B level fighters are getting more exposure than HBO's A level fighters.

This thread is moronic. By this logic, more people know Omar Figueroa than Gennady Golovkin. Go put Fatty Figueroa in the big arena of Madison Square Garden and see how your exposure theory works out.

Also in another post you mentioned "NBC has invested in this". They haven't invested jack ****, remember that. If it turns out to be a money maker, they surely will invest. Until then, it's a surefire money loser. I don't know how much (maybe they're not hemorraghing cash) but trust me they'd be paying Al Haymon right now if it was a revenue generator.

Instead, he's still paying them. That's proof that they're losing money. It's a private company so they don't release financials but simple logic tells you all you need to know. NBC will be eager to buy PBC content if it starts becoming profitable.

[about.thousands]

no you should compare Spike to HBO Championship Boxing. Fighters like Amir khan, Adonis Stevenson Andre Berto and Shawn Porter who have been on Spike are HBO championship boxing/showtime championship boxing equivalents and have been on those platforms

Ok I'll try that one. Do you want me to compare Berto's HBO numbers to his Spike number and so on and so forth? If you have ratings and dates you can PM them to me that'll make it faster.

[NEETzsche]

the steady downward trend for the PBC on NBC ratings is not good

[about.thousands]

This thread is moronic. By this logic, more people know Omar Figueroa than Gennady Golovkin. Go put Fatty Figueroa in the big arena of Madison Square Garden and see how your exposure theory works out.

I'm not saying more people know who Figueroa is than Crawford. I'm saying more people watched Figueroa's fight than Crawfords. So there are potentially 800k people who saw Figueroa who's never seen Crawford.

Also in another post you mentioned "NBC has invested in this". They haven't invested jack ****, remember that. If it turns out to be a money maker, they surely will invest. Until then, it's a surefire money loser. I don't know how much (maybe they're not hemorraghing cash) but trust me they'd be paying Al Haymon right now if it was a revenue generator.

Maybe you know more than the President of NBC Sports programming because according to him NBC has invested money into the operation.

The PBC is collecting some rights fees. It also is paying for some air time. The main reason the deal had to be structured similarly to a time-buy is that it was the most logical way for the PBC to create sponsorship and advertising inventory across so many networks.

“It’s not a time-buy,” Miller said. “The reason we’re not selling it is because you couldn’t have six different networks out there selling the same product — and certainly not a product without a track record. So you have one group selling everything. And that’s really the brilliance of the concept.”

Eventually, they reached a complex two-year agreement in which Haymon would pay handsomely for air time but NBC would invest as well, paying for some of the production costs, delivering Al Michaels, Marv Albert and Sugar Ray Leonard as on-air talent, and providing promotional assets.

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/J...epth/Main.aspx

[Dr Rumack]

What do you base this on? Because it makes no sense.

It's not impossible. But to be honest I think it's absolutely essential for Haymon's grand plan that HBO pull out of the business. Because with the current state of affairs he seems to have a bit of a problem.

Let me elaborate. TV advertising is sold at a rate of $10-50 per 1000 viewers. So Sunday Night Football, for example, has about 20 million viewers, which is 20,000 blocks of 1000 viewers. It sells its units (30 second slots) at about $650,000 each, which equates to a $30 rate for each of those 1000 viewer blocks. I doubt boxing commands the $30 rate that the NFL does, but for the sake of argument let's pretend it can.

So let's look at a fight like Quillin-Jacobs. It died on Showtime, but again let's take a high estimate and assume it does 10x those ratings on NBC and hits 3 million. That's 3000 of those 1000 viewer blocks. At the $30 rate that's $90,000 per advertising unit for PBC on NBC.

Ok, so the purse for the main event was $3 million.

So 3,000,000/90,000
= 33.33 units

That's 33 units to cover the main event purse alone.

The undercard also featured guys like Cuellar and Algieri, who aren't big names but nevertheless are top fighters and presumably aren't with Al to get paid chickenfeed. But let's lowball it again and say $500k covers Cuellar, Algieri, and everyone else on the undercard.

So 500,000/90,000
= 5.5 units.

So let's just call it 38 units so far, just to cover the fighters' fees.

Haymon also has to pay NBC their fee for the time-buy, which is reported at $1 million a show.

So 1,000,000/90,000
= 11.11 units

So we're at 49 units already, just to cover the fighter fees and the time-buy. Now we have to consider production and promotional costs. For big PPV fights this can easily be $5 million. But again let's take a real low number and say they produce the show and pay everyone involved in the broadcast for $100k. They probably don't, but let's just settle on that.

This puts us at 50 units, just to cover costs on the show, if we assume that the show can be sold as if it averages 3 million viewers for the whole broadcast, and if we also assume that boxing can get the same rate for 1000 viewers as the NFL can. Are there even 50 advertising slots on a PBC on NBC broadcast? I very much doubt there are. There certainly aren't 50 advertising slots during a main event which is the peak viewing time.

These numbers seem problematic to me. Even with very generous estimates on all fronts they simply don't look sustainable. Not by a long shot. There are only two ways this venture can work.

The first, is that the ratings grow exponentially to the point where Haymon can sell his ad space at $150k a unit in the very near future. On in other words, be able to promise advertisers a 5 million or so average rating that justifies sustainable ad revenue. I'm not even sure that would cut it. But it would at least be a trend in the right direction.

The other solution is that HBO pull out of the game completely. This won't have a major effect on viewing figures in the short run, but it will give Haymon much better bargaining power with the fighters. Because the truth is this, Al Haymon cannot afford to keep paying premium network purses to fighters without his ratings improving dramatically in the immediate future. It doesn't make economic sense.

There was a great article written for UCN by a guy called John Chavez back in January where he heralded the PBC project as a huge win for the sport, as he foresaw the type of deals landed by the UFC with Fox as the future not just for Haymon, but for the sport itself.

But there's a huge flaw in that vision. And it's that the UFC is sustained only by paying purses that fall dramatically short of the fees expected by the top fighters in boxing. And, there are a lot more boxers to pay. Additionally, the UFC does not have a rival premium network that can outspend it on individual events for as long as it is willing to put money on the table, simply because they need a fraction of the viewing figures to make just as much money.

At the very least, I see problems in the PBC vision. There are huge outlays that are not justified given the unit advertising revenue the shows are generating. Unless things change dramatically, and soon, I would not be surprised to see things start to unravel.

http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=37

[IMDAZED]

http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=37

Read it when you first posted and chuckled. Makes sense except...it's loaded with assumptions, low on facts. You don't know what the model is and whether it's anything similar to what has been done in the past. Based on quotes from NBC, that isn't the case. I'm in a rush or I'd get into further detail. But the bottom line is you just don't know.

[about.thousands]

http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=37

Here are some facts from people actually involved in the deal

The PBC is collecting some rights fees. It also is paying for some air time. The main reason the deal had to be structured similarly to a time-buy is that it was the most logical way for the PBC to create sponsorship and advertising inventory across so many networks.

“It’s not a time-buy,” Miller said. “The reason we’re not selling it is because you couldn’t have six different networks out there selling the same product — and certainly not a product without a track record. So you have one group selling everything. And that’s really the brilliance of the concept.”

Eventually, they reached a complex two-year agreement in which Haymon would pay handsomely for air time but NBC would invest as well, paying for some of the production costs, delivering Al Michaels, Marv Albert and Sugar Ray Leonard as on-air talent, and providing promotional assets.

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/J...epth/Main.aspx

[Dr Rumack]

Read it when you first posted and chuckled. Makes sense except...it's loaded with assumptions, low on facts. You don't know what the model is and whether it's anything similar to what has been done in the past. Based on quotes from NBC, that isn't the case. I'm in a rush or I'd get into further detail. But the bottom line is you just don't know.

You're one of the very worst fanboys on the forum, so I'm not trying to persuade you of anything. All the assumptions made are loaded heavily in PBC's favour. I'm overestimating everything from their viewer ratings to their unit rates and they are still losing lots and lots of money. The estimates reported by Iole that were in the order of $200m in losses sounded far-fetched until I actually broke down an event. Now they don't. The advertising revenue simply isn't there to pay premium network purses. It doesn't matter whether Haymon's paying them or NBC. The money just isn't there, and won't be unless ratings increase exponentially in the very near future.