how successful has haymon and the pbc been so far.... be honest

[Motofan]

2 stars.

Upside

More fights on tv should lead to more exposure to new fans

Getting to see more fights in general

Downside

The presentation KILLS me. It feels like I'm watching a local toughman competition.

Few competitive fights.

The network hopping makes it hard to even know when the fights are on half the time.

House fighter commentary is brutal. Even by boxing standards.

[brettWall]

Let's face it. It has become difficult and expensive to pit top fighters against each other now because Haymon started this tradition of overpaying them against nobodies.

Garcia vs Matthysse, for example, would not have been made had it not been added as undercard in a Mayweather PPV. Garcia's asking price was too enormous to make the fight a separate card. Now he's saying he will only fight Khan in a rematch if it's on PPV.

[bigdunny1]

I've seen PBC on Spike here in the UK. I've also watched fights from PBC shows on YT.

I have to say, the presentation of the PBC fights I've seen was terrible, and the commentary made it even worse.

There seems to be less atmosphere in the arena at a PBC show than there is on Mars or the surface of the moon.

Attendance like the TV Ratings has been horrible for PBC. Numerous outlets have confirmed they are making almost no money in ticket sales and literally being forced to just give a mass amount of tickets away to try and fill seats. Despite the give always most PBC fights are in half empty arenas. Keith Thurman fought in front of 4k viewers in a stadium that holds 12k in his home town after his NBC Debut no less. Too many shows means less time to properly promote each show. Put on fewer fights and make better matchups and you give yourself a better opportunity to fill the stands with passionate fans instead of empty arenas filled with fans who showed up because their company got free tickets and could care less about boxing.

[Tom Cruise]

So far I would agree with 3 Stars

It has plenty of room to grow and of course they could use some upgrades and improvements in certain areas but I think they're on the right path. The only issue I see has nothing to do with Presentation or Matchmaking or any of that it is just reaching out and grabbing a demographic and fans that don't care about boxing. Remember they don't know these fighters yet so big match ups to us don't mean **** to them right now. PBC needs to do more than just satisfie us who are already Boxing fans and know these fighters.

You must show potential growth with in that most important Demographic and that is 18-35 because that is the Demo that spends the most money. So beyond just match making, PBC fighters need to be out marketing themselves and their sport/promotion in general. I don't see any PBC Fighters out here doing interviews on ESPN, haven't seen any of them on Firsttake discussing boxing or any of that. While UFC Fighters are all over the place Promoting and Selling themselves to casuals. So outside of the ring is where more work needs to be done IMO. Have to do something to grab the attention of Casuals and NO, big match ups between 2 Fighters they don't know yet is not the Only Answer.

Great point!

These guys need to better understand how modern news is consumed by fans. Tyson Fury gets it.

Look at the BS front page, constant rolling news 24/7. These guys need to keep talking to people, keep themselves in the headlines and create their own hype. Its not enough to get mentioned once every 3months or whatever when youve got a fight coming up. Peoples attention ( especially casuals) doesnt last that long.

I think PBC's presence online in general is average at best. I follow their Youtube channel and, other than the actual fights that they upload, there is generally very little worth watching, and definitely not very mich to me really excited about an upcoming fight.

[joseph5620]

There was the same amount of boxing before pbc. You just chose not to watch.

More boxing doesn't equal the same amount of boxing. But you would have to have minimal intelligence to understand that. Sorry.

[R_Walken]

They were going to be No 2 in Boxing by default the moment they bought all the time buys on numerous networks before they aired any fights. Haymon crippled Showtime and started PBC with all those fighters. No matter what they were going to be the No 2 provider of boxing. So that is not a sign of success for PBC. The sheer high volume of fights doesn't speak to the QUALITY of the fights. They literally aired 10X more fights then anybody else. They have a high QUANTITY of fights it's the overall QUALITY they lack. Look at the 2015 fight awards and see how little represented PBC was. The fight of the Year was Vargas vs Muira NOT a PBC fight. Out of the top 5 candidates for fight of the year from most of the top boxing outlets they had maybe 2 nominations DESPITE having 10X more fights then everybody else. Look at the rest of the awards how many went to PBC fighters? Few if any. So the real question is how is PBC putting out anywhere near the same quality of fights when HBO dominated them all major awards DESPITE having 1/10th the amount of fights as PBC? That's due to the high amount of crap mismatches they aired vastly outweighing the few fights that you went thinking this is going to be a great fight. Even more shocking out of the few fights that turned out to be good NONE appeared on PBC's biggest and most important broadcasts ie NBC, CBS primetime. Instead their best fights were lesser names on Friday night fights on Spike or Tuesday nights on FS1 in fights few watched. Basically they wasted any momentum they could of gotten from those fights and aired bad fights on the biggest networks NBC, CBS that most casuals saw. HBO's fight of the year candidates were all viewed either live by millions among their most highly viewed fights of the year or were on a huge PPV that had almost 1mil buys. Meaning HBO put their best fights on their best platforms. They didn't put their best fights on HBO Latino where few saw them. Saying they are number 2 to HBO sounds good until you realize that the gap between 1 and 2 is so massive. That's like saying Arena Football is the number 2 league in the US for Professional Football. Technically true but means little.

Lastly because of the sheer volume of fights and networks PBC investors are paying they do not have the luxury to build slow. If they wanted that approach they wouldn't of burned through the hundreds of millions like they did in year 1. And the ratings do not suggest they are building or growing by the way. It's actually the opposite the ratings are trending down not up. Which again wouldn't be that alarming if PBC started very small on say 1 network. But PBC clearly came out with a aggressive business model to take over boxing and stomp out it's competition. Neither of which has happened. Instead you end up with a cheap looking product that people consider minor league boxing at a price that is MORE then the major leagues of boxing is spending to produce. Example you can't pay guys like Lara who have no fanbase 1mil to fight tomato cans under a rainy tent in front of 100 people for a fight that draws ratings worse then WNBA on ESPN2 and expect that to last long.

I thought you worked for HBo now I'm convinced you work for Golden Boy.

But don't you think some of the problem is the way most of boxing media bias against the PBC

It just felt that Most media outlets especially when you look at the P4P & Year end awards they went out of their way to discredit the PBC and go out of their way to highlight HBO affiliated fighters and fans like you just regurgitate their talking points.

You talk about low attendance , have they all been sell outs No but you don't mention the attendance for KOv/ Mohemmdi or Bradley / Rios or other HBO fights which was less then stellar and don't mention the good turn outs they had for certain fights

You cheer when Kov does 1 million peak views but criticize when Garcia/Malignaggi does 1.4 it's clear you and fans of your ilk won't give it a fair shake.

As far as PBc being #2, In my opinion the last 9 months PBC has slaughtered HBo ( excluding PPV) as far as the # competitive match-ups , exciting fights , number of fights and basically have 7-8 of the most watched telecasts for 2015 and probably 75% of the top 25 most watched telecasts. I think if you go By all barometers of sucess PBC & Showtime is #1 in the last 9 months with the exception of the high end talent but unless its on HBO PPV those names don't really seem to be fighting anybody of substance.

[bigdunny1]

I thought you worked for HBo now I'm convinced you work for Golden Boy.

But don't you think some of the problem is the way most of boxing media bias against the PBC

It just felt that Most media outlets especially when you look at the P4P & Year end awards they went out of their way to discredit the PBC and go out of their way to highlight HBO affiliated fighters and fans like you just regurgitate their talking points.

You talk about low attendance , have they all been sell outs No but you don't mention the attendance for KOv/ Mohemmdi or Bradley / Rios or other HBO fights which was less then stellar and don't mention the good turn outs they had for certain fights

You cheer when Kov does 1 million peak views but criticize when Garcia/Malignaggi does 1.4 it's clear you and fans of your ilk won't give it a fair shake.

As far as PBc being #2, In my opinion the last 9 months PBC has slaughtered HBo ( excluding PPV) as far as the # competitive match-ups , exciting fights , number of fights and basically have 7-8 of the most watched telecasts for 2015 and probably 75% of the top 25 most watched telecasts. I think if you go By all barometers of sucess PBC & Showtime is #1 in the last 9 months with the exception of the high end talent but unless its on HBO PPV those names don't really seem to be fighting anybody of substance.

How does the boxing media outlets have ANYTHING to do with PBC crappy TV ratings? You really think Casual fans who either ignored PBC or tried it out and didn't like it and never came back are influenced by boxing media websites? The reason no one talks about crappy attendance for other promotions or networks is because if they pull bad attendance it's usually a one off flop. THIS HAS BEEN THE TREND FOR PBC ALL YEAR. Damn near all these fights are in half empty arenas and numerous outlets and fans are talking about how they are giving tickets away. You got fans talking about they gave away free tickets at my company and still nobody wanted to go. Do you hear this for ANY of the other promoters and networks? And why are these other boxing outlets who give out awards pumping up HBO instead of PBC? Maybe because that's the same thing fans are saying. HBO is higher quality fights and more of the best fighters in the world. Shocking that they would award those higher quality fights and better fighters must be a conspiracy right.

More viewers then HBO should of been a giving if you talking about channels that are broadcast in more homes. Problem is when you compare those ratings NOT to HBO which is subscription based and in only 30% of homes but to it's counterparts and to that same time slot, or other sporting events on those networks you see how terrible the ratings are. Or compared to their OWN events. For example NBC aired it's last prime time show and got 1.8mil viewers. Compared to HBO that would be successful. But it was a massive failure considering NBC's first PBC show did 3.4. So it's really down 50% and compared to other broadcast networks where reruns of shows pull that many viewers and don't cost anywhere near as much as PBC does to air the ratings are bad. You can try and spin it all you want but the ratings are the ratings and they have been bad under PBC and all are trending down. Trying to compare them to HBO which is a totally different model that doesn't require viewers to drive advertisement which is the only way PBC can recoup that money is foolish. HBO less viewers but it's subscription based so everyone watching is recurring income for HBO they don't need any money from advertisers. PBC doesn't get viewers they they lose millions because advertisement/commercials are directly linked to the amount of viewers you draw and they pay the networks not the other way around. That's why tons of outlets claim PBC has lost hundreds of millions already.

And Showtime is pulling in less then HALF the viewers it drew just a year ago before Haymon ruined that channel. Wilder just did 500k viewers a year prior to Haymon starting PBC he did 1.3mil viewers on Showtime the same channel. But yeah PBC is sure killing it. One thing that is NOT DEBATABLE is that the one entity that has suffered the most from PBC is ironically Showtime who are in bed with Haymon. HBO has actually seen their viewership go up not down since PBC debuted.

[The Big Dunn]

I voted 3 stars.

I like that more fights are on the air and more fighters get TV exposure. I am disappointed with the marketing/promoting of the events and the failure to do the little things (ex. put the Broner/Porter fight in Ohio rather than Vegas) that make an event better.

I haven't liked the announcing on some shows and while I like looking at Laila Ali, I don't need to hear her commentary during the fight.

I would like to see Al make more fights in the lower weight, pair fights better (Wilder and Santa Cruz on the same card) and not hold anymore top fights until he gets a different deal structure.

[Dip_Slide]

Even if that were true, Haymon supporters couldn't say enough about the massive stable Haymon had assembled and how he had pushed every other promoter to the fringes of the sport. If that's true, how come barely edging out HBO in matchmaking is the best thing you can say about PBC?

I didn't say PBC was by any means perfect, I was saying that u can't be critical of PBC but praise HBO even though PBC is offering the better product.

Al Haymon is a strong figure in boxing, but bear in mind that HBO has the top 10 P4P fighters in the world, yes Haymon got a great stable but HBO got the top P4P fighters and they have the experience and the reputation of being the premiere boxing channel. PBC needs a bit of time to get there and then the best will fight the best because the reward (exposure, sponsors and money) will be higher, but let's just hope that everyone can work together to give us the fights we want.

[BoxingIsGreat]

I voted 5 because of all the new faces (of all races) and talent they show.
I love boxing and I don't care about the set up or commentary.