The HBO Budget Crisis and What it Means

[The Gambler1981]

Boxing isn't dead it has just declined, it can grow again it just takes time, capital and effort.

Something dead can never come back. Best comparison is Indy car racing, which used to **** all over NASCAR, their popularity was dropping and the sport split in two leading it to decline further and faster. Once that ended that sport was at an all-time low, but while it has not regained what it was it is fairly healthy currently much better than it was.

Boxing will be fine in the US it just needs to actually adapt to the situation, which is healthy.

[bballchump11]

final number
Wilder-Duhaupas: 2.179M Average Viewers


NBC (primetime)
3/7/2015 (main event Thurman-Guerrero): 3.374M
4/11/2015 (main event Garcia-Peterson): 2.882M
6/20/2015 (main event Broner-Porter): 2.327M
9/26/2015 (main event Wilder-Duhaupas): 2.179M
12/12/2015 (main event Figueroa-DeMarco): 1.817M

That's incredibly weird. Then preliminary ratings were higher than the final tally? http://www.boxingscene.com/wilder-du...million--96310 This article said the final number should be higher than the 2.365 million

But I won't argue the specific number too much. We know for sure that the fight did between 2.17 million to 2.37 million. That's still not far off from the UFC cards I showed earlier. Those UFC cards had better matchups and bigger names as well. One had Dos Anjos vs Donald Cerrone and Allistar Ovreem vs Junior Dos Santos as the co-main event. It barely outperformed Wilder or possibly did worse.

And the Figeoura fight was doomed from the start. That deserved to be on Spike or something.

[BennyBlanco]

PPVs subsidize the budget. I guess if they're successful with Kovalev/Ward winner, GGG and Crawford they can move them to PPV to bulk up the schedule.

PPVs do not "subsidize" the network's budget in the sense of generating additional revenue that can be used to buy more fights.

PPVs (other than MayPac) are generally a breakeven business...yes, the network gets a distribution fee of 10%, but the network has to pay for production and marketing of the PPV, production and marketing of the preview show (All Access/24/7), insurance, T&E, etc.

What a PPV does is allow a fight to happen that the network cannot otherwise pay for. It's a way of making a fight happen without the network paying for it.

[BennyBlanco]

C'mon man! They just did a major restructuring of their management . Read all the news- then think about the bigger picture fellas. HBO just lost ken hershman and now Peter Nelson is freshly trying to roll the dice

That's more evidence of the same. HBO Sports went from having Hershman, Nelson, Mark Taffet and Tammy Ross to only having Nelson.

That's major cost-cutting. $2-3M a year just in salaries, benefits, etc.

[BennyBlanco]

It may be a long time before SHO PPV becomes viable.

You realize that's a good thing for Showtime, right?

Showtime's business is getting monthly subscribers. To do that, they need attractive programming on Showtime. Every time a good fight goes to PPV, it's a lost opportunity, since that fight could have gone on Showtime and been used to draw and retain subscribers.

So from Showtime's perspective, the fewer PPVs, the better it is for the network.

[HeroBando]

You realize that's a good thing for Showtime, right?

Showtime's business is getting monthly subscribers. To do that, they need attractive programming on Showtime. Every time a good fight goes to PPV, it's a lost opportunity, since that fight could have gone on Showtime and been used to draw and retain subscribers.

So from Showtime's perspective, the fewer PPVs, the better it is for the network.

But then they end up paying millions for sub FNF ratings. That's a bad deal

[Scipio2009]

It was still a free livestream as part of a free preview weekend.



Wilder's got a lot of work to do before thinking about the Fury-Klitschko II winner.

Honestly, i don't think so; granted, he does need to get into the habit of stepping offline when lurched into defense, in addition to better utilizing the depth of his jab, but he's already shown flashes of finally getting that down.

Watching Fury-Klitschko, you can't point to anything that either guy did that would leave Wilder out of depth (Klitschko's punch may change things, but Wilder's chin is better than people seem to believe here).

[BennyBlanco]

But then they end up paying millions for sub FNF ratings. That's a bad deal

Two problems with that comment:

One, no one other than the promoter and the network know what Showtime paid for a card. You can't assume that the license fee equals the total purses, as that makes no economic sense. So you really have no basis for saying Showtime paid "millions" for a particular card.

Second, ratings have nothing to do with how good a deal it is for Showtime. For ad-supported networks, the network's revenues are a direct result of how many viewers they attract; in other words, they monetize viewers. Subscription TV networks like Showtime and HBO, however, do not. It doesn't make an iota of difference how many people watch their shows; all that matters is whether or not people are continuing to pay their monthly subscriptions. So "ratings" have nothing to do with how a good a "deal" the program is.

[Scipio2009]

I don't want HBO boxing to die personally, but it seemed very obvious from the get go that PBC's plan was to eliminate HBO and Showtime from the market. It even required Showtime (or HBO's) complacency in the matter.

Get the two largest tribes/armies/competitors to fight each other. Sweep in after the war and steal all the women. Literally the oldest trick in the book.

Showtime isn't going anywhere (streaming is definitely an option for the future, but Haymon is still going to need a viable avenue for the coming fights for mega-purse fighters [Chavez Jr, Stevenson, Garcia/Thurman/Porter winner, and other fighters on the cusp of being $2m+ purse fighters]), though HBO is likely on it's way out.

Showtime/CBS locking in the PBC deal (with ESPN, SpikeTV, and FS1 picking up their own content deals) makes too much sense for that not to be the end game.

[HeroBando]

Two problems with that comment:

One, no one other than the promoter and the network know what Showtime paid for a card. You can't assume that the license fee equals the total purses, as that makes no economic sense. So you really have no basis for saying Showtime paid "millions" for a particular card.

Second, ratings have nothing to do with how good a deal it is for Showtime. For ad-supported networks, the network's revenues are a direct result of how many viewers they attract; in other words, they monetize viewers. Subscription TV networks like Showtime and HBO, however, do not. It doesn't make an iota of difference how many people watch their shows; all that matters is whether or not people are continuing to pay their monthly subscriptions. So "ratings" have nothing to do with how a good a "deal" the program is.

Somebody must be paying these guys fat purses. Doubt it's coming out of these rent a promoters pockets, and it's clearly not from the gate proceeds.

Sure, premium networks don't care about ratings. But why not just do Shobox for 20x less for similar number of viewers?