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You'll have more fights on Showtime with likes of thurman,spence,wilder,garcia,charlo,santa cruz,etc all fighting on showtime regularly....
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Why would we as boxing fans want boxing to fail at all? -
PBC will never fail!
Get used to it!
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That dichotomy is why "PBC failing" never really made all that much sense to me; Showtime/CBS always seemed to me to be the most likely home for the full PBC property once phase 1 was done with (With PBC continuing provide fight cards for ESPN's Saturday Night Fights and SpikeTV's Friday Night Lights Out; Toe-to-Toe Tuesday would likely get folded into CBS Sports Network, providing a ton of fresh content to undergird the continued broadcast expansion of that channel[no different than what the UFC wasable to do for FS1]).
If the PBC effort can help Espinoza(Showtime EVP-Sports, boxing guy) convince Les Moonves (Chairman/President/CEO, CBS Corporation) that putting $100m-$150m per year behind boxing content [Showtime/CBS/CBSSports, and whatever other affiliated outlets, ie CBSSports.com, the All Access CBS app, etc], Haymon's effort succeeded, whether the PBC name continues forward or not.Comment
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Showtime doesn't have the budget to carry all those fighters. That's why PBC exists in the first place.Comment
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Rumor has it HBO didn't even have the budget to make an offer for Anthony Joshua & thats why Joshua signed with Showtime.
Showtime & HBO have similar budgets these days & I've even seen it suggested Showtime has a bigger budget than HBO these days. Whatever the case I think its beyond obvious Showtime has more of their budget unaccounted for. If HBO spends too much money in this quarter Roman Gonzalez might be having a PPV in the 4th quarter of this year.
And I think most people are under thinking what PBC succeeding or failing is gonna mean for friends of Haymon of which Showtime surely is. People ignore that Espinoza was saying from day 1 that PBC fighters would be fighting on Showtime in the future.
Stephen Espinoza in Jan. 2015 when PBC first got announced:
http://******.craveonline.com/news/3...-for-the-sportPremier Boxing Champions NBC’s new boxing series called “Premier Boxing Champions” (“PBC on NBC”), a multi-year deal between the network and adviser Al Haymon, is “a great move for the sport,” according to Stephen Espinoza, the Showtime network’s sports executive vice president and general manager.
“Anything which has the potential to expand boxing’s fan base and to bring in a wider range of fans is a good thing for the sport of boxing and is a good thing for every network that carries boxing,” said Espinoza, who has televised many of Haymon’s 150-man roster of fighters.
“Recently, over the last 10 to 20 years, the sport of boxing has become deeply associated with pay-per-view T.V. and become really dependent on pay T.V. We forget that, with a couple of notable exceptions, that every major pay-per-view star has been built in some way or another through broad exposure on network television. Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones Jr., Mike Tyson and you can go back even further.”
“Floyd and Manny are the notable exceptions and there are reasons for those,” said Espinoza. “But in order to really build true stars, you have to market those boxers not just to the 25 percent of television households that have premium television but to the entire hundred million homes that have television. That’s the only way that you’re going to build mainstream stars.”
“I expect to see all of those fighters back on Showtime very, very soon. We were part of the decision concerning which fights would go to NBC and we were consulted and we agreed with taking those individual fights to NBC. What we’re looking to do here is not about one or two good fights,” said Espinoza.
“It’s about elevating the sport and expanding the sport and eventually drawing more fans of the sport and of those fighters to Showtime. I’d like nothing more than for Adrien and Keith and Robert and Danny to get fans from among the millions of viewers of those telecasts and then, to bring all of those back to Showtime.”
Espinoza’s sentiment appears to be supported by Sam Watson, Haymon’s right-hand man.
“The pay-per-view fights will be on Showtime. We’ve got nothing against Showtime. We love them. That’s how fighters are made with those stations. Now, it’s going to be fun for everybody to go home and watch the fights on NBC TV,” said Watson, during a Wednesday interview with ******.com.
“I would say that our pay-per-views will be Showtime. We’ve done everything lately with Showtime. We took everybody from over there who was watching HBO and they came over to Showtime. Everybody saw it with their own eyes. Now it’s time for the little old lady and the little old man who can’t afford cable TV to go home and turn on NBC and it’s everywhere.”
People keep acting like some PBC guys going "back" to Showtime is some sign PBC is weeks away from a going out of business sale, but this was ALWAYS PART OF THE PLAN.Comment
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Showtime has a very good summer schedule for boxing, and I do believe that if the PBC was more successful, then some of these guys would not be coming back to Showtime as much. But the executives probably weren't too worried. They know that the "time buy, spend recklessly, and hope for lucrative tv deals to follow" is not a business model that can work, especially in an unpopular sport such as boxing.
Showtime has the fighters, is making better matchups now, but their main problem is turning that into decent ratings. Ever since PBC launched, Showtime's ratings have been horrible. Some of these shows are averaging 200k viewers for guys getting 7 figure purses...These are the type of numbers that could eventually cause CBS to cut the budget down.Comment
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