Comments Thread For: Early Ratings: Thurman-Porter Most Watched Bout of 2016 To Date

[$tate of Mind]

Good news, the fight was very entertaining. Hopefully boxing gained some new fans that night.

[Scipio2009]

2-3 mil viewers sucks though for CBS. You are used to premium cable numbers, where 1 mil is a good night. On CBS 2-3 mil still sucks. Those are awful ratings. If PBC survives it will be by using free TV as its commercials, showing only bad fights like it mostly has so far, as a way to advertise starts on free TV to sucker in PBC fan boys to buy PPVs for all the good fights, which is where they will make the money back.

But if you're talking PBC itself on free TV, and 2-3 mil ratings, that's nowhere near good enough by itself, or have you not seen the reports that they've lost hundreds of millions already putting up those type of ratings?

NBC paid out $1b for a new 6-year deal to carry the EPL, and the Premier League has never gotten anywhere near 3m viewers for a match. The NHL signed a 10-year $2b tv deal with NBC, and they've never drawn anywhere near 3m viewers.

Live sports content is an entirely different monster, which you should know by now.

7 years, $1b ($150m per year) to not only make CBS Sports Network a channel for people to actually pick up (20-30 fights cards on CBS Sports Network, plus all of the support programming for the other fight cards, ie weigh-ins, promo material, post-fight recap, interviews, etc), carrying a dozen primetime fight cards on terrestrial TV, continue with Friday Night Lights Out (for Spike Sports; Viacom and CBS Corp are kissing cousins), and still the full Showtime budget (which would now be used to supplement the programming on CBS, featuring big international fighters/ fight cards, carrying the prime fights when football impacts the CBS schedule, and still give CBS a platform to maximize the few PPV showdowns that would actually manifest in the sport, as an example Deontay Wilder becoming undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, all his support programming being aired on CBS/CBS Sports/Showtime but Wilder only fighting on primetime CBS 1 out of every 3 fights, with the others being on Showtime/SHOPPV) isn't all that bad a deal for a broadcaster, especially with live sports content providing the biggest **** for the buck.

[Boxing Logic]

NBC paid out $1b for a new 6-year deal to carry the EPL, and the Premier League has never gotten anywhere near 3m viewers for a match. The NHL signed a 10-year $2b tv deal with NBC, and they've never drawn anywhere near 3m viewers.

Live sports content is an entirely different monster, which you should know by now.

7 years, $1b ($150m per year) to not only make CBS Sports Network a channel for people to actually pick up (20-30 fights cards on CBS Sports Network, plus all of the support programming for the other fight cards, ie weigh-ins, promo material, post-fight recap, interviews, etc), carrying a dozen primetime fight cards on terrestrial TV, continue with Friday Night Lights Out (for Spike Sports; Viacom and CBS Corp are kissing cousins), and still the full Showtime budget (which would now be used to supplement the programming on CBS, featuring big international fighters/ fight cards, carrying the prime fights when football impacts the CBS schedule, and still give CBS a platform to maximize the few PPV showdowns that would actually manifest in the sport, as an example Deontay Wilder becoming undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, all his support programming being aired on CBS/CBS Sports/Showtime but Wilder only fighting on primetime CBS 1 out of every 3 fights, with the others being on Showtime/SHOPPV) isn't all that bad a deal for a broadcaster, especially with live sports content providing the biggest **** for the buck.

I agree with you that the model could work if they just use the free slots as advertisement for their stars in mismatch fights, getting exposure, while making the best fights on PPV. This is a terrible model for the fans, and goes against everything you've been defending about the PBC since it started, but since PBC defenders were full of it from the beginning, and Al Haymon has always despised the fans and never does anything for the fans, you're correct that this model could work so long as you admit it was never about the fans, and that free TV will just be used as advertisements for the PPV cards, similar to UFC (but UFC still puts at least one legit fight on pretty much every free card, often multiple, so it's not the same).

However in terms of the ratings they are getting, you only gave one example which is premier league. I think you are ignoring a few factors.

Soccer is the biggest sport in the world, and the premier league is the top soccer league in the world. It's also in fricken England, where it gets tens of millions of viewers in primetime. It airs in the US in the morning, as a secondary market, where NBC is paying only for US broadcast rights, while not having to pay any of the production costs. So premier league is doing 2 mil in the morning or 1PM in the U.S., as a secondary market. Let me know when PBC starts doing 2 million at 10AM on NBC for fights in England. Until then you know this is a crazy comparison.

But you know the biggest difference? NBC is investing for the future. As I said, soccer is the biggest sport in the world already, so they are investing thinking that eventually it will become big in the U.S., too. They see how many viewers the big internal games with the U.S. get. The women's soccer world cup games. They see all that, and they've seen soccer grow in the U.S. every year for decades, so they are forecasting out 10 years from now. Boxing, on the other hand, keeps going the opposite direction.

How can you ignore these things?

I mean look man. Al Haymon always gets his way. He seems to always get taken care of. He had Richard Schaeffer working for his benefit, instead of his own company, when Schaeffer was at GBP. He has Espinoza working for his benefit, instead of Showtime Boxing, now. So he basically has moles working for him wherever he goes, wherever he needs it. He always gets taken care of, so I fully expect he will get a TV deal with CBS, whether it's in CBS' best interest or not, because all that has ever mattered since Haymon entered boxing is what has been in Haymon's interest. Whatever that is, people seem to do it for him, from HBO to Schaeffer to CBS/Showtime now.

So I agree, CBS will give him a deal. But do I think CBS will actually make money off the free TV dates? Do I think this business that has lost hundreds of millions off free TV dates, and marinated Thurman-Porter and Jacobs-Quillan for years and still got bad ratings for their best fights, is going to start turning a profit with the same or similar business model? No. You're sipping the coolaid if you think it will. As I said from the beginning, the only profits they will turn will be PPVs. But luckily for them, they've starved boxing fans of good matchups for so long, that boxing fans may be desperate enough to help them turn 50 to 100 mil per good PPV, and then it will only take them 4-10 good PPVs to make their money back and start turning a profit.

Or, maybe boxing fans have figured out what they're doing, and boxing fans are sick of it, and are going to stop enabling these promoters. For example as frustrated as I am with Danny Garcia and Deontay Wilder's ducking and avoiding good fights, and as much as I would be entertained watching them lose to Thurman and Joshua as a result of me being sick of their ducking and them losing being what's best for boxing, which is ultimately what I root for, what's best for boxing... as much as I would be interested in seeing that, I'm not going to pay for it because I'm not going to pay money to be manipulated like that. It happened once with Mayweather-Pacquiao, but at the time I thought that was organic. Pacquiao was too good, Mayweather always believed in avoiding punishment like that, so there was nothing anyone could do to get him in the ring until Pacquiao got old, and that's just how it was. I could really blame anyone for that besides Mayweather, at least that's what I thought.

But now it feels like Haymon is doing it on purpose. He saw how frustrated the ducking made boxing fans. Maybe he realized, as much as people complained about Mayweather's personality and actions outside the ring, what really made people hate him, and what really made people want to see him lose, was how he ruined boxing, and ducked Pacquiao. It was the ducking. It's always the ducking. And Haymon has also seen Danny Garcia, whose personality is fine, get big numbers, because he's a ducker. Boxing fans don't care about personality. They care about whether you make the best fights or not. And if you don't, they want to see you lose and go away so boxing can move forward with people who will.

Haymon seems to understand this, so he's building the PBC brand off of ducking. He knows the more his fighters duck, the more fans will hate them, and the more fans will pay to watch them lose on PPV.

At least, that's what Haymon hopes. That's what boxing fans would have done 5 years ago. But if more fans are out there like me, we're just done with that. We have to take a stand against that business model otherwise it will ruin the sport. Go find real PPV stars, like potentially Joshua, Errol Spence, and so on. The real top fighters. And put them in top fights, and people will buy. But stop trying to manufacture fake PPV stars out of above average fighters like Wilder and Danny Garcia. Stop trying to manage them and duck them into undefeated records and PPV fights. That's ruining boxing. Let them be what they will be. Have them fight the best 2-3 times a year, and see how they do. If they keep winning, they will naturally become PPV stars. If they keep losing, then they're not good enough. But stop trying to fake it with them.

Problem is, Al wants to fake it with them. He wants to make them PPV stars through ducking and frustrating fans, and since I as a fan want to be entertained, not frustrated, I have to take a stand against that for my own self-interest as a boxing fan. I'll keep supporting the real thing, but I'm not going to be manipulated into buying PPVs for above average fighters just because they ducked enough to get me frustrated with them.

[Scipio2009]

I agree with you that the model could work if they just use the free slots as advertisement for their stars in mismatch fights, getting exposure, while making the best fights on PPV. This is a terrible model for the fans, and goes against everything you've been defending about the PBC since it started, but since PBC defenders were full of it from the beginning, and Al Haymon has always despised the fans and never does anything for the fans, you're correct that this model could work so long as you admit it was never about the fans, and that free TV will just be used as advertisements for the PPV cards, similar to UFC (but UFC still puts at least one legit fight on pretty much every free card, often multiple, so it's not the same).

However in terms of the ratings they are getting, you only gave one example which is premier league. I think you are ignoring a few factors.

Soccer is the biggest sport in the world, and the premier league is the top soccer league in the world. It's also in fricken England, where it gets tens of millions of viewers in primetime. It airs in the US in the morning, as a secondary market, where NBC is paying only for US broadcast rights, while not having to pay any of the production costs. So premier league is doing 2 mil in the morning or 1PM in the U.S., as a secondary market. Let me know when PBC starts doing 2 million at 10AM on NBC for fights in England. Until then you know this is a crazy comparison.

But you know the biggest difference? NBC is investing for the future. As I said, soccer is the biggest sport in the world already, so they are investing thinking that eventually it will become big in the U.S., too. They see how many viewers the big internal games with the U.S. get. The women's soccer world cup games. They see all that, and they've seen soccer grow in the U.S. every year for decades, so they are forecasting out 10 years from now. Boxing, on the other hand, keeps going the opposite direction.

How can you ignore these things?

I mean look man. Al Haymon always gets his way. He seems to always get taken care of. He had Richard Schaeffer working for his benefit, instead of his own company, when Schaeffer was at GBP. He has Espinoza working for his benefit, instead of Showtime Boxing, now. So he basically has moles working for him wherever he goes, wherever he needs it. He always gets taken care of, so I fully expect he will get a TV deal with CBS, whether it's in CBS' best interest or not, because all that has ever mattered since Haymon entered boxing is what has been in Haymon's interest. Whatever that is, people seem to do it for him, from HBO to Schaeffer to CBS/Showtime now.

So I agree, CBS will give him a deal. But do I think CBS will actually make money off the free TV dates? Do I think this business that has lost hundreds of millions off free TV dates, and marinated Thurman-Porter and Jacobs-Quillan for years and still got bad ratings for their best fights, is going to start turning a profit with the same or similar business model? No. You're sipping the coolaid if you think it will. As I said from the beginning, the only profits they will turn will be PPVs. But luckily for them, they've starved boxing fans of good matchups for so long, that boxing fans may be desperate enough to help them turn 50 to 100 mil per good PPV, and then it will only take them 4-10 good PPVs to make their money back and start turning a profit.

Or, maybe boxing fans have figured out what they're doing, and boxing fans are sick of it, and are going to stop enabling these promoters. For example as frustrated as I am with Danny Garcia and Deontay Wilder's ducking and avoiding good fights, and as much as I would be entertained watching them lose to Thurman and Joshua as a result of me being sick of their ducking and them losing being what's best for boxing, which is ultimately what I root for, what's best for boxing... as much as I would be interested in seeing that, I'm not going to pay for it because I'm not going to pay money to be manipulated like that. It happened once with Mayweather-Pacquiao, but at the time I thought that was organic. Pacquiao was too good, Mayweather always believed in avoiding punishment like that, so there was nothing anyone could do to get him in the ring until Pacquiao got old, and that's just how it was. I could really blame anyone for that besides Mayweather, at least that's what I thought.

But now it feels like Haymon is doing it on purpose. He saw how frustrated the ducking made boxing fans. Maybe he realized, as much as people complained about Mayweather's personality and actions outside the ring, what really made people hate him, and what really made people want to see him lose, was how he ruined boxing, and ducked Pacquiao. It was the ducking. It's always the ducking. And Haymon has also seen Danny Garcia, whose personality is fine, get big numbers, because he's a ducker. Boxing fans don't care about personality. They care about whether you make the best fights or not. And if you don't, they want to see you lose and go away so boxing can move forward with people who will.

Haymon seems to understand this, so he's building the PBC brand off of ducking. He knows the more his fighters duck, the more fans will hate them, and the more fans will pay to watch them lose on PPV.

At least, that's what Haymon hopes. That's what boxing fans would have done 5 years ago. But if more fans are out there like me, we're just done with that. We have to take a stand against that business model otherwise it will ruin the sport. Go find real PPV stars, like potentially Joshua, Errol Spence, and so on. The real top fighters. And put them in top fights, and people will buy. But stop trying to manufacture fake PPV stars out of above average fighters like Wilder and Danny Garcia. Stop trying to manage them and duck them into undefeated records and PPV fights. That's ruining boxing. Let them be what they will be. Have them fight the best 2-3 times a year, and see how they do. If they keep winning, they will naturally become PPV stars. If they keep losing, then they're not good enough. But stop trying to fake it with them.

Problem is, Al wants to fake it with them. He wants to make them PPV stars through ducking and frustrating fans, and since I as a fan want to be entertained, not frustrated, I have to take a stand against that for my own self-interest as a boxing fan. I'll keep supporting the real thing, but I'm not going to be manipulated into buying PPVs for above average fighters just because they ducked enough to get me frustrated with them.

lol

-PBC on CBS/Showtime (the home for the first pay deal, imo) will end up hosting all of maybe 3 PPVs in 2017 (Wilder-Joshua, Ward-Stevenson, and possibly the fight to again unify the welterweight division; can also add Wilder-Fury, but the timing of such a bout is unclear); with a seeming top-line budget of $3m-$4m per show, there are very few matchuos possible that actually even need PPV to be made (on top of that, the sponsorship opportunities for the fighters by being aired on terrestrial TV in primetime likely eases that number even more)

-If you can point to a single EPL match that did 2m viewers, a link would be greatly appreciated. (Also, in case you forgot, the afternoon PBC fight cards drew 1.5m viewers and more on NBC/CBS).

-The energy of a big fight weekend is unmatched, be it in the US, in Germany, in Britain, in Russia, in Montreal, or anywhere else where fights can be staged; it's not going to happen every time, but the energy behind Thurman-Porter matched the energy that came to boxing for Cotto-Alvarez.

Looking into that same future, Showtime/CBS saw Mayweather-Pacquiao do over $700m in total revenue, saw Mayweather-Alvarez do over $250m in PPv revenue, and has seen the sporting world come alive for fights like Cotto-Alvarez, and to a lesser extent Alvarez-Khan and Wilder-Szpilka, in addition to the re-emergence of marquee fight towns.

You see Errol Spence Jr coming along with all of the other top 147lbers being in their late 20's, see the depth of fights at 154, the re-emergence of the heavyweight boxing scene (which led by Fury, Wilder, and Joshua, among a nice bumper crop of prospects, is being brought back under personable, charismatic, big-punching giants of men), Andre Ward getting active again, Golovkin-Jacobs being an event that will have to happen, and the host of other talented kids putting their towns/communities on their backs, and you don't think that CBS/Showtime, a network that has already shown itself to be interested in boxing, is exciting for the future of boxing? (especially with HBO, the only other US competitor, seemingly wanting very little to do with boxing anymore).

-Haymon "gets his way" because he knows how to do business, and he gets along with other folks who know how to do business. Schaefer and him got along because the relationship worked for everyone; Haymon got his marquee fighters paid and his prospects regular work, while Richard Schaefer was able to build boxing's dominant promotional stable of talent while not saddling the company down with massive guarantees for everyone (even while Oscar was AWOL). Haymon was able to get Floyd a massive close-out deal for his career, while Stephen Espinoza was able to leverage Floyd being tied to his network to re-assert Showtime Sports as a top-level boxing player again, with Showtime Sports seemingly being THE top boxing player at this point.

Haymon got his piece, but he did so in a way that worked for everyone.

-Thurman-Porter topped out at almost 4m viewers. With the main event drawing what it did, with the demographic numbers likely showing a sizable 18-49 audience for the show, how much money do you figure that Showtime/CBS pocketed for all of the ads that they sold during the broadcast? (outside of a handful of Ray Donovan spots, and the non-commercials to carry the in-the-corner stuff, there were a ton of actual commercials sold)

The fact that you continue to think that no money is being generated, when there are already 50 shows worth of evidence that that is false in laughable.

I get it; you think the whole thing will fail, boxing will be off of terrestrial TV, HBO will magically go back to spending money on boxing, and things will magically return to the day where HBO was carrying boxing.

live in your delusion if you want.

[Boxing Logic]

Scipio if the free telecasts are generating revenue, why has PBC already lost hundreds of millions of dollars? I don't understand why you think this business model will work when all it's done so far is lose money. Have you not noticed the "Showtime presents PBC on ..." trend lately? That's because PBC lost most of its money, so it can't pay for pure PBC shows anymore. They're having to use Showtime's budget now to put on the CBS shows, which takes away from Showtime's budget to actually deliver to their premium channel subscribers. So how is that a good thing for Espinoza who is supposed to be in charge of Showtime Sports, not CBS sports?

I agree with you that the PPVs will make a lot of money back, but I don't understand how you think the free telecasts are making money when it's been reported they've lost hundreds of millions so far, and you can see the results in the recent trend of "Showtime presents PBC" instead of pure PBC like it started. On my side of the argument are the many, many, many reports that PBC has lost hundreds of millions of dollars. On your side of the argument is cherry picking the peak number for Thurman-Porter, instead of the average, and then saying "imagine how much money they made from advertisers." Well I don't know how to imagine that because I'm not an ad exec and have no idea. What I do know how to read are the reports that PBC has lost hundreds of millions. Thurman-Porter still did below average ratings compared to other primetime NBC, Fox, or CBS programs, with a much higher budget, and the other big non-PPV PBC matchups like Jacobs-Quillen did awful ratings on Showtime.

Do you just ignore this when doing your analysis?

Also why do you think Stevenson-Ward will be a PPV? You mean whether Ward wins or loses vs Kovalev, or you're assuming a win?

As for Spence, I agree he's great, so why isn't Spence-Thurman or Spence-Garcia up next? You could do Spence-Garcia next, get Spence the big win, and that sets up Spence-Thurman right after that. After Spence wins that, two big fights back to back at a young age, he has momentum, gets on cover of Sports Illustrated, starts getting compared to SRL, and you have something. But waiting another 12 months before he fights anyone, then another 18 before he fights the next guy, isn't going to build towards anything. It's just like Jacobs knocked out Quillen in one and hasn't done anything since. He lost all momentum. Why isn't he calling out GGG? It's obvious he wants to wait until 2018 when GGG is old before he fights him, and do you really think boxing fans are going to rally behind a stable of fighters that won't fight guys in their prime? People will see through that and he won't become the star he could be if he beats GGG now.

Also I like how you turned Schaeffer and Haymon colluding to steal all of GBP's fighters into an example of Haymon being a great businessman who helps everyone he gets involved with. He ruined HBO's programming while he was there, he basically put GBP out of business, and now Showtime is having to use their premium budget to subsidize his PBC shows. I'm open to what you're saying because you're right, HBO's budget has dropped, and it would be ****** to bet against Haymon because whichever way you put it, how I did or how you did in a much more positive light, he does tend to get what he wants, so I wouldn't bet against him. But Haymon's propensity for coming out of these situations golden aside, how can you glaze over all the points I've made, all the current facts, and say losing hundreds of millions is no problem, and squandering all of Danny Jacobs momentum is no problem, and so on?