Has the PBC experiment failed?

[Sugar Adam Ali]

the facts don't support your premise. wilder, thurman & garcia have all had PBC fights with millions and millions of viewers. please let us know which fights of theirs had several million viewers before PBC?

and seeing as how NO fights were doing millions of viewers before PBC, how can you claim they haven't grown an audience? all of the fights with the most viewers this decade have been PBC fights.

as for landing a TV deal, they already landed one with spike, they've convinced showtime to increase their budget, and CBS now dabbles in buying major fights. all of this before PBC can even offer their main TV package to anybody. when the time buys run up, PBC will land a TV deal. meanwhile, HBO boxing is half way dead already.





how do you create a bidding war for your product without offering it to multiple networks? PBC is in their proof of concept stage. if they just chose one network, it would be much tougher to find a buyer when the time buys ran up.

PBC has done several million viewers for a fight on NBC, CBS and FOX. if they just chose one network, they'd have a much smaller chance of multiple bidders when the TV package was finally offered.

Lmao...

So you actually think Thurman, Danny, and wilder are much bigger stars then they were 2 years ago?


And double lmao at thinking being on one channel, one time won't start a bidding war.. ******est thing ever

Every network sees all the ratings,,, being on so many channels and times and different days has done nothing but confuse the casual fan..

Monday night football,,, Sunday football on cbs and fox

Monday night raw

Monday night nitro

Bellator Friday nights on spiketv

Golf is golf channel on thurs/fri, and cbs on Saturday/Sunday

Sunday night baseball on espn

Sunday basketball on NBC


Literally every sports organization has some sort of set schedule on the same channel..


UFC is solely on fox, yet other networks will bid for them and cause a bidding war next year...

Time buys are fine to get a foothold, but no one has ever done random time buys on so many different networks, and it's not working.. UFC did time buys for about 1 year, TNA did them for almost 2 years and then both landed tv deals..

Pbc has time buys going into year 3, and no network is serious about them, so obviously you and your logic are not working...

When does this multi channel bidding war start for pbc?????? They can be signed at any time

[asgarth]

no, the problem is that you are mentally ill and view everything through a delusional, negative prism.

if PBC is turning people away from the sport, they wouldn't be continuing to do millions of viewers for their major network shows. PBC is proving over and over again that world champions defending on network TV will attract millions of viewers.

and deontay will do millions of viewers on FOX next month.

so when the time comes for PBC to negotiate a paid TV deal, they'll have proven to the major networks that boxing can do similar numbers to UFC.

I command you for sticking up to PBC, but if some people view everything through a delusional, negative prism, you see everything through rose-tinted glasses.

I like PBCs lineup for this quarter, but with the exception of Thurman vs garcia every good fight will be televised by showtime. On free tv you get fights like lara vs foreman or wilder vs random guy.

I thought pbc was supposed to change the boxing landscape and bring boxing back on freetv, but the fights we are getting for free are abysmal.

Yes PBC has more viewership than HBO, but you cant directly compare them, because hbo is subscription based and has a smaller viewerbase.

And i dont have the rating numbers on hand, but im pretty sure pbc on spike, nbc, etc and especially on showtime has a downward trend. If you want to sell a product, you better show growing numbers or at least stable numbers.

Even the first broadcast of the year yesterday on spike was laughable.

[al-Xander]

but the point the other posters made was that PBC didn't reach new viewers, which clearly they did as they've had several broadcasts peak over 4 million viewers.

averaging the network shows with the fs1 or bounce shows doesn't change that fact. it just creates misleading numbers. i don't see you averaging in the hbo latino shows? or HBO PPV shows? so you're not being consistent.

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE who weren't watching boxing before are now checking out boxing several times a year thanks to PBC. why is that a bad thing?

Point is PBC's numbers are alarmingly inconsistent. Think about a show like Real Time with Bill Maher, for example. It averages 4M viewers per episode. Just imagine the cost of producing such show compared to a boxing match. It's night and day. Boxing shows have so many moving parts ranging from negotiating and dealing with diva boxers to assembling a ring and seating arrangements inside an auditorium. It needs huge investment upfront. No boxing business would survive with mere average of 450K ratings.

[Scipio2009]

True but its a different type of viewer you get on network tv. More channel surfer 'watch while also browsing facebook' types. People watching on HBO tend to be fans of the sport and it shows that a fight getting a few million views on networks often doesnt have the big fight feel that a 1mill views fight on subscription channel does.

Spence is the most watched fighter in the US for last however many years in his fight with Bundu, and yet I bet barely a single US casual could pick him out of a line up. Its an extreme example because of the TV slot, but it is indicative of the problem of using network TV to build a fanbase



Well Haymon had the budget to put boxing a million different channels but he didnt have the budget to stay on HBO? Nah. HBO, as a brand, represents the top level of the sport, and i think it was a mistake for Haymon to try and challenge that before becoming more established in the sport.

Oscar was vital imo for the success of Haymons boxing promotions pre PBC. A talking head who had the ear of the largest US boxing market, Mex-Ams. Good looking, charming, charismatic. He was a perfect spokesman for prospects coming up and for talking up big events. PBC misses that badly. They dont have a Dana White providing sound bites for the press to get stuck into, to hype their fighters or talk up their events. They just have Floyd talking about himself all the time.

Eddie Hearn is that guy in the UK, and he just absolutely lit up the Jack/Degale press conference with his easy charm and way with words. PBC/Sho need someone to take that role.

Haymon is fronting the money, with his eye towards getting a check from a broadcaster in the future; HBO is no longer paying out the checks that they use to. The luster of HBO Boxing is going away, just as the luster of Showtime went away with the fall of Mike Tyson. Times turn.

Oscar De La Hoya was good, up to a point; the moment that his drug issues started messing with the money, he was no good to anyone beyond the core Mexican audiences and Mexican TV; though not as "handsome", Schaefer stepped into the role and delivered better than Oscar (with the ability/know-how to also close out the deals that came up).

PBC would benefit from having a singular voice (Schaefer at Golden Boy, with Oscar bought out, would've been the perfect way to launch), but they've figured out a way to work around that. Floyd Mayweather, Lou DiBella, Eddie Hearn, and Richard Schaefer, collectively, help provide that press contact. Beyond that, the eventual move to a main partner for the PBC shows (to consolidate the TV presentation) will ease even more of those concerns.

[original zero]

Adam -

Yes, Thurman, Garcia and wilder are definitely bigger stars than they were two years ago. MILLIONS OF PEOPLE have watched them in the last two years that had never watched them before.

Two years ago, Thurman was a relatively unknown interim champion struggling to get undercard spots on Showtime. Now he's about to unify the two biggest belts in the sport, potentially on CBS instead of Showtime with millions watching.

How much experience do you have working in the television industry? Or the combat sports industry?

And if the casual fan is so confused, why do MILLIONS MORE tune in to PBC's big network shows than tune in for HBO?

The NFL is on CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network. Do you realize how fkn ****** you look when you advocate for one network and your example is a league airing on FIVE networks?

Hilarious how everybody thinks they're some business expert, even about businesses they have ZERO experience in and ZERO understanding of.

Al Haymon is the most powerful man in all of boxing. If you don't understand his methods, chances are if anything is the "******est thing ever," it's you.