Comments Thread For: Showtime Scores Rare Ratings Win Over HBO in Head-to-Head Battle

[bigdunny1]

These are TERRIBLE ratings for both networks and took away viewers from each other. But it's actually worse for Showtime because they had the more significant fight. A rematch of a fight of the year candidate, featuring the fighter of the year and much bigger names they also paid 5X more only to do slightly better then a cheap boxing after dark card. 2 great cards and neither even cracked 600k viewers not good for the sport of boxing. And both do better ratings if they air on separate weekends SMH

[Guest]

These are TERRIBLE ratings for both networks and took away viewers from each other. But it's actually worse for Showtime because they had the more significant fight. A rematch of a fight of the year candidate, featuring the fighter of the year and much bigger names they also paid 5X more only to do slightly better then a cheap boxing after dark card. 2 great cards and neither even cracked 600k viewers not good for the sport of boxing. And both do better ratings if they air on separate weekends SMH

Ideally that would be great but everything around staging the fights is so date and venue dependent that they might not be able to get the dates they want to do that. And they would have to know each other's schedule many months in advance. It works for a Pac-May type fight that is built up and takes forever but not anything else.

[bigdunny1]

Purses
HBO
Vargas 250k, Miura 150k, Berchelt 50k, Roman 25k
Total 475k

Showtime
Frampton 1m, Cruz 900k, Garcia 375k, Zlaticanin 320k
Total 2.6m

Showtime outspent like crazy with not very much to show for it. How can you justify spending that kind of money for shows that DON'T even crack 600k viewers. Cruz himself made DOUBLE what the entire cost HBO spent for their card.

[bigdunny1]

Ideally that would be great but everything around staging the fights is so date and venue dependent that they might not be able to get the dates they want to do that. And they would have to know each other's schedule many months in advance. It works for a Pac-May type fight that is built up and takes forever but not anything else.

They have to figure something out, boxing right now doesn't have that many fans to begin with and can't afford to split that little audience is left in half. Especially when you have 2 really good cards.

[Bronx2245]

Showtime, please don't be discouraged! Your card had way better competition and the fighters fought at a much higher technical level than the HBO fights! Keep up the good work!

[filup79]

My friend on the the west coast says the Showtime card came on live at 6PM or whatever it was, but the HBO card gets delayed 3 hours and didn't come on until 10PM. So naturally everyone was watching Showtime first.

I live on the west coast. Both fights were on at the same time

[sicko]

I don't care about none of that, it was another excellent Showtime Card from start to finish that is all I can ask for as a Hardcore Boxing fans. Could give a **** who else is watching or not! That being said, things are changing so much with people Cutting Cable and Satellite Services and switching to Streaming Services now so eventually the entire Rating System will change.

Good for Showtime I guess. They seem to be very happy with their Numbers to the point in which they're putting up Money for bigger matches on their Network and not cutting back like HBO and putting everything on PPV lol

[MrRolltide91]

Of course.....

[Butch.McRae]

That's actually the lowest HBO main event rating that I could think of. I don't remember any other main even being less than 500k. I think the lowest before was Rigo vs Agbeko @ 550k.

I wonder what their lowest average rated telecast is across the entire platform? For some reason I think its boxing, based on their lineup of shows. (note a lot of the shows average viewers are much higher due to HBOgo)

I also wonder how many watching are actual boxing fans, versus those that just have the TV on HBO.

[gbonafide]

Props to both networks for putting on entertaining cards with action fights. Last year pretty much ****** all around and hopefully we'll see the HBO schedule fill out and both will keep the great momentum this year has started with.