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

[Mitchell Kane]

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.

It's a good ratings win for SHO, but that is a huge discrepancy in purses.

SHO basically paying 5 to 1 to get under 100k more tv viewers.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with SHO the rest of the year.

They've been very busy early on this year, and they've been spending freely...but this is coming at a time when the PBC isn't busy.

So what happens once the PBC starts regularly having some of their bigger events on other channels? Is SHO gonna have stretches without boxing? Because that's a big reason why their ratings dropped.

[Mike D]

Santa Cruz/Frampton & Mikey/Zlaticanin was obviously the card to watch if one had to pick, and it wasn't even close.

Francisco Vargas is always in brutal, entertaining wars but his level of relevance in the big picture (even going into the fight before he got tagged with the L) is really non-existent.

[PACnPBFsuck]

This sport is not in shape to be competing with itself, they need to cut it out with that bullshyt.

[North Star]

Ratings are funny and if you DVR'd both it probably counted for both, like I did.

My fight night was Muira/Gonzalez, then over to Garcia/Zlac, then Frampton/Santa Cruz, then Vargas/Berchelt. It was a great night of boxing, but the snoozer for me was Frampton/Santa Cruz. The crowd hype was great, but the fight itself was not. Leo came with a good game plan and Frampton couldn't adjust much and looked to pot shot and defend. There was no drama or action in that fight. All the others were fantastic entertainment though, especially Vargas/Berchelt!

[Butch.McRae]

Naw. That Bill Simmons show was so bad they cancelled it before the end of the first season. They put ALOT of money into that show and his website. ALOT OF MONEY!! Money that should've went to boxing. They put $100 mil into Vinyl and cancelled it after the first season. They aren't interested in boxing. It's plain to see

Vinyl was averaging more views across all platforms than their boxing telecast though. Just wasn't enough views to justify the budget for the show. I think it was cancelled due to production expenses; Scorsese and Jagger were the producers for that project. (Check out the ratings here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_(TV_series))

I forgot about the Simmons show. That was a terrible idea from the start lol

But I agree, they are gradually doing away with their boxing offering.

[r1onnie2]

I'm not surprised, Showtime had the better fights that night.