arum dropped HBO?

[al-Xander]

yes. the free tv fans

Yep. Haymon/PBC fans. That's them. Absolutely. Doe.

[Eff Pandas]

That Pac-Horn card was AWESOME. Who else didn't feel like they were watching a full blown PPV for free on a Saturday night? I thought it was awesome.

Agree that was a fun night & honestly I didn't even think about that feeling like a PPV card across the board til you just mentioned it, but yea I agree with that too.

I wished they hadn't of went so in on the bad decision as that probably gave a lot of non-hardcore fans a bad taste in their mouth, but as for the fights themselves it was a fun night that had the feel of a $60+ PPV. And we paid $0. I love it & can't wait to see more of it.

And randomly I hope PBC is paying attention to what TR just did with that card. Cuz while I'm a PBC supporter they have not been able to create that vibe TR did in their first attempt at a more mainstream/casual fan viewing choice. And granted Manny is the name he is & the had that fight in a great venue, but PBC gots more notable guys that can be grown into bigger names under their banner than anyone else in the sport right now & they keep discounting putting fights on at the right venues as much as they could.

[Scipio2009]

Arum bringing pac and Crawford lomocheko ( maybe verdero too) sounds like he dropped HBO

Free tv will kill HBO ....at the end Haymon won because we all know who revived free boxing

HBO makes far more money off Game of Thrones, Ballers, and the other half dozen of top-notch shows that they produce, than they do boxing. HBO's death is being greatly overstated here.

[Robbie Barrett]

It's a bit of both. HBO would turn down shit fights, this upset Arum. So now Arum is free to put his shit on ESPN.

[Scipio2009]

The UFC

what is HBO going to even show anymore being that haymond and arum jumped ship. some euro bum chitfests?

-WME paid $4b to buy the UFC
-the UFC/Fox deal ends next year
-HBO/TNT/TruTV can air the fights.
-TimeWarner, like most other channels, is always looking for content that fits the plan.

Only hangup will likely be over price; Fox got the UFC for basically $100m per year, but were cut out of the PPV revenue (details are hard to pin down, but estimates at the take would put PPV revenues generated in 2016 by the UFC at something like $500m; goosed dramatically by Conor McGregor, whose three fights generated something like $300m on PPV).

If TimeWarner can get the whole pot (cut the PPV count to 4-6, put the remaining former PPVs and FOX cards on HBO, put the Fight Night cards on TNT and TruTV, air TUF on TruTV, etc) for the right price, things work out for both sides.

[Scipio2009]

Showtime/CBS isn't going anywhere

You cannot blame Arum.

HBO have cut back their budget over the years and if Arum was solely dependent on HBO (in 2017 and beyond), he'd be in a lot of trouble because of the dwindling dates. Admittedly, HBO have added two brilliant triple-headers recently but the rest of the year has been PPV fights.

HBO cannot scale back their budget and dates and not expect people not to look for alternatives. In fact, I doubt think they are panicking. They don't really care for boxing anymore. And if they don't care for boxing, then it makes sense for Arum to align with ESPN, otherwise the sport would be at the mercy of a network that didn't for it (anymore).

From the launch with Hagler and Tyson in 1986 to now, SHO has been through the books/busts of boxing and have stuck to it.

Boxing hasn't been hostage to HBO for a good while now.

[Scipio2009]

It definitely sounds like Arum dropped HBO more than HBO dropped Arum to me. I mean the fact HBO made an offer for Manny vs Horn & Arum turned them down should suggest thats true. And does anyone think HBO wouldn't wanna show Crawford, Lomo or Valdez fights in the future? I think anyone who wouldn't wanna show those 3 guys' fights in the future don't know sh^t about what boxing fans wanna see. And I'm no Top Rank apologist, in fact I trend closer to being a Arum hater, but I try to be as fair & logical in my assessment of situations as I can be.

I think HBO isn't in boxing for the long haul anymore despite them continually denying it. The writing is on the wall if you look back to the early 00's when the had ~$100M+ budget to now when they got a ~$25M budget. And the fact Nelson is the first head of sports thats been deemed a Vice President of Sports instead of a President of Sports speaks volumes to me in HBO moving away from sports, which means primarily boxing. Boxing isn't moving the dial for HBO like it used to. Is that boxings fault with all the bs & multiple champions? Is that HBO's fault for not working with other en****** more often to make the important fights? Idk, but I got eyes & I can see HBO is moving away from boxing & if they turned into a purely PPV boxing model or just had boxing on HBO Latino or just made some more massive change to how they've done boxing in the decades they've been in the game it would come as little surprise to me.

Valdez fights at a weight where most of the top talent is elsewhere, Lomachenko fights at a weight where the likeliest sellable fight is basically against the the only fighter elsewhere, and Terrence Crawford is set on fighting at a weight where basically all of the top talent is elsewhere. If marketable fights come together, I don't doubt that HBO will go into their pocket to see if a deal can be made.

Still, would be interesting to find out more information about this deal, particularly the structure and whether it's on the same terms of the deal with Golden Boy (time-buy for the shows with ESPN, that's basically being paid for by their sponsorship from Tecate).

[Mike D]

The bad thing about it for HBO is that it will be tough to bring people back who mostly tuned in for boxing. They would need a huge surge in boxing to get people that subscribed just for that to go back. No way will someone subscribe for 2-3 fight nights a year. They might be digging themselves in a hole they will never get out.

But the people who buy HBO solely for the boxing (such as myself) represent such a tiny, minuscule sliver of their actual audience, though. If HBO really cared about that itty bitty demographic they wouldn't be shrugging their shoulders like this every time another boxing star departs their once very deep and star studded stable

Now HBO be like

[Scipio2009]

The bad thing about it for HBO is that it will be tough to bring people back who mostly tuned in for boxing. They would need a huge surge in boxing to get people that subscribed just for that to go back. No way will someone subscribe for 2-3 fight nights a year. They might be digging themselves in a hole they will never get out.

But hey, if the free fights are anything to go by so far, I'm all for it. That Pac-Horn card was AWESOME. Who else didn't feel like they were watching a full blown PPV for free on a Saturday night? I thought it was awesome.

Pacquiao-Horn felt like a full-blown PPV because it was a full-blown PPV; only difference was that Australia carried the cost of the event, while we got the event as ancillary product here.

Joshua-Klitschko, were there not any contractual issues, is a fight that could've been aired on CBS for what the US rights to the fight ended up going for (the UK already delivered 90,000 tickets sold and a UK PPV audience of 1.4 million homes, so it's not like they were scraping for money).

Pacquiao fighting in the US, against anyone, isn't going to be on free TV because there is no way that you're going to cover Pacquiao's guarantee off of what could be made on ESPN.

Let's see what the Lomachenko and Crawford shows look like; likely more indicative of what to expect

[Scipio2009]

Agree that was a fun night & honestly I didn't even think about that feeling like a PPV card across the board til you just mentioned it, but yea I agree with that too.

I wished they hadn't of went so in on the bad decision as that probably gave a lot of non-hardcore fans a bad taste in their mouth, but as for the fights themselves it was a fun night that had the feel of a $60+ PPV. And we paid $0. I love it & can't wait to see more of it.

And randomly I hope PBC is paying attention to what TR just did with that card. Cuz while I'm a PBC supporter they have not been able to create that vibe TR did in their first attempt at a more mainstream/casual fan viewing choice. And granted Manny is the name he is & the had that fight in a great venue, but PBC gots more notable guys that can be grown into bigger names under their banner than anyone else in the sport right now & they keep discounting putting fights on at the right venues as much as they could.

Thurman-Garcia had a great vibe, in front of an electric audience, and ended up being a really good fight; not 50,000 people, but the crowd didn't take away from anything. Having Pacquiao out front didn't hurt either.

Let's see what Top Rank can do with Lomachenko in a 7k-seat building and Crawford in a 15k-seat building before settling in on Arum figuring out the presentation.