Comments Thread For: Garcia-Rios Peaked at 558K Viewers, Averaged 516K on Showtime

[N/A]

People will do mental gymnastics as to why he drew less than Errol Spence

Who thought he would draw more than Errol Spence? Errol Spence was making his first defense of his IBF world championship against the WBA world champion who vacated to take the fight.

Garcia was fighting a non-title tune up against a faded fighter who only held a title in a lower division.

Of course Spence was the bigger fight with more interest.

[Bob Haymon]

Showtime Anytime is not included in the ratings. Sling is included in the ratings.

It has to do with whether Nielsen considers you to be watching the linear feed of the channel. When you add Showtime to Sling, Sling is considered your "cable package" and Showtime is considered a linear channel on that package, so it is counted.

When you watch on Showtime Anytime, even though Showtime Anytime added a live feed, you're watching directly through the on demand app, not your cable/satellite company, so it's not counted.

This is why HBO GO doesn't allow live fights. They want to protect the Nielsen number. HBO GO even makes you wait several days before you can watch on demand and they never upload the entire broadcast. HBO wants to make it as inconvenient as possible to watch in any way that Nielsen doesn't count.

That is why HBO's numbers are artificially high and Showtime's are artificially low. There are numerous examples of ways you can watch Showtime fights that won't be counted by Nielsen, but HBO blocks those viewing methods because they want to force you to watch in a way Nielsen measures.

Nielsen numbers only matter on ad-supported television. It's subscriber count that's important on commercial-free premium television.

[N/A]

Nielsen numbers only matter on ad-supported television. It's subscriber count that's important on commercial-free premium television.

Yes. Of course. You are 100% correct. That is why Showtime couldn't care less about artificially protecting the Nielsen number. Showtime is trying to make their fights as accessible to their subscribers as possible. By streaming live on their app. By making the fights available on demand ASAP instead of HBO's three day delay. By making the entire telecast available instead of HBO's "fight only" on demand version. By replaying the fights later that night even though Nielsen won't count the replay (HBO only replays early the next morning, they refuse to do a late night replay, they want you to watch live).

But what happens is, since SHO doesn't protect the Nielsen number and HBO does, fans on this site look at the ratings and use them to claim SHO boxing is failing. Even though clearly SHO is all in on boxing and continues to increase their budget and number of dates. Clearly SHO knows something fans on this site don't. Which is the real number of people watching. If ratings were down as much as people here believe, SHO would not be so optimistic about boxing, promoting Espinoza, giving him even more money to spend, etc.

If you look at the falling ratings of SHO boxing, the slide perfectly coincides with Showtime adding a live stream to their app. It's no coincidence.

[steeve steel]

Alexander vs ortiz pulls in 1,5 million... kind of puts things into perspective. So much for Garcia saying everybody wants to fight him because of high ratings.

[GMAN SUPREME]

garbage fights = garbage ratings.

[JLC]

I streamed it on the Showtime App like always, so I know my viewership isn't counted in these ratings. Nielsen ratings don't say much anymore, especially with cord cutters using streaming apps to watch live shows.

Agreed. I actually just purchased the showtime anytime app last month strictly due to their boxing schedule.

[asgarth]

Yes. Of course. You are 100% correct. That is why Showtime couldn't care less about artificially protecting the Nielsen number. Showtime is trying to make their fights as accessible to their subscribers as possible. By streaming live on their app. By making the fights available on demand ASAP instead of HBO's three day delay. By making the entire telecast available instead of HBO's "fight only" on demand version. By replaying the fights later that night even though Nielsen won't count the replay (HBO only replays early the next morning, they refuse to do a late night replay, they want you to watch live).

But what happens is, since SHO doesn't protect the Nielsen number and HBO does, fans on this site look at the ratings and use them to claim SHO boxing is failing. Even though clearly SHO is all in on boxing and continues to increase their budget and number of dates. Clearly SHO knows something fans on this site don't. Which is the real number of people watching. If ratings were down as much as people here believe, SHO would not be so optimistic about boxing, promoting Espinoza, giving him even more money to spend, etc.

If you look at the falling ratings of SHO boxing, the slide perfectly coincides with Showtime adding a live stream to their app. It's no coincidence.

But is it too technical advanced to release the stream numbers?
If they dont care about public opinon, than they shouldnt mind, but if they really are creeping close to HBO numbers with the viewers from streaming, they should find a way to count them and release them properly.

HBO has still the public perception of being the better boxing platform, even if their product is pretty average at the moment. Showtime makes the better fights right now, but it would help them, if proper viewership numbers would give us a much clearer picture about where they are right now compared to hbo.

[N/A]

But is it too technical advanced to release the stream numbers?
If they dont care about public opinon, than they shouldnt mind, but if they really are creeping close to HBO numbers with the viewers from streaming, they should find a way to count them and release them properly.

HBO has still the public perception of being the better boxing platform, even if their product is pretty average at the moment. Showtime makes the better fights right now, but it would help them, if proper viewership numbers would give us a much clearer picture about where they are right now compared to hbo.

All of these numbers are supposed to be confidential. Some of the basic Nielsen numbers end up getting leaked. But if it was up to Showtime, we wouldn't know any of the numbers at all.

[Bob Haymon]

Yes. Of course. You are 100% correct. That is why Showtime couldn't care less about artificially protecting the Nielsen number. Showtime is trying to make their fights as accessible to their subscribers as possible. By streaming live on their app. By making the fights available on demand ASAP instead of HBO's three day delay. By making the entire telecast available instead of HBO's "fight only" on demand version. By replaying the fights later that night even though Nielsen won't count the replay (HBO only replays early the next morning, they refuse to do a late night replay, they want you to watch live).

But what happens is, since SHO doesn't protect the Nielsen number and HBO does, fans on this site look at the ratings and use them to claim SHO boxing is failing. Even though clearly SHO is all in on boxing and continues to increase their budget and number of dates. Clearly SHO knows something fans on this site don't. Which is the real number of people watching. If ratings were down as much as people here believe, SHO would not be so optimistic about boxing, promoting Espinoza, giving him even more money to spend, etc.

If you look at the falling ratings of SHO boxing, the slide perfectly coincides with Showtime adding a live stream to their app. It's no coincidence.

I think you're exaggerating the impact of streaming on live ratings. The college football final, for example, with it's massive audience of 27 million viewers on ESPN alone only got about 1.5 million viewers more when streaming numbers were counted. Only about 5%. This is a similar proportion of traditional tv vs. streaming viewers that any important live event usually gets. Even the most optimistic estimates on Showtime's streaming viewers would indicate a decline in overall viewership.

[IMDAZED]

But is it too technical advanced to release the stream numbers?
If they dont care about public opinon, than they shouldnt mind, but if they really are creeping close to HBO numbers with the viewers from streaming, they should find a way to count them and release them properly.

HBO has still the public perception of being the better boxing platform, even if their product is pretty average at the moment. Showtime makes the better fights right now, but it would help them, if proper viewership numbers would give us a much clearer picture about where they are right now compared to hbo.

I don’t think that’s the perception at all. The perception is HBO is the better network, but Showtime is the better boxing network.