Top Rank series on ESPN to feature: Pac/Horn, Loma/Salido 2, Crawford/Indongo

[Eff Pandas]

It is kind of funny, how Roy Jones was the face of HBO boxing for so long and the trajectory of their power in the sport have mirrored one another.

If this investor can pull it off and get it all together they have something and they then do have the content because there are enough guys and people with interests in those guy to produce shows focusing on those talents. I still say Boxing Wives is a winning concept that would fit perfectly in that medium.

Whats that a reality show about Tim Bradley's wife & 3 or 4 other boxer's wives? That wouldn't be a bad idea. Likely has the impact of bringing more females to fights & watching on TV.

[Eff Pandas]

In theory, this makes sense.

IMO the disconnect is in the objectives of the two orgs. One of PBC's strengths (at least with the fighters who agreed to be apart of the effort) has not just been with the TV exposure, it also been with the INCREASED cut/income the fighters by greatly reducing the splits and the false caps that promoters can put on them.

Clearly, Top Rank has no such objective.

Yea don't disagree with any of this really. And yea in theory a lot of stuff makes sense, but in action most theories need adjustments & pivots to correct shortsightedness &/or shortcomings. I'm just rooting on more theories getting put in the playbook so we can corrected the problems we aren't seeing yet while ending some of the problems we've been seeing for a long time.

I also find it interesting that we have yet to really see any analysis on how this deal impacts the fighter's purses/income. We know PBC raised purses for their guys (whether artificial or not, it made sense for the fighter financially beyond just TV exposure). Does Top Rank's deal do the same? Or does it just the same ole same ole 'slave deals' with only Top Rank benefitting?

Hopefully we'll hear more details soon. Because so far I see is a (potential) boon for Arum/Top Rank, with no idea how a Terrence Crawford or Loma gets more money from this.

We shall see.

Yea the money stuff isn't adding up yet, but so few details are known who knows. But for sure if Crawford is making $6M/year on HBO fighting twice & would now be making $6M/year on ESPN fighting three times its not gonna work out unless thats the short game or HBO Boxing does go outta business in the near future & that money no longer exists to be compared with other outlets.

[hectari]

Time buy. Rob has an investor apparently.

Where does it say its a time buy? I thought it was a deal with ESPN.

[Mitchell Kane]

Yea don't disagree with any of this really. And yea in theory a lot of stuff makes sense, but in action most theories need adjustments & pivots to correct shortsightedness &/or shortcomings. I'm just rooting on more theories getting put in the playbook so we can corrected the problems we aren't seeing yet while ending some of the problems we've been seeing for a long time.



Yea the money stuff isn't adding up yet, but so few details are known who knows. But for sure if Crawford is making $6M/year on HBO fighting twice & would now be making $6M/year on ESPN fighting three times its not gonna work out unless thats the short game or HBO Boxing does go outta business in the near future & that money no longer exists to be compared with other outlets.

I don't think Crawford was making $6 milion a year.

I thought his purses were in the $1 to 1.5 million range...and he wasn't getting more than two HBO fights a year.

Just like the PBC's investor money could only pay premium purses for a limited period of time, Top Rank will only be able to use their hedge fund money to pay premium purses for a limited time.

Presumably they have enough for one Pacquiao fight, maybe a few more for Crawford and Lomachenko, who have high premiums.

HBO was willing to still televise some Crawford and Lomachenko fights, so I don't think Top Rank would leave them without having the means to pay them...but the HBO well was appearing to dry up, so Top Rank had to do something.

Gilberto Ramirez, Oscar Valdez, Jesse Magdaleno, Jose Ramirez, those fighters have lower minimums for the moment, so those are the fighters I'd assume we'll see more of on the ESPN series.

[hectari]

I'm talking about PPV's down the line, after this initial ESPN deal is over.

Pacquiao on ESPN may be a one-time thing....he may go back to PPV.

But the next tier of fighters, with Lomachenko, Crawford, Ramirez, Valdez, Magdaleno, those fighters aren't really PPV level yet (except against the right opponent) so they may stay on ESPN until the end of this TV deal.

The Olympians like Conlan and Stevenson I would expect will go back and forth between ESPN and the streaming service.

The UniMas level fighters like Jose Ramirez and Felix Verdejo may also rotate between ESPN and the streaming service.

We'll see.

Arum said this Pacquiao Horn free ESPN tv fight is probably one time deal, but if Pac fights Crawford, spence or Thurman its PPV

Also doesn't HBO have rights to some of Top ranks events?
How does that work unless Top Rank back in the 80s and 90s also did their separate broadcast or did Arum buy out the rights or what?

I know Arum now has to do separate TR broadcasts when HBO does PPV of the same event so Top Rank can license and keep their vault, if HBO commentary is on it Top Rank can't use that even though they are the head promoters

Im not sure how that goes if someone knows more please tell me.

[Mitchell Kane]

Arum said this Pacquiao Horn free ESPN tv fight is probably one time deal, but if Pac fights Crawford, spence or Thurman its PPV

Also doesn't HBO have rights to some of Top ranks events?
How does that work unless Top Rank back in the 80s and 90s also did their separate broadcast or did Arum buy out the rights or what?

I know Arum now has to do separate TR broadcasts when HBO does PPV of the same event so Top Rank can license and keep their vault, if HBO commentary is on it Top Rank can't use that even though they are the head promoters

Im not sure how that goes if someone knows more please tell me.

Well, Dan Rafael announced that ESPN will show some "classic" Pacquiao fights before the Horn fight.

Also, during the week of June 26, there will be several classic Pacquiao fights -- Ricky Hatton, Juan Manuel Marquez III and Bradley II -- available on demand and streaming via the ESPN App.

http://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/i...ve-espn-july-1

Golden Boy used to show their "classic" fights on the FOX Networks when they still had a deal.

The promoter often retains the rights to the fights.

Here's something Thomas Hauser wrote about the licensing of Top rank footage for Legenday Nights:

HBO lowered its standards to make Marquez-Licona. The reason? Marquez is promoted by Bob Arum. And a lot of people believe that HBO's fight schedule is now dictated in part by a screw up.

Last year, HBO aired a twelve-part series entitled Legendary Nights highlighting its thirty years of boxing. Unfortunately, it forgot to license relevant fight footage before the programs were put together. The two main beneficiaries of this snafu were Main Events and Top Rank.

Pat English, the attorney for Main Events, acknowledges, "HBO made the documentaries without getting the rights. We were in the same situation as Arum. We decided to ask for what we would have asked for if we hadn't had HBO over a barrel. We didn't get dates as such, but there was a license fee and also some promotional considerations."

Arum wasn't as kind as Main Events. Thus, in the forseeable future, fight fans might be watching some match-ups on HBO that the network would not normally telecast. Or as one HBO insider put it, "Once the mix-up happened, there were ways to remedy the situation other than raping the core product of HBO Sports. But instead of dealing directly with the situation and paying a straight license fee for the footage, HBO entered into a deal that lets Arum put on crap with bring-your-own opponents."

http://www.secondsout.com/columns/th...ownward-spiral

And here is what was written about Top Rank's library of fights:

http://***************.com/index.php...library.40347/

Those tapes number over 10,000, date back to 1970 and contain, by conservative estimate, at least 25,000 fights. Muhammad Ali is in there. So are Roberto Duran, George Foreman, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, who will add to the collection this Saturday when he fights Tim Bradley for the second time here at the MGM Grand.

It's hard to quantify just how much the collection is worth. It's like art in that way, valuable only if someone is willing to pay for it. Still, one boxing archive sold to ESPN years ago for a reported $100 million.

Arum believes his boxing library is the largest that exists. He says that Don King also owns an extensive archive, and he heard once that King offered an interested buyer $500 million for it. When the buyer balked, Arum says King cut his offer in half. He never sold.

"It's probably worth eight figures," Arum says. "But put this in the story: worthless. Because when I die, and they total up my stack, I don't even want to count. It's old film!"

Joking aside, Arum says he realized as far back as the second Ali-Leon Spinks fight, in Sept. 1978, that he needed to save his tapes and guard the rights. Previous to that, he would give the rights away, but always in a non-exclusive exchange, so that he also retained them.

Broadway Video, based in New York, does the converting. The process is not a swift one. As long as it takes a tape to play is how long it takes to convert it. The really old tapes present their own problems, because they oxidize and begin to disintegrate when run through the machine.

All told, Tang says he has converted 3,000 to 4,000 hours of footage. He did 1,000 hours last year alone. He's not even halfway done. "It's like a new science," he says "It's like a black art. Content is. Formats. Coding. Because once it's in a digital format, what digital format should it be in? How can it play on an iPad? You have to evolve with it."

To that end, Top Rank is watching closely what happens with World Wrestling Entertainment. In February it launched a pay channel heavy on video content. Top Rank could do the same, but it does not own the rights to its fighters the way the WWE owns its characters and their storylines. In fact, when a company buys rights from Top Rank for a commercial use, it also must secure the rights for a fighter's likeness from the fighter or his estate.

Here's more from the article specifically on the rights....

Top Rank regularly sells the rights to certain tapes to individuals or companies for use in documentaries, commercials, films. Some want generic montages of early knockouts. Others want specific Pacquiao fights. Arum says he always hears the same thing. "We're making a documentary on a very small budget."

As boxing became more of a global sport in recent years, as the number of channels and mediums increased, so, too, did the demand for footage. Top Rank sells parts of its library all over the world, in more than 100 countries. It even sold footage of Butterbean for use in "Jackass: The Movie."

The rights must also be protected. On his honeymoon, DuBoef traveled to Thailand, where he saw an old Ali fight on ESPN International in Bangkok; in Japan, he saw another Top Rank bout on TV. He called the lawyers. He says they worked out a settlement. "Paid for the honeymoon!" Arum says.

That happens all the time. Arum says payment for Pacquiao rights were of particular concern in the Philippines, so now Top Rank only deals with one network and requires the money paid up front.

"The real question now is what happens to all this content, once you have the digital platform built up," DuBoef says. "Do you become your own Netflix-type boxing franchise?"

To that end, Top Rank is watching closely what happens with World Wrestling Entertainment. In February it launched a pay channel heavy on video content. Top Rank could do the same, but it does not own the rights to its fighters the way the WWE owns its characters and their storylines. In fact, when a company buys rights from Top Rank for a commercial use, it also must secure the rights for a fighter's likeness from the fighter or his estate.

In May, Arum says that Top Rank will begin a show in China. Part of that is screening older fights that fans there have never seen. Arum will speak, and they will watch, and he is looking forward to the experience, all these fights he has not seen in 30, 40 years.

The tapes themselves will remain protected, in the name of future monetary gain. Inside the vault, there is even an oversized fire extinguisher. It sucks the oxygen out of a room to prevent fires from spreading.

That's the vault. The one place where boxing history is bomb-proof.

[PK3434]

What are the chances all the racist PBC haters will be okay with this time buy?

Details haven't been released yet but the PBC model and the top rank model seem to be completely different. Haymon literally tried to take over boxing by buying time on every network and signing hundreds of fighters. Haymon was trying to shut down other promoters from being able to do any business. That is the main reason why it failed. If pbc bought time on one or two networks and then gave them good fights and eventually turned it into a deal where they were being paid by he network, that would be awesome. That should be the ultimate goal of time buys: to prove to the network you have a product worth paying for.

[hectari]

Well, Dan Rafael announced that ESPN will show some "classic" Pacquiao fights before the Horn fight.



http://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/i...ve-espn-july-1

Golden Boy used to show their "classic" fights on the FOX Networks when they still had a deal.

The promoter often retains the rights to the fights.

Here's something Thomas Hauser wrote about the licensing of Top rank footage for Legenday Nights:



http://www.secondsout.com/columns/th...ownward-spiral

And here is what was written about Top Rank's library of fights:

http://***************.com/index.php...library.40347/

Wow good research and looking out man, are you a Boxing writer? you really know how to do research.

Man over 25 thousand fights Top Rank has lol dang, looks like ESPN made a good move, that Vault is insane.

[Pigeons]

Where does it say its a time buy? I thought it was a deal with ESPN.

Thats what Steve Kim said.

https://twitter.com/steveucnlive/sta...13399433506816

[Eff Pandas]

I don't think Crawford was making $6 milion a year.

I thought his purses were in the $1 to 1.5 million range...and he wasn't getting more than two HBO fights a year.

I was throwing out a random number for an example not specific purse(s). I'm just saying if Bud makes the same money, but has to fight an extra fight to get it its a problem for Bud & other fighters the longer that goes on.

Gilberto Ramirez, Oscar Valdez, Jesse Magdaleno, Jose Ramirez, those fighters have lower minimums for the moment, so those are the fighters I'd assume we'll see more of on the ESPN series.

For the time being. But Oscar & Gilberto have potential to be in the 7 digit region soon.

But if everyone is fighting 3 times a year, or more maybe for the younger cats just reaching the serious prospect/fringe contender range, then the big names will likely be giving up millions of dollars if they aren't paying HBO money while the lesser guys aren't giving up as much is all I'm saying.

So the guys driving the audience to ESPN & this streaming app will actually be doing more to change the current paradigm, but receiving less in return. Or speculatively anyway, like I keep saying who knows for sure, I just have trouble believing there is premium cable money waiting to be paid for guys fighting on basic cable. I could be wrong or it could just be a short term play as previously mentioned that the fighters are onboard for & understand.