Any numbers on the Haye-Klit PPV?

Yeah, i was thinking that. How the heck are you gonna get 16 million plus viewers on a subscription channel? lol.

Isn't RTL basically the German equivalent of BBC or ITV?

 

I was at the Chambers fight, I think the place was supposed to hold 55,000 for boxing and it wasn't full but it had to have 50,000 people there, some of the nose bleeds were empty. I took alot of pictures, I'll have a look through see if any give a good picture of the crowd.

 

USED TO being the operative word. Boxing in Britain is a minority sport now for a variety of reasons, however very occasionally a Boxer can generate cross over appeal as Hatton did, Haye does and Froch does to a degree.. other than that they are not interested in the sport. You could mention any of the names in this weekends big card to the general public and even sports fans and the majority would say "Who" to anyone of them

 

Yeah, kinda like ITV.

Subscription based TV in Germany is struggling heavily because the FTA channels are very strong there. PPV is nearly non-existant.

 

Haye vs Wlad could have been the flame that turns into a forrest fire.

Not enough sparks to get it going though. Pac vs Floyd to follow. Khan in a big fight. DeGale etc It needs the boxing community at large to invest in the sport but it is unlikely to happen now adays. Thanks to MMA they woke up a bit and stopped it from disappearing but its unlikely the glory days will ever return, I'm not even talking about the 60s or 70s, I'm saying even the 80s, maybe early 90s.

A card like this Saturday should be big news.

 

Free to air tv gurantees nothing and its time to forget the dream that your going to see the majority of boxing shows on FTA tv. Its not going to happen!!

 

yeah 100,000 is pretty disgraceful. I know plenty of people who watched boxing on ITV4 if they spotted it on, but dont have sky sports to even think about watching it on SFN.

 

As with the fellow above who says next weekends C5 card might be the beginnings of something... as much as I would like this to be so, you are deluding yourselves.

Boxing getting on TV isn't the problem. We had boxing on ITV up until recently.. it didn't help ignite interest. It's the sport itself and specifically the boxers that are the problem. Going in the ring and winning isn't enough, you have to be entertaining as that ultimately is what professional boxing is about.

20 years ago we had a sport that was alive with characters all over the place that had people talking, now we just have a few here and there. Coupled with that too many fighters pull out, put in poor performances, fail to live up to expectation, factor in the politics behind the matchmaking and promotion.. and then complete it by the appearance of PPV.. why would a big star stay on terrestrial when there is huge sums of PPV money on offer, he wouldn't. Put all together and you have a sport that is struggling to compete with other modern sports which deliver more consistent and quality entertainment.

What is the solution?.. I don't know.

 

5 million for Prime time sunday evening is less than you would want.