Boxing back on Network TV? Ratings?

NBC,Wealth TV and Epix are already dabbling in this eexperiment.We will see where it lands.

 

Doubt it will do that well. Probably a rating in the 1.0 - 1.5 range, maybe a bit higher if it's in prime time. If it invovled Chavez or Canelo, you can probably double or triple that number though.

 

A lot of that would depend on what network was hosting the fights, what day and time they were shown, and what their lead ins were. You really have to build a base around anything you do. You can't show Ellen or the View and then Canelo vs Martinez. You'd need a network with a strong young male demographic which watches these kinds of things, and you'd need to precede them with something equally appealing to that demographic. You also want to make sure that the programs you put on around the match have a strong regular following and aren't struggling themselves. Then you have to make sure that your competitor networks aren't hosting anything great on their channels at the same time that would steal your viewers.

Also, since boxing interest has waned over the last decade in the states, you might hedge your bets by appealing to the large minority of Mexican enthusiasts within our borders. Have the fight on a Mexican holiday like Cinco de Mayo for instance to maximize eyes on screens. You still have to do a lot of promotion leading up to the event such as commercials or a 24/7 type documentary show about the fighters so people know who to root for and what's at stake.

 

If the fights got hyped, they'd do good #s. If they were just thrown on with no buildup beforehand, nobody would care.

Most casual fans stopped caring about boxing with the demise of the HW division. If it ain't big stars, they ain't interested. Diehard fans would definitely tune in of course, but thats a minority of the public.

I'm actually scared that if boxing did get back on network TV, the fighters featured wouldn't go hard to seize the moment. They would stink it out and cause more ppl to hate boxing rather than simply ignore it. It might do more harm than good.

Hypothetically, I'd luv to see boxing on network TV, but it's actually a helluva risk. It has to be a guaranteed crowd pleaser to score.

 

network ratings are over rated anyway. they meant something years ago, now you have 300 different channels to choose from.....

 

it could make a comeback if the matchmakers and TV producer carefully select the fighters and the fight that they're going to show.

 

If Canelo fought someone like Ortiz on CBS. It would do incredibly well. Just because of the media attention it'll get for being the 1st big boxing show back on primetime Network TV.

 

If you put Floyd vs Pac on regular TV it would get giant figures worldwide.

 

Not very good. You gotta build up a guy a like seth mayhem mitchell and put him in against some cans for some tyson like K.O's

Also put the hispanic fighters on telemundo on pst time

 

Take the viewer base for HBO and multiply it for the user base of, say. FOX.
HBO has 27 million available viewers while FOX has an estimated 115 million.

So we take a mediocre draw like Maidana who can attract 1 million viewers with HBO's 27 million base and multiply it by the 115 million viewers for FOX. It's not an ideal way to calculate it but you could at least get 10 million. Anything in a prime time slot is automatically going to get more than 3 million in most cases anyway. It's the most watched slot an will automatically attract a huge audience automatically.

Do the same thing and put the UFC on HBO ... their ratings would fall to around 800k for prelims. That's why the UFC's ratings didn't shoot up so drastically on FOX. Spike already has around 100 million subscribers which is already close to the range FOX has. In fact their ratings on FOX are only slightly up from the big free shows they ran an spike ... such asa fre Anderson Silva fight that did about 4.6 million on Spike.

Remember those Elite XC MMA shows on CBS? They did over 5 million viewers for that ... now compare it to a similar org like Strikeforce on Showtime and it's only getting around 150k viewers per show. Their highest rated and biggest show this only got around 500k viewers ... compare that to boxing which managed 1 million.

Boxing is a much more powerful draw in the US pound for pound. The number one problem boxing has is a little known channel called HBO which refuses to share the main boxers by over paying them

If anything the head to header of Canelo-Chavez proved that boxing's fan base is much larger than previously thought. People have been assuming that boxing's entire fan base must be located on HBO and to a lesser extent Showtime. However, Canelo's ecord braking 1 million viewers going head to head with a major HBO PPV shows that they aren't a mixed bunch after all.

And lastly, consider this, an estimated 2.6 million (500k buys = about 2.6 million) watched the Chavez-Martinez PPV while 1 million watched Canelo. That is 3.6 million people combined who watched boxing that night. Imagine that same number translated onto a much larger network! If boxing wanted to they could go back to being a major fixture on US TV. The problem is boxing doesn't want to while cable networks pay so much.

 

those 2 primadonnas wont do it. they r too money hungry

 

I can't remember who he was fighting but Mike Tyson earned 46 million viewers before going onto PPV. It was considered a boring ugly fight and if you check google news archives you can find article mocking Tyson as a waster. It didn't matter. All that mattered in the end was the exposure.

 

BTW in case people haven't heard boxing should be having some major network exposure soon enough. Kathy Duva has a two fight contract on NBC's main channel and GB have a contract with CBS to show the US Olympic boxers who turn pro in October and December I think.