Does anyone agree that with Showtime ( PDC ) , ESPN ( Top Rank ) and Dazn ( Matchroom ), HBO are pretty much finished as a boxing broadcaster ? Other than GGG Canelo, the Superflyweights and a handful of Golden Boy Champions, who do they have ? That Superfly card on the 8th doesn't look great, it's just there really to promote the PPV fight the following weekend ?Who can they get ? I remember when US boxing people used to say ' the only three letters that matter in boxing isn't WBC, WBA or IBF, it's HBO '. It's sad really because years ago, HBO boxing seemed so exotic. Nothing's forever. rezzer, Yesterday at 8:46 PMEditReport #1+ QuoteReply
And why would you care? What's it to you? Are any of them paying you money? By the way, what great matches does Showtime have lined up aside from Garcia-Porter?
It's far from certain at this point. At least they're not planning to give up on boxing, and one can't say a giant like HBO is done so easily.
HBO hasn't had a ton of content this year, but many of the fights they have put on have been very good and stack up to Showtime very well at least in quality.
I think the sport in general is suffering a bit. A couple of years ago we had a HUGE pac fight and a HUGE Floyd fight like every few months, plus Cotto as well. Right now who are the big stars? Alvarez just doesn't get the juices flowing, and the rest of the new Era of stars don't have the same marquee value. Problem was Floyd, Cotto, Pac, Mosley, klitschkos, froch, ward, and a few others all retired in rapid succession, and all those names are difficult to replace.
The Pac and Floyd fights of the last eight years were mostly a joke. They might have got eyeballs, but they were usually disappointments and unimportant events meant to string the public along with the promise of an eventual superfight between Floyd and Pac. Stuff like Ward/Kovalev and GGG/Canelo were much better fare. We're still getting Lomachenko and Crawford fights every couple months on ESPN equivalent to what Pac and Floyd gave us. But as for HBO, it looks like they are finished as the boxing monopoly they were for decades.
There are some rumors that PBC might be signing a deal with Fox. Makes me wonder as to what would that leave SHO with. HBO will likely stay for years to come, mainly because of Canelo. Canelo is going to keep fighting under the HBO PPV umbrella, thus bringing with him some talent from Golden Boy. Loeffler has shown he has new ambitions and he has a good relationship with HBO. So he will likely showcase plenty of talent on HBO. But it doesn't look promising. They have to come up with some interesting programming. But it seems it's up to the promoters, which is a shame. (Golden Boy had a lot of talent at 130 and they completely shat the bed)
HBO has actually been on the relative decline for at least 6 years, probably more, it seems. I would say despite a higher budget and subscriber rate that they overall lost the battle with Showtime since that war went to the next level starting in was it 2012-13-ish. They have definitely been poor the last couple years. Again, that is mostly relative to being the untested king for so long.
Regardless of the quality of those fights they were still huge events that got people talking for weeks/months at a time.
