ESPN disgusts me

There’s some history behind it.

ESPN bought the huge collection of fights amassed by Jimmy Jacobs and Bill Cayton for the ESPN Classic Channel.

Jacobs/Cayton asserted that they owned the broadcast rights to those old fights that they had collected over years, buying them from whatever source had them. Whoever sold a fight to them also ‘sold the rights,’ but that didn’t mean they actually owned the broadcast rights.

So at some point ESPN realized that they could either spend millions researching who owned each fight and tracking down those entities or their heirs and then paying for the fights again so they could broadcast them, or they could just put them in the vault and not spend that time, money and effort (and in many cases it would probably be hard to establish who, indeed, would own the broadcast rights to a fight from long again).

You can read a good bit about it here in this contentious thread (Klompton is part of it, so of course it’s full of snark and contention): https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...e-jimmy-jacobs-fight-collection.142037/page-2

So most ‘classic’ fights you see on ESPN are the ones that they KNOW they have the rights to — like Ali-Frazier and stuff like that.

Also, they did air a ton of old classics on ESPN Classic (and the other ESPN outlets) and it turns out hardly anyone watched unless it was Tyson or Ali or De la Hoya or someone else well-known to modern fans. An obscure Jake LaMotta fight doesn’t really have an audience today, or not one that will tune in to watch in enough numbers to sell advertising around.

 

I wonder what ESPN plans to do with the Jacobs-Cayton collection? They spent a pretty penny on it, only to keep the vast majority of it under wraps. Especially if they're not certain they have the rights. With fights, say, more than fifty years old (that's 1971 at the time of this writing), who does own the rights? The original networks? The original promoters? Fighters? Are they simply broadcast rights? If so, would those rights include streaming? So many questions...

 

Is there a master list of all the fights they have somewhere from these collections?

 

Please stop using text talk.

 

Out of respect to the older members.

 

Some clarity for the sane minds.

 

This is very ironic coming from a Tyson fan. A guy who was a drug addict who got paid to punch people and was a convicted ******.

 

ESPN is pathetic, they transformed from a sports network into a political commentary show staffed by social justice warriors, who instead of covering sporting events their hosts explore the racial and social implications of who just won the curling event in Bulgaria.