Eddie nose was out of place when Smith and Sky started demanding better cards when he was healing nonsense on them around the time of Okolie v Chamberlain. Eddie also likes the glamour of promoting guys like Canelo and he can’t do that with sky , he will make it a success but I liked the fact sky would create hype and attract casual audience .
Haha so much bitterness in a post. I remember Hearn begging Sky to put up money for smith vs Ryder as they wanted it on PPV and he didn’t think it was. Smith wanted big money and he has to put him on dazn on the AJ card to make the money work. Sky could only offer half of what smith wanted to fight. The thing people fail to realise is Hearn works with the budget he get provided by Sky etc. His fighters purses are what they negotiated and Hearn builds a card on the budget he works from. Hearn has done plenty of cards that have made losses or broke even in order to provide the content to Sky. I know for a fact Prograis vs Taylor made a loss but Hearn had to work with the budget he had from Sky and was contractually obliged to provide a PPV. If Hearn has a budget 4-5x what Sky provides and offers the same quality of cards 2-3 years from now then fair enough. But I know for a fact we will have a lot of cards with 4-5 very good fights on them. He has to stack the cards to draw subscribers. My guess we see the exact same as the US marquee names like AJ on the platform with slightly weaker undercards with prospects etc and other cards with world title fights and a bunch of 50/50s. but at worst if we got the same cards as we get now for a price or £6.99 and get to cancel Sky at £40 odd his a month are we complaining?
What happens with the gate money? If sky offered half then surley the gate makes up for the rest? Or does that go elsewhere? Also isnt in on Smith if he wants money that's not really on offer? He couldnt get that anywhere else could he?
Essentially all goes in to the pot. Don’t know the numbers but at a guess it Did a gate of approx £500k and Sky put up a similar figure which isn’t easy. Smith just won life changing money and would have wanted a minimum of £500k if not closer to £750k given he’s champ and ring magazine champion and wanting a big fight. Not a fight against Ryder. Gallagher would have been on to Eddie about championship money. Plant just picked up $750k for a truax fight for reference. if Hearn says that’s a bigger market. Smith would have said take us out there then. But Hearn had no fight for him and smith threatens to move somewhere there are fights Ryder would Have got £150k minimum. Once you take out undercard purses and event costs and taxes there is not much left I would imagine. Don’t get me wrong Matchroom would have still earnt a few quid but not much.
Don't they have a large amount of rights to other sports though ? Including college football. I'm not sure you can draw comparisons to the US and UK market. Subscription TV outside of Netflix in the UK is driven by who holds the football rights.
US and UK are completely different markets. US Population is 300M Plus. ESPN Plus is also an add on service to it’s big brother ESPN (Linear Channel) which does have NFL Rights. Boxing is not a profit or subscription driver in this country, why do you think Sky pay pennies to Hearn for Saturday Fight Nights or didn’t launch a boxing channel back in 2017 when they had the chance to? No Preimer League and you’re UK Operations will end up having to be propped up by other areas of the Business. And UK Sports Rights are not cheap
They do they have college football, UFC etc and also are they are part of Walt Disney Corporation. DAZN know this, in Italy they have Italian Football, in Germany they have Champions League, so i’m sure in the UK they know they have to get PL
Only other thing to add in is that DAZN is a global company and although rights are bought in a territory the budget is run as a whole. They can offset certain budgets like the PL in the UK by using some of the subscriber base where it’s cheaper for the content. for instance they have the premier league rights in Canada and Brazil which have cheaper rights fees and good subscriber numbers. eventually I wouldn’t be surprised that DAZN don’t make a play for some football content on a global basis. Rather than buying the content in each territory essentially going to a provider and purchasing the whole lot
This is great news for me, I don't subscribe to Sky and I'm never going to. Contrary to what Adam Smith thinks, not everyone wants to watch Netball or other sports. Sky missed a big opportunity by not offering individual sport passes on Now TV or even setting up their own streaming service (they have it for PPV events). Instead, if I wanted to watch a Saturday night fight I would have to pay £7 (the last time I looked) for an all day sports pass, £27 a month to watch Saturday night boxing.
Espn + getting UFC was huge for them. UFC is the sport that Espn+ hopes will drive subscription numbers. Getting UFC PPV's on espn+ ppv instead of the usual PPV providers was a great move as you can't buy the PPV unless you have an espn+ subscription.
