This is really good news for Josh Taylor, his profile should go through the roof with Sky's marketing machine behind him.
Breaking news on Sky now and Adam Smith just wet himself with excitement at the boxing to be shown on Sky. Open for business and a new look for boxing - long overdue Smithy
Going head to head with Sky Sports in the UK generally doesn't end well for the opponent, just ask Setanta and BT. Most of the casuals who have Sky Sports and order PPV's will just think "we've still got boxing on Sky which I'm already subscribed to, couldn't be bothered signing up for a new online service, stick with what I have".
so happy with the top rank deal. The best thing eddie leaving sky, now we have someone fresh doing uk boxing we now have top rank shows. plus dazn shows warrens cards, the underated mtk and hennessey shows plus fite zone. The icing on the cake would be someone get pbc shows.
100 % right. Most of the casuals don’t know what’s Matchroom, what’s Queensbury or what’s Top Rank. It’s just boxing to them and the Joshua fight will reinforce that as I’d be very surprised if Joshua left Sky. They’ll buy whatever bullsh1t Sky tells them
99% of the time I’d agree, but people absolutely love Eddie Hearn and weirdly worship the bloke. Stuff like the No Context Hearn, iFL vids, BBC podcasts and general social media has elevated him far above any promoter in people’s consciousness, and he’s almost certainly more recognisable to the public than the vast majority of his fighters. In general yeah, people who like a bit of boxing don’t care who the promoter is, but Hearn’s profile, prominence and selling is arguably as important to the success of DAZN as the quality of fights he puts on.
I think eddie has made a massive mistake leaving sky. He has probably been offered a massive amount of money to go to dazn. I'm sure financially it works wonders for him. I think he has lost a lot also. Most fighters will want to fight on sky sports. The Joshua situation will be interesting and another promoter has joined sky and will pick up a fair few boxers. Sky sports news keeps people in the loop about boxing. A streaming service is not going to advertise as well. Eddie has gone to dazn without Joshua and whyte I believe. His stable isn't great so it will be hard work building stars without the hype and promotion. Eddie knows a lot more than me about promotion and building profiles but I think that he has let a few people through the door here to rival him.
Once his face is off Sky Sports News he is out of sight out of mind. Casuals are not going to sign up to DAZN for pony fights never mind waste an evening watching them.
He's said he's about to sign some sort of deal with the BBC. Obviously that could be just radio rights or podcasts but if it's delayed highlights that's pretty big too.
Eh Day needs his face and voice on TV so makes sense but cannot see many interested in watching highlights late at night of one sided fights.
I know it was ten years ago and different media landscape but the same thing happened with Boxnation, Warren had the countries number 1 stable by far when he left Sky and after 12 months the fighters were openly saying they wanted Sky’s exposure, YouTube is maybe a difference maker but genuine question who watches the likes of IFL, hardcore, casual or a mix of both? And even so the casual market do not subscribe to Sky Sports for boxing it’s for football and everything else in general. Sky could show the Fightzone cards every Friday night and probably pull in 200k plus consistently and it would be the same casual viewers as watched Matchrooms shows.
