Why was HBO boxing abolished?

Profits and viewership shares had been on the gradual decline, and the long-awaited mega-event that was Mayweather vs. Pacquiao (a rare joint venture between HBO & Showtime) was generally viewed as somewhat disappointing, which in the short-term hurt the stature of the sport especially in terms of being a "premium TV commodity", but really none of that mattered or would have meant HBO slashing all live boxing coverage from their programming slate had it been any previous executive regime. It was Peter Nelson, then president, who buckled to pressure from new parent company AT&T to have the network focus almost exclusively on "scripted content" and get away from even a whiff of a faint suggestion of the reputation of being a sports channel.

The kicker, though? HBO (specifically Nelson) murdered its prestigious 45 year tradition of being a premiere broadcaster of championship boxing in the USA in late 2018. Peter Nelson would depart the company in the summer of 2020, just about twenty months later. AT&T would change its mind about entering the media sphere the following year, and spun off Warner and its assets (including HBO) in a deal that merged them with Discovery, just over a year ago.

In other words, the parties to blame for ending that fine lineage all ceased to even be in charge of HBO not long after the bungle. They came in, laid on the sofa with their dirty shoes on the cushions, lit a cigar and discarded the match, setting the house ablaze ...then just shrugged and dipped out.

 

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...hy-you-should-hate-peter-nelsons-guts.681746/

 

That additional context makes me feel even worse about this, ugh. Thanks for the enlightenment. Boxing hasn't been the same since.....

 

DAZN very much wanted to create the impression of filling the niche HBO left behind (and take undue credit for its demise), going as far as to make Buffer a staple of their product... but they don't and never will have that big fight HBO feel. Even if they had gotten, say, Jim Lampley - it would have been close but no cigar. The production team at HBO Boxing really cared about putting effort into every detail to make it feel special. Can't say the same for anybody left in the game, including their old archrivals at Showtime.

 

Yeah, DAZN feels like somebody's film school project. It's so embarrassingly amateur.

 

The net profit wasn’t that much more than the expenses at the point when they stopped. PBC had raised the rates that fighters were expecting and DAZN wasn’t too far behind. For HBO who during their heyday was averaging 4 to 5 millions minimum viewers for Word Championship Boxing programming to be lucky to get 1.2 million viewers wasn’t worth the growing financial demand of the fighters.

 

So what? It was a legacy program, a loss-leader that maybe didn't bring in as many new subscribers by way of casual fans as during the peak of the PPV era but again - so what? It was a loyal core audience, in some cases going back decades, and yeah it was expensive but AT&T/Warner had more than enough cashflow to eat the cost to keep longtime customers happy. They just didn't care to.

 

Sometimes capitalism sucks. They're in the business of profit.

 

they saw the stupid arms race between DAZN, ESPN and PBC in the mid-late 2010s and said nope, we aren’t getting involved in that. probably the wisest move they’ve made as a company.

 

No doubt about it. Down to the music, graphics, sound quality, production, pre-fight hype shows, it was just magical how it all came together.

 

A lot of it was they lost their access to fights. They refused to work with Haymon and DAZN was entering the fray. And TR went with ESPN.

They were reduced to women’s fights and the little guys. But it had already stopped being the home of big fights.

Thing is, they could get back in now that paydays are set to drop. The inactivity is killing the sport with casuals in the US. There is an opportunity, but it’s over.

 

Showtime will be out of Boxing business by end of this year as well.

 

Game of Thrones killed their budget

 

HBO boxing was always about mainstream marketable stars. After Floyd who could carry the general publics attention? As another poster mentioned Showtime is likely to ditch boxing soon too.

If the biggest stars don't want to fight each other, the public loses interest.