Sky's Boxing Promoters: A review

Sure if you have a big enough attraction people will come. But if you look at footall games smaller clubs and smaller fixtures do suffer from mid-week due to falling away attendances. And the problem is by running so many events you're denying promoters the budget to put on really big events that attract casual fans. And the competition was specifically on television. The evening football and rugby matches usually finish by 8/9pm on a Saturday. Other than the football highlights and the occassional big Serie A/La Liga game, boxing has a pretty much clear run on Saturday nights.

I genuinely believe that boxing would be far stronger in this country if Sky broadcast one event each month that was in front of a live crowd of 10,000 and a television audience of say 250,000 to 350,000 than four events in front of 1,000 and an average television audience of 100,000. The later is not growing the fanbase or creating new stars.

 

but what about all the other fighters. wheres there exposure. a young up and coming fighter would never get on tv.

I am not talking about world title fights on thursday night. commonwealth, english titles. the top class prospects in 8 rounders. these fights will only ever draw a small audience on sky and 1000 to an arena from the local area even if its a saturday. on a thursday night theres never any football apart from europa league. the rest is just darts, snooker.

then i agree with you saving saturday nights 1-2 times month for big cards.

 

I really like the idea of a live fight on during Ringside.

 

Top prospects should be on the prelims of the big month's cards - you can show highlights of their fights on ringside over the next month. Alternatively send a crew down to the promoters non-televised show and get some footage to air on Ringside the following week. But with money so tight live boxing should be reserved for fights and fighters that are on a certain level. Nobody is made a star by appearing on ESPN's Friday Night Fights and nobody is made a star by appearing on Sky's weekly fight nights - the money just simply isn't there any more to make the weekly format work.

However if that has to be a weekly series for young prospects the model I would use is the same as currently being used by MMA promotion Bellator in the states. 13week seasons based eight-man tournaments with the winner getting a title shot. You could easily use that as the basis for a series of shows based around prospects.

 

Like BB your idea is to drastically different to how it works now it couldn't work. you cant go from 50 live shows on sky a year to 12 bigger shows which essestially happen anyway.

 

That sounds boss that to be honest:good

 

spot on gasman.

hbo & showtimes works in the US because of the tiers. you have

HBO PPV
Showtime PPV
HBO WCB
Showtime WCB
HBO BAD
ShoBox
ESPN FNF

cards slot into one of them appropriately. sky needs to create that here.