First Boxxer/BBC Show

This content is protected

 

Shalom is correct, SSN haemorrhaged all their viewers after the 2020 great ‘awokening’, they have been panicking to try and regain viewers after they spend years chasing the far lefts imaginary “modern audiences”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2025/05/01/sky-sports-news-presenters-axe-gen-z-piracy/

Talksports audience has grown massively in the same period, I don’t think it would take a rocket scientist to figure out where SSN audience went, it’s not just the radio channel they have the app on just about every device that’s effectively a tv channel and the mobile app on top, they are also all over YouTube.

When it comes to boxing though the big difference is a SSN viewer has access to any boxing on the regular SS channels and a Sky ppv is a couple of button presses away on their remote with the price added to a future bill, whereas Talksport and DAZN are a completely different world.

 

Chasing the far left audience. What the hell you on about. SSN whole revamp was towards chasing the social media football crowd which funnily enough talksport did the same exact thing. It's not a coincidence the same people all over social media football fan channels are also appearing on SSN.

The Premier League viewer like myself who has been there since day 1 of SSN is older generation that naturally you will see drop away. SSN could have been the exact same before 2020 and that generation I belong to would still not be like it was before when we watched SSN way more intensely.

SSN has to replace them viewers somehow but chasing the YouTube crowd that was never gonna work. Admittedly I not sure what they should do.

YouTube fan channel hosts on SSN hasnt worked and I am evidence of a viewer who doesn't wanna see social media fan channel guys when watching SSN. Talksport seems completely opposite though as they can't get enough of the whole social media channel guys showing up at Talksport HQ. More and more as every month passes by.

 

Yeah, they really were part of the sports culture zeitgeist. In the 1990s, 2000s, and even early 2010s, Sky Sports wasn't just a broadcaster. It was a major producer of sports culture. Soccer AM generated catchphrases, personalities, and football banter that filtered into pubs, playgrounds, and Sunday league dressing rooms. Soccer Saturday with Jeff Stelling, Chris Kamara, Paul Merson and others became appointment viewing even for people who weren't watching the matches.
The generational shift in viewing methods was something they had to address though. Younger football fans increasingly form their media habits around: YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and podcasts. Personally, I think they managed it terribly. Sky's style is now generally more polished, rights-holder-friendly, and less confrontational, but really stale. That's good for maintaining relationships with leagues and clubs, but it can make it feel less culturally central. They basically got rid of the unpredictability, humour, and personality. Then they tried to claw in the younger audiences and bring some life back in to it by hiring YouTubers, which didn't work.
By contrast, Talk Sport has become a kind of perpetual football conversation machine. Even people who dislike it often know what was said on a given show because their clips go viral which engages younger audiences, their presenters are encouraged to be opinionated, and arguments generate engagement. TalkSport were very clever in hiring the personalities they did and have hoovered up so many of the Skysports viewers that were discarded.

 

Is TalkSport really that relevant though? Can't say I listen unless I'm looking for something specific or Jordan has farmed attention again.

That said, it does seem to cross generations. Had an uncle who used to have it on the radio all the time, basically as background noise in the house, and a couple of other relatives who'd listen on their daily commute in and out of town.

Probably helps that it's not behind a paywall, is easy to access, and isn't dictated to by a massive media conglomerate in the same way Sky is with Comcast. Long gone are the days when Sky was Murdoch's toy and seemed more interested in shaping sporting culture than protecting corporate relationships.

 

Watched the podcast and Bellew is insufferable on it. Constantly talking over Shalom and trying to belittle him ‘you could never follow Eddie at Sky’ ‘why are you matching Azim poorly’ absolute tit. Azim is fighting far better opponents than Dalton Smith was at Azim’s age.

 

In fairness Ben called Tony a twat too, enjoyed that. Also enjoyed Ben not backing down in what basically amounted to organised bullying from Hearn sycophants.

 

They chased the far left audience by turning SSN into a another political outlet for woke insanity, its output during 2020-2022 was more politics than sports, they replaced the presenters with DEI hires that were better suited to CBBC to get them boxes ticked.

 

Sky aren’t chasing a ‘far left woke audience’, they’re frantically trying to chase any audience they can full stop. They’re struggling to maintain relevance and subscriptions among younger audiences.

Sort of linked to this is that they’re so desperate to generate positive PR and look progressive, they’ll just clumsily jump on any bandwagon or trend they can. But it’s all just a disguise to cut costs - whether it’s their pushes around sustainability, women’s sports and DEI, or on-screen and social activity with YouTubers and content creators etc.

And it all feels so forced and fake. They’re the absolute definition of a big dirty corporate changing their social logos to a rainbow flag for Pride month, not reading the room and patting themselves on the back for being progressive. See that women’s sports TikTok they did a few months back. And nothing they ever do with these YouTubers feels genuine, just a watered-down, corporate version of what works on their own platforms.

For a company that spent so many years at the forefront of sports and media, they’ve been completely left behind by this generation and have no idea how to engage with them.

 

Very true, and in no way any different from a lot of these large businesses and organisations which are in the public eye, anyone who works or has worked for any of these household name firms recently will have witnessed behaviour very very similar I have no doubt

 

They are not now but thats the point, but 2020-2022 they were insufferable, they have been trying to course correct the last couple of years and the new DEI hires were mostly sacked off last year, social media and the young generation keeps being brought up but guess what the average young white working class lad is more pissed off and angry about woke and DEI than middle aged men, and I’m saying this as a 43 year old bloke who has a career and a family, they are the ones who who are starting out in life and being told they are ‘toxic’ in school, being overlooked for further education and jobs because they don’t tick the correct boxes, look at the scenes in this country the last couple of weeks in Belfast and Southampton to see for your own eyes, now who do you think the core target demographic is for boxing or football or sports fans in general? Guess what it’s not the women and middle class wokies that the media want to project and these lads are not tuning into a sport news channels to be told the same old crap.

Talksport in the same time period have gone down the same social media path yet their audience reach has exploded, now why is that? Because they recognised the core target demographic and produced programming/content for them, unlike Sky their primary income source is ad revenue and they couldn’t afford to drive listeners/viewers away, whereas Sky still had the subscription revenue coming in wether a subscriber watches SSN or not.

 

But even then, it wasn’t about appealing to left-leaning audiences or anything like that. Around Covid times they needed to cut costs massively, and that involved binning off a lot of staffers who had been there for many years and were on disproportionately large salaries.

Replacing them with younger, more diverse presenters, reporters and pundits was an incredibly convenient PR cover for that

 

Yes I agree with you 100% on the cost cutting, it’s even had a broadly used term ‘woke capitalism’, but the end result for the viewer was a preachy channel that during that period was producing content more fitting for Sky News rather than Sky Sports News and that’s the period they drove the viewers away and they have never come back. And for the record I don’t even consider myself ‘right wing’, ten years ago I’d be firmly considered left of centre, a couple of years ago a link for a website the political compass was being passed around my what’s app groups and I did that, I came back as ever so slight to the left of centre yet according to the media and the uniparty I like millions of others are “far right”, and you wonder why people are angry.

 

I've heard Boxxer haven't paid Riakporhe or Frazer Clarke for their fights on the Fury undercard yet.

 

Probably true..