Sky's Boxing Promoters: A review

Sky should just do everything on a fight by fight basis. If the promoters don't like it -- where they gonna go?

 

true that way we will defo get good even fights.

 

Sky contracts with Matchroom, Warren, Maloney and Hattons will come to an end June 2012. Prizefighter is contracted until June 2013.

Warren for me is not delivering in any way. The major issue is that theres such a significant gulf in the money in play for PPV and regular Sky. There needs to be something in between which would allow fights like Khan vs McCloskey, Groves vs DeGale, Cleverly vs Braehmer to be on regular Sky Sports.

 

It would be good for them to look at Showtime's current boxing business model and how they do things - excluding the S6 of course which has been a frustrating event.

Even HBO perhaps..... but Sky make many of the mistakes that HBO make, i.e. giving essentially unproven fighters lots of money, leaving little in the pot elsewhere. The 2008 Olympians are probably on a fair whack per fight, meaning either a **** undercard or **** opponents.

These deals need to end and quick - I'm not saying don't give them more, but DeGale shouldn't be on more for a debut than (say) Ricky Burns is for a WBO title defence.

I'd like them to reduce the number of promoters they give contracts to - in fact the only promoter I'd give a guaranteed number of dates to at the minute is Warren..... because he's got the largest stable with the biggest names, in fact so many that he can't keep them all active enough..... hence why Brook has probably gone elsewhere.

Obviously quality control needs to be applied - no interalphabetty **** (the Hattons are as guilty of this btw) and less of these ''can't punch but never been stopped'' guys.

As for the rest of the promoters - make them put together proposals for SFN slots, midweek boxing and also PPV. Encourage them to work together.... there's enough money in most big domestic fights to go around.

Issue a list of matches that they want to see, and basically put the word out that it's either **** or bust - Khan only got on HBO because he fought Maidana.... it was Maidana or Maidana

We want to see....

Hall vs McDonnell
Chisora vs Fury
DeGale vs Groves - which we are getting
Barker vs Macklin
Quigg vs Frampton

etc etc etc

Reduce the number of promoters they deal with - for the audience that we have and the number of good fighters we have..... there's too many. In America there's what..... GBP, Top Rank, Don King.... three major promoters, plus the likes of Shaw, Goosen and DiBella - so that's six. We've got the same number with nowhere near as many good fighters, and nowhere near as many viewers.

This leads to a dilution in the quality of title matches because said promoters prefer to keep matches in house, and can have multiple fighters in the same weight class without having to match them because of having two domestic titles (Brit and Commonweath) - Frank Maloney said that he wasn't putting Price and Dallas together under any circumstances. So that's a big :finger to the viewers then.

Don't accept Commonwealth title matches anymore - it wouldn't solve the problem but would make the situation much clearer for all concerned.

Sorry if it's a bit scrambled..... as I was going through one topic it kinda lead onto another and then back again, but I'm sure you understand

 

Beetson your thoughts are in the right place but I think you take it to far and your to extreme in places.

Sky are working with domestic level boxing and they have a budget thats appropriate for those shows. Boxing does not attract the advertising revenue and viewing figures to up that budget.

What HBO and Showtime do is essentially make themselves the Matchmaker. A promoter will come to them, or they will come to a promoter with a fight and they will say No, or Yes and say how much they are prepared to pay for it. Sky could do this but you cannot expect the quality to improve dramaticlly without the budget going up.

Not accepting Commonwealth title fights is a ridiclious comment. Theres allot of poor level Commonwealth title fights and they should not be accepted but, same as several poor British, European and World title fights from this year. You may not like the multiple title situations but you have to accept boxing needs to be marketed to the public and putting a belt on a fight increases its value to the public.

Personally I think Domestic level boxing should be on a weeknight.

 

It seems that Sky did tell Khans to do this. They employed the Hattons and gave them a budget to put together an undercard. What they put together to start with was very good.

 

More promoters is not going to help anyone. I don't see Peters doing anything paticuarly better than the others.

 

Sky need to take more control over some of the matchups. Say that they will only show Price when he's against another contender, they've shown enough bum fights involving him. Same with the other heavyweights. Make Maloney put on Hall vs McDonnell instead of showing them separately against unknown Euros or overmatched domestic contenders.

 

Alternatively, you could centre your coverage around the British title, and make promoters aware that it's not an option to bring over European imports for the EBU title and still pick up the readies.

In the last three years I can't recall that many genuinely good European title fights - where the opponent has been European title level.... as opposed to just European. Many of them haven't been as good as the domestic champion at the time - so Sky should force that fight instead, for both titles.

Thinking out loud....

Munroe vs Maludrottu & Martinez I & II
McDonnell vs Jamoye

Any more?

In years gone by it wasn't unusual for fighters to defend their European title abroad, why are people so reluctant these days?

 

But they shouldn't accept them - that's my point.

The policy of ''main event must be a title fight'' in it's current form is flawed.

People aren't going to watch boxing just because there's a title on the line - they'll watch if you've got an interesting matchup. By reducing the number of acceptable titles you are more likely to get these more often.