Of course they mean something. TV networks are businesses, and higher ratings means you can charge more for ads. They don't mean much for the premium channels that don't have ads.
Then why does FNF only draw about 100,000 - 200,000 viewers a week? Why did the old shows on Versus draw about 250,000 at best? It's a nice argument, but other than the viewer bases, it doesn't seem to have much grounding in reality. If you build it up over time, I'm sure it will do just fine, but right away it would be viewed as a dud. If you put a star-level fight on network TV, I'm sure it would do great. Anything less than that and it's probably destined to fail, unless you get at least one big name and a nice marketing effort behind it.
I really hope they never turn boxing into a freak show at first just to build some cheap ratings. Top fighters against complete bums, I'm talking total stiffs that couldn't hack it in low level MMA just to attract the wresting and hockey fight fans. To some degree this already happens with young prospects they are pushing, but it hasn't reached Gary Shaw's Elite XC status yet, thank god.
FNF ... as in the ones on ESPN 2 or whatever - I'm not in the states. It gets ratings that reflect the network and timeslot. Together with an over all lack of star power it does pretty well in the ratings I hear. A few randomers fighting for a few hours manage to get ratings approaching 700k which is good for the lesser ESPN channels. And that's a low budget boxing show to boot. I never looked into the Versus ratings but boxing on NBCS (new Versus) is doing very well relative to the other sports on the channel. Boxing is the second most watched sport on NBCS outside of hockey. Recently the other sports did get a spike during the Olympics which surpassed the boxing cards but that seems to have gone down. And again these aren't exactly major cards or anything. It's apples and oranges comparing ratings between small networks and major networks. A show like, say, Dexter, which averages 1 million on Showtime could reach over 12 million on a major network but so long as its on Showtime it will never get those ratings. Just look at Hockey's TV ratings on NBCS. They've gone from getting ratings in the millions on a major network to getting about 400k viewers on NBCS for their larger games. Likewise, look at how much the UFC's TV ratings have fallen simply by moving their content to FUEL. Small networks get small ratings. UFC fights that once did 1 million plus viewers now do around 200k. We'll see soon how a lower level card will fair on a major network soon since Adamek will likely be fighting on NBC. Another thing people seem to forget about boxing is that it's in a horrible timeslot - FRIDAY night fights (Friday is worst day for TV), Boxing AFTER DARK (nobody watches TV that late).
UFC has not done all that well on Fox. http://mmajunkie.com/news/30071/ufc...s-hold-steady-for-network-televised-event.mma Boxing would do about the same, maybe slightly worse, depending upon the matchup. I would say being on a free network as opposed to a premium pay channel like HBO, would probably add about 30% to viewership.
UFC is not boxing. They have very little cross over audience between them and have nothing to do with each other ratings wise. You get Tv ratings relative to the network you're on. Strikeforce's biggest event this year on Showtime did about 500k viewers. Boxing's biggest event (which is giving Canelo too much credit) did 1 million. That's the difference. Put UFC on HBO and their ratings will be much smaller than boxing's. If big boxing matches and the UFC were put on the same network boxing will get the higher ratings. Pound for pound boxing is the bigger sport. Also how do some of you think boxing would get 1.5 rating on a major network? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is? They get higher than that on HBO! Tennis on HBO got ratings in the 400k range ... tennis on ESPN manages 3 million, tennis on NBC has managed 6 million. That's the difference between cable and a major network.
that horrible boxing card they slapped together for CBS did around 2.4 million. It's not great but given the standard of the card it's pretty good. Very middle of the road numbers. I just wanted to put to rest the idea that boxing on network TV would only manage around 1 million. No boxing can do much better than that.
Yeah, it will have to be mostly Latino & Mexican fighters for this to work. Latinos are now the predominant race in the USA. Plus, they are the poorest sector of the population, which means a large percentage of them can't afford cable TV, let alone PPV. CBS & NBC know what they're doing.