https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/sports/hbo-boxing.html What do you think of this? Is it a good move?
They were probably losing money with boxing business wise so yes, it's a good move for them to stop a money bleeding venture.
I'm in Croatia just now and was on a game of thrones tour yesterday, not knowing hbo is connected. With the money HBO has made with the filming no wonder they ditched boxing.
They are finished, I was getting sick of Lampleys biased ass. I don’t think GGG vs Canelo did as good as they claim or as they expected so they thought its time to wrap it up
It was a good idea to leave. If they wanted to continue, they would have had to completely restructure everything. Would have taken a tremendous amount of innovation. But they didn't care to.
They should have invested heavily into social media. Build the HBO Boxing brand. With such a vast fight library, they could have produced low budget, high quality YouTube series(and other platforms). Just look at channels like BoxingLegendsTv. Air undercards on the same platforms. Air more shows but keep the budget down. Lemieux-Rosado cost HBO 500k(the entire card), yet it was a massive ratings hit. There is quality in quantity. They could have even produced a quality PPV model. Monthly shows with a respectable price(say 45USD in HD). Stack the card with often featured names in quality matchups. You don't need that many buys to break even. 150k PPV's at 45USD each(for HD) is 3.3m in revenue. You can easily cover stacked cards. Not everyone has to be overpaid. People say that the UFC is loosing money due to low PPV sales, but its far from the truth. Just like morons claimed that Manny and Floyd flopped when they didn't sell over 1m.
To put it simply, Larry Merchant left HBO Boxing in 2012 and the ratings never recovered. This is simply a case of poor management by the network. Nothing else.
