Froch may earn Sky deal for next defence

no chance a deal gets done that quickly.

 

Sure it will, just offer Mick some complimentary dohnuts at the meeting.

 

have been to skys offices many times. they give you these chocolate muffins which are quality.

 

Big Dunk, I dont disagree with anything you said about the business case for Haye, my point is that I cannot buy that Sky are blameless or couldnt do anything for Froch after Hennessy lost the ITV gig. In particular, Froch's last two fights could have been on sky box office on a revenue share - similar to what is offered at Primetime. Froch has said that himself in the press conferences leading up to the abraham fight, so although you have said Sky made Hennessy an offer for the Kessler and Abraham fights and Primetime topped that offer (which I find hard to believe - how do you know this?) - why is Froch saying his last two fights should have been on Sky Box Office?

Sky Box Office revenue share wouldnt kill Sky's budget. I dont buy that. They could have had him on soccer am, sky sports news, sky news, Darke could have talked about him during his football commentary, ringside appearances etc - they could have done all that and made a healthy profit on the ppv (not as much as Haye-Harrison obviously - but satisfying a demand for genuine world champion).

PS 300k for the Taylor fight at 3am is unrealistic - I have no issue with that.

 

Hennesey said in his interview with Boxing News that Froch makes more from Primetime than he would from Sky Sports.

The reason is Sky can only do a certain number of Box Office shows a year. If they did more than 6 a year or more than 1 show a month it would seem like they were ripping people of and it would dilute the value to the Sky Box Office brand (lets forget about Haye vs Harrison doing that for now)

Haye's last two fights were 3 and 2 weeks before Froch, and in the same month. You cannot expect Sky to do 2 Box Office shows in the same month. Even the hardcore boxing fans would scream rip off. For Box Office to work you need more than the hardcore to buy the fights, and the average sports fans is not going to pay £30 to watch boxing on top of his sky subscription.

Hennesey has a deal with Sky. Why should Sky deal with him? Sky wanted to show the Pascal fight as part of the Ricky Hatton vs Mallignaggi card but Hennesey jumped ship.

and while at ITV did Hennesey deliver??? No. They showed 2 Carl Froch fights. Why the hell wasn't the Taylor and Dirrell fights part of the ITV deal??? Why was Angel McEnzie shown live on ITV4 along with Phil Fury.

Plus in the past year Sky have shown Fury, O'Donnell, Barker, Murray and Daws. The best of Henneseys stable apart from Froch who they offered a deal to.

 

Good point. A previous poster on here said that the deal Haye has with sky is that they pay him 5 quid out of every ppv sale so in essence all that Sky are spending directly on Haye from their own pockets is the marketing of him. Im sure Froch would welcome a similar deal. Give him the exposure they have given Haye, show the fight camp epispodes, my brother loved them and he aint even into boxing but he bought the Froch fight saturday night on the back of that. If they have Froch on box office they actually can't lose if you think about it, worse case scenario it dosen't work out, they still make more than enough to cover what they spent marketing him.

 

They go to their wrestling fans every month with a ppv. Fair enough the target audience is primarily kids, but its excessive to expect parents to fork out on ppv every month and they still do it. I think Francis is trying to save face with his reasoning for not having Froch on.

 

they get 4 hours of live programmeing from WWE every week, along with hours worth of other shows. after football it gets the highest viewing figures on Sky. There is a market to WWE PPV's every month. There isn't for boxing end of story.

Theres no saving face from Francis. People seem to think the guys who run Sky Sports are thick because they don't show Lopez vs Marquez, they are smart, there departments make huge profits every year and they no what there doing.

If you put Froch vs Kessler on Sky Box Office 3 weeks after Haye Ruiz, you would get 1000 of complaints from boxing and general sports fans and it would dilute the number of buys for both PPV's.

 

If Hennessy is so sure that Froch is making more with Primetime than with Sky and Froch is complaining that his last two shows were not on Sky Box Office - then something doesnt add up here. Perhaps, Sky were only prepared to pay a small flat rate for it and put it on Sky Sports etc? I dont know, but it doesnt take a genius to figure out that a Froch PPV on Sky Box Office would trump a Primetime PPV.

Yes, I read what Francis said about saturating the PPV market etc and to a point I agree with that, but it in itself is no defence. If they had signed Froch then they could have shifted either the Haye date or Froch date so that they are not so close - it wouldnt have been a problem. Further, Primetime and Premier Sports have been created - so they obviously dont agree that the market is saturated.

And lets have a look at Sky's last few PPVs. They have been atrocious, pure mismatches/ugly fights. Khan-Salita, Haye-Valuev, Haye-Ruiz, Haye-Harrison - bollocks. They let all these go to air, but we all know Froch-Kessler, Froch-Abraham and Froch-Dirrell (on paper at least) are vastly superior matchups - there is simply no comparison.

They put ad breaks in between rounds on PPV and you cant hear what the corner men are saying to their fighter - key drama of the big fight is missed because those greedy *******s are creaming extra BIG dosh from commercials.

The amount of live under card fights and the quality of the under cards have been crap too.

If you look at the last two PPVs they are polar opposites. Haye-Harrison was just a money spinner - two names to draw in the casual sports fan and make a quick kill. The Magnificent Seven was a treat for the boxing fan (I bought it and would buy another one - but I dont know any casual fan who buy it), but did nothing to enhance the profile of these prospects that Sky hope to build into headliners or the next PPV star.

How many casual could recognise a name or a face on the Magnificent Seven card? The Magnificent Seven is a blatant attempt to cobble together a bundle of good domestic fights (that we should be getting on Sky 1 for our sports subscription) and sell it as a PPV, because they only have Haye who is PPV worthy.

So, my belief is that Sky have tried to cover their ass with the bull****, 'we had no space for Froch' and 'we cannot saturate the PPV market' etc.

There PPVs should be headlined by a world title fight in a good match-up and build a strong under card of prospects - it is the boxing that will make Sky's offering a success and draw in new fans. If they had got Froch a couple of fights ago, then they could have spaced out the Froch and Haye PPVs and put on better under cards. But, hey, that might be too customer-focused and is in grave danger of being value for money.

I disagree with you on Hennessy's ITV shows, if I had could be arsed I would go through his cards and provide examples, but suffice to say Hennessy's ITV cards more than hold their own with what we got in last season's Friday Fight Nights - which too frequently contained mismatches.

 

Whatever has gone on before, id be very surprised if Froch-Johnson isn't on box office or sky sports. Been too much noise made in the last 3-4 days for Sky to pretend it didn't even happen. Smith has been very vocal and he will try and convince his bosses to give Froch a deal.

 

Dont know if anyone has mentioned this but if Haye does retire next year then Sky are left with only Khan as a possible PPV fighter.

If they put the Johnson and Ward fights on Sky Sports they should then be able to sell him as PPV