HBO and ESPN marketing agreement on boxing

great idea

 

That makes sense; I heard an HBO advertisement for Ward-Dawson and Vitali-Charr on ESPN Radio in my dad's car and was wondering how that worked out

This is great news for the sport; it is being treated more as an entity in itself, and not a fragmented sequence of short-term profit opportunities for networks.

 

:happy:bbb

 

We need united powers in Boxing.

Similar to Soccer clubs, the larger ones have what are called 'feeder' clubs. Same concept here I would imagine. ESPN hype fighters, give them house hold names, that fighter then steps up to HBO.

 

Yup!

 

Bingo. This helps build the recognition and name value of a fighter before they step up to HBO, and it also helps HBO reach more sports fans to market their title fights and the guys involved whom the casual fan might not know. :good

 

Great move. Friday Night Fights has always been an unofficial stepping stone to the premium networks. Now, the guys on those cards should really feel they are fighting for something.

ESPN is the premier sports network in the world. This signals that they are wanting to expand their boxing base, not shrink it. Great news for fight fans.

 

I like this idea a lot.

 

Big win for fans!

Makes sense for both entities. Boxing has a small but very loyal fanbase, and ESPN can capitalize without having to spend much money.

 

I was always annoyed when Sportscenter would run down an HBO PPV fight and could only show photos and no real highlights.

This is good ****.

 

this makes complete strategic sense. the only thing stoppin g them before was hbo's time warner ownership. but hbo ...a larger porportion of their suscribers suscribe to the boxing. boxing takes a small percentage of the budget and also brings in its own revenue through ppv. it makes sense to really push this especially if boxing is growing at ridiculous rate outside the usa.

 

It seems lines are being drawn in the sand.

You've got Showtime/CBS, NBC/Versus, HBO/ESPN...

Competition breeds quality. :bbb

 

HBO partnering with ESPN puts that particular alliance firmly at the top IMHO. Showtime/CBS has a potential that the others don't, but haven't utilized it like they could have. NBC and Versus is really the same company (Versus is now called NBC Sports), and there hasn't been Boxing on NBC in ages.

 

I don't know man, maybe in the cable arena, but it's hard to go up against network heavyweights like CBS and NBC. If those two can start putting out solid boxing programming, even an HBO/ESPN alliance would need to up its game and stay on its toes..