HBO CRUSHES Showtime in ratings for 2013

Golovkin's numbers are the most impressive to me.

 

Oh, so the network with the much deeper pockets that has been on top for decades and has enough brand recognition built up that pretty much anyone could take over and run it any way they wanted and have ratings stay largely unaffected managed to hold steady over their distant closest rival? Wow. Crushing victory.

 

by those numbers i'd expect 3G to break 2 million in his 3rd fight in 2014, if he gets a good opponent to face him in April.

 

Golovkin-Chavez will probably happen...

 

I never seem to understand fans who allow HBO and Showtime to influence them enough that they take sides...

None of them can care less that you probably cannot afford a gallon of milk. None of them could care less how much you make, how many ratings you get....

When I see fans... get involved on.... Ohh Pacquiao is broke... well he has more money than most of us...

Mayweather has the nicest cars.....? Who cares.... stop bragging or complaining about other peoples money and ratings...

 

:deal

 

Came in here to say something along the lines of:

"Well, they have a substantially higher number of subscribers, so if that wasn't the case that would mean that HBO is probably leaving the boxing business."

 

and I bet one of the 2 cards on NBC this year did better ratings than Cotto's fight on HBO.

 

Those are freebies and are covered by subscriber fees. HBO has always had a larger subscription base. Remember if you don't subscribe to HBO/SHO you can't watch their regularly scheduled fights. A better assessment is how much are people paying for PPV? I'm guessing pretty even.

SHO went up to 18M subscribers and that's with the 3 mo free package if you bought Mayweather PPV. HBO went down to 28.7M subscribers. That's a huge disparity. One could argue, HBO had 2x the number of subscribers earlier in the year. Search for

hbo-boxing-raising-its-game-in-high-stakes-battle-with-showtime

 

this. HBO is the premier premium network. i know so many people who have HBO but not showtime. i used to be one of them..

 

atsch

You realize boxing is a SMALL factor in what makes up the profile of both networks, right? It's a value-added bonus for us fans that boxing exists on two premium cable networks. Trust me, they could both get rid of boxing and not bat an eyelash or have their overall ratings suffer much for it. We take it for granted, but you have to realize that boxing on those networks is a gift and we are lucky to have it. They are catering to a niche audience - though some randoms who don't follow boxing and of course the casuals might occasionally tune in for a big event, or maybe stumble upon it while flipping channels. You do have perspective on just how non-mainstream a sport boxing is, yes? The overwhelming majority of Showtime & HBO subscribers probably think it amusingly quirky that both have regularly televised live boxing and promote it so much. Most of them don't watch it, and probably scratch their heads at why such a now obscure sport gets so much airtime on those networks. It only has a home on them because there are people at HBO Sports and Showtime Sports who care about boxing. By no means does it make or break them.

It cracks me up when people act like either network is going to be significantly affected by the workings of their Sports divisions, let alone the narrower (and trust me, completely expendable and not terribly profitable...no executive at either believes that a major share of subscriptions come from boxing fans) focus of their live boxing programming.

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/box/blog/bo...t-watched-cable-fights-of-2013?urn=box,wp3205

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-its-game-in-high-stakes-battle-with-showtime

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/netflix-poised-to-pass-hbo-in-paid-u-s-subscribers.html

HBO numbers have been going down for years now, they are losing subscribers while SHO has been gaining and the Mayweather signing has worked out great for them.

Seeing how much the boxing ratings have increased for SHO and it's subscriber base is also growng the boxing budget will only grow from here on out.

The HBO budget is about $35 million this year.

The SHO budget is around $28 million.

for the last 20 years the numbers weren't even in the same universe, now it's the same ball park with SHO making up ground.

 

Showtime is competing with HBO far more than they have at any year prior. The mere fact that HBO continues to enjoy the advantage in terms of number of subscribers says nothing about the trajectory of the two companies, most especially because HBO's highest rated fight of this year had 300,000 fewer viewers than their top fight for last year.