Hearn British stable

The ‘90s were really Frank’s peak — he had British boxing pretty much sewn up outside of Lennox and Eubank. The ‘80s were a different beast altogether. Promoters could double as managers, lock fighters into long, onerous contracts, and tack on automatic extensions with every title won. They even took a cut of earnings outside the ring.

Ironically, it was fighters like Terry Marsh and Michael Watson who helped challenge and change that system — pioneers in more ways than one.

And yeah, I agree with your take on Warren in recent years. But truthfully, boxing’s become a bit like the Premier League — most of the talent is now brought in after it’s been developed elsewhere.

 

And all while making stacks more money. Sky Sports Boxing needed EH more than EH needed Sky Sports Boxing.

 

I think both need each other and Matchroom may be raking it in with the DAZN loot but the profile of UK Matchroom Boxing is on the floor.

Most weekends are out of sight, out of mind when Matchroom have a UK card on and Queensbury will soon find this out as well.

 

This is true to a degree but Hearn benefitted from the Sky hype machine pre 2020’s great awokening, Hearn utilised Sky Sports News and the cross promotion with mostly the football to get viewers and build up fighters profiles, it was mentioned earlier but it was when he moved to DAZN the change to fighters self promoting via socials kicked in.

Since 2020 Sky have been aggressively pushing the woke agenda down everyone’s throats and it’s drove viewers and subscribers away, 2023 is their last financials and they lost close to £800m, the viewers that are left have been tuning in at ko etc and turning off immediately, nobody watches their support programming any more, SSN has lost its audience and is in panic mood, the following quote is from the below article and sums it all up, the boxing aspect is exasperated by the fact Shalom could send a insomniac to sleep.

“ Another senior figure in TV made a claim – heavily disputed by other insiders – that changes at Sky Sports News were a direct result of a perceived obsession with appealing to younger viewers.

“They’ve been trying to appeal to an audience that isn’t there,” the figure added. “Gen Z gets its news differently so they don’t watch, and they p----- off the audience that did – so they’ve shot themselves in both feet.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2025/05/01/sky-sports-news-presenters-axe-gen-z-piracy/