i know the woman in charge at the bbc thinks everybody needs to spend time at wine parties, as boxing in her veiw is uncivalised, so if she,s got connections with itv, and there all in the same building, then forget it,:-(.
I dont doubt your figures at all Rob but how many of those have Sky Sports? like any business you gotta try to reach as large a portion of your market as possible and with only Sky Sports showing regular boxing it means the sports only going to a small portion of the target audience. Benn, Eubank, Watson, Lewis, Bruno, Calzaghe, Hamed, Froch, Khan etcetcetc all appeared on terrestrial t.v and not just when they reached world level. It got people following their personas and tuning into fights in ludicrous volume. Benn and Eubank being interviewed by JONOTHAN ROSS with James Toney on via satellite was posted on here recently. Are Macklin and Barker gonna be chatting to Graham Norton with Andy Lee on the satellite soon? Terrestrial t.v broadcasting boxing is not essential but it does a lot to build our top fighters into cross-over stars and make them more £. The more t.v dates there are means more opportunites for these lads it can only be a good thing BUT it aint happening soon. BBC have a boxer-hater in charge and ITV will use the money on Simon Cowells man boobs-reduction. Cant even imagine Barry Mcguigans shows being on there, more likely Setanta Ireland
The majority of Sky subsribers have sky sports over 75%. When the number of Sky Subscribers was at 8million then they over 6million with the Sports package. So with the additonal Sky subscriber numbers, add virgin and other cable networks your looking at 7-8million that have Sky Sports. Ricky Hatton never appeard on terrestrial TV. Honestly I would rather Boxing stayed as a nieche Sport.
That's making a big assumption there though, Rob. That assumes everyone would watch the boxing or watches sport, which they don't. It's also assuming that EVERY home that has Sky has more than one person in it. Even taking your 75% number at face value (I'd be very surprised if it's that high), that's 9m people who have the sports package. ITV have an available audience of something like 30 million people on average who can watch for free. If ITV put their money into showing and promoting prime time fights on a Friday or Saturday night, they could easily get back to viewer numbers near 5m. Terrestrial will ALWAYS be the best avenue for mainstream interest. And the problem with it being a niche sport is that it's so hard to see fights outside of the UK ones.
ITV could show a re-run of Midsomer Murders and get 6million at the same time....and it costs them allot less. A sport like boxing belings of satelite tv and ppv. theres no assumption on the number of people on each household. ive calculated at 2.5 which is less than average.
Yea i know about Hatton, mistype meant Froch. Well spotted thanks. As for the rest, you gotta provide some sort of reference for your numbers, like with your maths on the Mag 7 thread they're just speculation ie unfounded unless you do. Even if we take your numbers for gospel you need every single one of those Sky Sports owners to watch the fights and you're still way short of the numbers watching big fights when on terrestrial. 20mill for McGuigan-Pedroza, 18mill for Benn-Eubank. Your every day Joe Bloggs knows Eubank, can pick Naz out of an I.D parade (if he has lipo-suction anyway) and Calzaghe won a VOTED Sports Personality of the Year award before he put on pink spandex and tried to cha-cha. More access to fighters in more living rooms across the country builds the stars needed to attract the casual fans that have dwindled since you have to pay monthly to SS. Boxing as a niche sport?? Wot good is that??
"Froch seems to be the only thing left out but is Super Six fights were never shown by ITV anyway and I cannot remember the last time they PAID for a US fight" Didnt they pay for the Khan v Malignaggi fight? interesting.
No mate they got it for nothing. And mentioned Froch above, he did really good numbers in the Pascal fight and in the re-run of the Taylor scrap considering the stupid o'clock it was on but then they dropped out
No1 in the states wanted to show Khan-Malignaggi, its a rarity man and Frank Warren had a good chuckle. ITV pay through the nose for zzzzzz talent shows i'd be shocked if they U-turn and invest in boxing for a long time
But by that measure, you still need to take into account that it's unlikely every one of those 2.5 people will watch sport. So you're back in the same boat. You can only measure what's measurable. It's like The Sun claiming 40 million people read their paper every day - it's hearsay and nothing more.
It was on HBO in the states, did the highest ratings since the Klit-Arreola fight. It even did 500,000 viewers in the UK on ITV at 4am, and 1.5 million on the 10am replay.