SKY SPORTS ARE MISSING

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33,000 viewers for Okolie vs Light. 59,000 across all channels and platforms

 

It is a peculiar stable they seem to have.

Eubank was the one they were banking on and Smith just battered him.

Not sure where the next big fight is. Brook would want silly money to fight Smith

 

That is shockingly bad. I tip my hat to the 59K fans who watched, they must really love the sport as the fight was a shocker

 

Wouldn’t be surprised if Sky pull out of boxing probably this year. Will be break clauses in the Boxxer contract.

Probably just show US shows which they can get very cheaply.

Very telling that they haven’t replaced Adam Smith or even put an interim in charge.

I’d hate to see BT and DAZN numbers too. Imagine they’re both smaller than Sky’s.

 

I wouldn't mind Sky or any of the others pulling out of boxing as that would be we can get the UK talent more condensed which will improve TV cards overall

 

I organised a triathlon that was televised on Ch4 with replays on Sky and Eurosport a week later. This was 10 years ago.

Ch4 screened it at 6:40am and we got 200k views.
Sky was 40k across all channels, replays and on-demand over (I think) 2 weeks.
Eurosport was 2-4k and they repeated it a lot.

I thought it might be interesting in the context of above. The production company spent around 18k producing it. I've no idea whether it was successful for all parties as we didnt organise it again. It was cool, but eyeballs on our event didn't lead to a huge uplift in entries and at this time, sponsors weren't fussed about TV as we were in recession.

 

The only reason they’ve stuck with it is for the Sky Box Office money. Hard to see where they’re gonna get much of that any time soon.

 

Going forward, I seriously hope that boxing will be given high priority by Sky.

Competition is healthy and it's good for the boxers. Some of them make way too much money compared to their real worth.

 

They need to fill hours of content across channels and boxing does that pretty well. I think they probably overpay for it compared to other things like lower league / Scottish football for example, but filling the schedule has always been part of the job.

 

About 1/3 the number of views a similar length IFL interview with Eddie gets.

 

That has to sting! Shalom has no idea what he's doing. Eubank is mid 30's and punted like he's a prospect (and got stopped), Okolie is the most boring boxer on earth, and other cast offs from Matchroom won't cut it. Sky need Ed and vice versa.

 

They overpay significantly. They also increased the budget significantly and the viewership has declined. I think they will see out the 4 year contract with Ben and then review their position. Previously the PPV income paid for the boxing content put out by Matchroom so effectively Sky didnt actually pay for the content. Now they are really limited with the PPV offering and it will be on Ben to build a PPV star by the 4th year of his contract or sign one.

Seems like the money is going into Azim

 

Sky needs to decide between maximising viewing figures and popularity vs virtue signalling / lazy matchmaking.

Women’s boxing matches stuffed onto men’s boxing cards to pad them out turns all boxing fans off. You see more action outside a kebab shop on a Saturday night than in most women’s “boxing matches”. They don’t even “fight” in 3 minute rounds.

If a young boys first experience of boxing is watching Lawrence Okolie fight then he isn’t ever watching boxing ever again.

Some commercial nous here is required from those signing the cheques. It isn’t difficult. Many of us here could do a much better job. Just put on exciting fights between evenly skilled fighters. I actually think sky sports had it right around the early 2000’s with its standard Saturday night cards

 

Imagine that. Putting on 50/50 fights between boxers of domestic and above level.

They better not do it too often, they might actually increase the viewing figures for boxing.