Sky taking advantage?

Wrote a short article on sky's ppv policy, just hoping to get a few opinions. Are boxing fans being treated unfairly?

“We have shelved pay-per-view boxing for the time being because there aren't any fights on the horizon that warrant PPV billing.” those were the words of sky sports managing director Barney francis in 2011. The previous year the sky juggernaut had went all out in fooling the public into believing Audley Harrison was a worthy contender for David Haye's heavyweight title. Such were the levels of deception against the casual boxing fan, many of them anticipated a 50/50 fight. What inevitably transpired in the Manchester arena was a farce of a fight. Harrison, who had no right to be in the ring that night could only muster one solitary jab, as the explosive David Haye decided to finish the fight in round 3. The fact that haye was carrying Harrison through the opening 2 rounds was embarrassingly obvious to watch. The public and media backlash against the event was prolonged and justified. Sky were blamed for tricking the masses into accepting such a mis match, the wba drew criticism for sanctioning the bout in the first place and paying customers who bought into the hype vowed never to be taken for a ride again. Little did they realise, the worst was yet to come.
After 2 years of a sky ppv free boxing world, a fight was put together that finally justified the hype. Carl Froch, for so long lacking the exposure his incredible performances justified, was finally on the big stage. His rematch with Danish hero Mikkel Kessler was expected to start where the first classic encounter had finished. On 25th may 2013 at London's atmospheric O2 arena, sky box office returned. "Warriors call" was the tagline for the event and that's exactly what was delivered. Two evenly matched modern greats going toe to toe in a fight to rival the first meeting. Boxing fans hailed the night a success and sky ppv was back, only now Eddie Hearn held the keys to the ppv palace.
Eddie Hearn, the son of legendary sports promoter Barry Hearn, first made himself aware to the boxing public as Audley Harrison's promoter in the build up to his "fight" with David Haye. "Audley is going to open the door to his destiny" and "what happens when Audleys left hand detonates on Haye's chin?" We're just a few of the lines uttered by Hearn, as he took up his first class ticket on the sky hype train. A stable of fighters including Carl Froch, Kell Brook and Carl Frampton convinced sky's head of boxing Adam Smith to assign all sky boxing shows to Eddie Hearn. Effectively giving him a monopoly at the expense of established promoters Frank Warren and Frank Maloney. New promoter and sky sports boxing icon Ricky Hatton was told, shamefully by e mail, that him and his fighters are no longer needed. Boxing fans hopes for more frequent competitive fights, inter-promotinal matchmaking and promotional rivalry played out on sky tv were dashed. The prospect of four promoters trying to better each other's shows on various Saturday nights had the potential to light a spark under British boxing.
Sky's 2011 appreciation that paying subscribers were being treated unfairly by paying out extra for unworthy ppv events seemed to have waned post 2013. Since then ppv has been rolled out for Kell Brook v Frankie Gavin, a fight no one was calling for. A domestic rematch between Tony Bellew and Nathan Cleverly, which was dreadful and to top it off the untested Anthony Joshua v "king" Charles Martin, unbelievably for a version of the heavyweight title. Too many ppv events over the Eddie Hearn era on sky, have been unworthy main events backed up with uncompetitive undercards.Emphasis has been placed on hyping fights over any sporting rivalry.fake hate and wwe style press conferences has become the norm. Dereck chisora's lightweight floating table, surely a low point in sky's new ppv age.
Boxing fans, like any other fans deserve to be respected and not taken advantage of. Read any boxing fans forum online and you will see the general consensus suggests they are more than happy to pay for genuine fights. Fights such as Quigg v Frampton and Froch v Groves 2 seem to be few and far between and fans have instead been asked to pay out for fights with zero significance on the world scene. So going forward one of two things must happen. Number one, sky take a step back and reassess there current ppv output and only use the box office platform for the genuine big fight or number two, boxing fans vote with their remote and refuse to part with their hard earned cash on over hyped and under competitive cards. Unfortunately both scenarios are as unlikely as the other.

 

Agree with that, I see Brook v Spence as similar to froch v bute and that was regular sky. Seems that any half decent fight is deemed ppv worthy. That being said it's a fight I'm looking forward to, think it's going to be a classic.

 

Fair point, I've probably put this out at bad time, as it can be argued brook v Spence is ppv worthy. My article was more a criticism of ppv's such as brook v gavin and Joshua v breazeale