Stevenson-Fonfara averages 672,000 viewers

And most of those are from Mayweather/Alvarez and other Mayweather cards pushing up the numbers. It means little if those spikes are anomalies.

All their other cards are still getting lower viewership, make the improve viewership specific to just a few events, and not the whole.

HBO is still getting much more viewers PER BOXING EVENT. That's a FACT.

 

it was PPV in Canada and it usually is shown on the Superchannel up here . . . I wonder if the super channels numbers are included in Shows and if that had an impact?

 

but again....you cannot deny that they are gaining ground on hbo. and when you have the best guy in boxing...how hard do u think it's going to be to attract the future stars? it's just a matter of time. arum is getting worse....haymon is only going to get better. as a result...the networks will follow suit.

 

I found it annoying as hell that they put it on ppv just because a Canadian was fighting. I have super channel and was pissed lol

 

Showtime is likely NEVER going to reach the number of viewers HBO has. They could have every freaking boxer in the sport under their banner and it still wouldn't help them.

Boxing is but a fraction of both Companies' budgets and repertoire.
The Budget for Game of Thrones alone completely demolishes whatever is in the coffers for boxing. Trust me, HBO has bigger things to think about than how many fighters Haymon has on his roster.

 

Gaining ground on specific events, yes. As a whole? Not even close. Once Mayweather retires, Showtime numbers will regress again.

Stevenson was supposed to be the much bigger draw than Kovalev, but head to head, Kovalev/Agnew drew 40% more viewers.

On average, HBO cards average 50% more viewers than Showtime cards. Cathy Duva is right about one thing...you can't create a star on Showtime...and she's not very far off.

 

bull****. kathy doesn't know what she's talking about. plenty of stars were born on showtime and then signed by hbo. ward is a prime example.

who said stevenson was the bigger draw?

everyone coming up is signing with haymon. outside of stiverne..he has the heavyweight division locked up. the future of boxing is with al haymon. bob is fading...and hbo made the wrong choice.

 

And the highest HBO are what, 1.5?

So Showtime has as of last widely reported subs about 20% fewer subscribers. (using numbers cited in this thread, which actually arent accurate but are close enough for now) However in terms of boxing audience its about 13% less going by ratings history.

Stevenson lost 46% of his viewership numbers. Nielsen ratings for TV are US only. There is no way to spin that numbers as anything but a massive hit to Stevenson US drawing power. His brand appears to be very damaged.

 

i think it's fair to point out that he made a decent amount of money for this fight. how does it compare to what he made at hbo? let's not forget that he won his fight and the house was pretty packed in canada. while we can't count the viewership in canada for the hbo/showtime argument....we can count the viewership in canada for his future earning potential.

 

Yeah I was not speaking to his earnings. The fact is GYM has a really good thing going in Canada , and is one of the few promotional outfits that dont actually need premium cable subsidies to thrive. Montreal is a great fight city.

Its probably a safe bet to make that Stevenson brand has not taken nearly the hit in Canada with his home crowd, where aligning to fight BHop would be seen as a legit move. As opposed to US based fans, who know Stevenson mostly via the HBO buildup to a Kovalev fight that got nixed.

 

Too bad Showtime doesn't work with its parent company, CBS, in airing boxing.

 

That actually almost happened - I remember they did one CBS bout not too long ago in conjunction. Not sure why it did not proceed further.

If I had to speculate, I would say it was to keep SHO brand differentiation vs the upstart streamers like Netflix and Amazon that are getting into the original programming game but dont have live sports. But thats pure conjecture on my part.

 

I hear you but when you're putting out facts, then you should put down all the facts.

 

One thing that seems important (I may have a piece of the puzzle missing here since I am not from the US thank god).

The Showtime subscribers may not have HBO and vice versa. Which means people on Showtime didn't probably knew much about Stevenson prior to his fight against Fonfara. It probably take times before people start wanting to see your fights. Stevenson bigger number on HBO at his last might be explained by the fact that he hard dismantle Dawson and Cloud in his last fight. More people expect then to see a good action fight. It takes time in general for a fighter to attract numbers. It probably take some time to sell a boxer to the viewer of one particular network. No?

 

Yup. Probably barely got even. I guess they will be shooting for a big fight with Hopkins.
That card will hopefully be stacked :deal