It’s official. After a successful 38-year run, the Showtime network will no longer air boxing after the end of 2023.
Parent company Paramount Global issued the following statement:
“As we evolve our strategy to more efficiently allocate resources and align our content offering across the business, we’ve made the difficult decision not to move forward with boxing and other content produced by the Showtime sports team. Showtime will continue to air and support the remaining 2023 boxing slate and honor obligations through the end of the year.”
Showtime is the main broadcast vehicle for Premier Boxing Champions, so PBC will need to find another outlet.
Why? Why in the world would showtime do this? First HBO and now showtime??? This is horrible! I’ll definitely cancel my showtime subscription then.
Showtime was showing less and less of fights over the last few years. No surprise to see this action on their end. Boxing for sure is making changes in the entertainment industry. The good ole days are definitely gone now where HBO, USA Network, and Showtime were hot favorites.
I fired HBO and now Showtime joins the unemployment line.
Am on the Showtime survey group where they ask for opinons on programming and give small rewards for participating. Have told them would be cancelling Showtime if they dropped boxing and reminded them that was the only reason many fans kept the service.
Just get the free Pluto TV app, on your iPhone, and on your smart TV. They have more than 14 movie channels on there, and a sports section, which a few of the channels have older boxing matches on it. Some MA fights as well. And hey, it’s free!
Very simple, it’s a loser money wise. Boxing is generally not a profitable endeavor, tv wise. Some ppv’s can make money, but those are dwindling too.
Look at the fiasco at Waddell and Reed and the PBC franchise. Hundreds of millions lost.
As I’ve said for many years, boxing is going to be relegated to a few streaming services.
PPV numbers of the Youtube fighters and such are actually far better than most “real” boxing PPVs. KSI – Tommy Fury had more buys than Wilder v Fury 3… the heavyweight championship of the world.
So many in boxing have lived in denial about mainstream interest in boxing. To make a turnaround, you first have to admit a major problem. Considering overall combat ratings, it’s probably too late to really lift boxing into any sort of mainstream popularity in the next few decades.
And so many say “well boxing will never die.” The goal in business is not simply to “stay alive.” It’s to grow and prosper. If your goal is “staying alive” you’re already dying.
It’s sad that they’re leaving, but everything in regards to television/streaming is changing so much these days so it isn’t shocking. They’re also selling off Bellator which is one of the biggest mma organizations in the world.
Now how cool would it be if PBC goes to ESPN and, effectively, becomes stablemates with Top Rank. You have to think its either ESPN or DAZN now.
I thought I heard before that Top Rank has exclusivity with ESPN. ESPN is pretty cash strapped, too, and is going through some transition pains as cable and satellite subscriptions fade.
I don’t think Al Haymon would want to sign with DAZN based on some of his prior comments. Maybe he could get a deal with Comcast, owners of NBC and Peacock streaming app.
If he did end up on DAZN, I’d hope that would lead to more cross-promoted fights.
I like that Peacock idea. They been pushing sports a lot harder recently too.
I hope it’s not dazn. I don’t like the commentators.
Showtimes has def had the best commentators. HBO was great too with max but curious to see where they may go
🙁
ESPN parent Disney is in cost cutting mode just like Paramount, so I doubt ESPN/ESPN+ picks them up. ESPN wouldn’t even make a serious bid on PAC-12 football which led to that conference falling apart. I’m unsure what the economics at DAZN are.
Other major streamers are raising prices, removing older content to avoid paying residuals, etc. It’s a tough time for PBC to be put in this position. Maybe Haymon puts together his own streaming PPVs until he can find a more established partner.
It’s time for every Haymon fighter to leave the sinking ship. They won’t though, because other promoters would expect them to fight living, breathing opponents.
Haymon could just dissolve PBC and free the fighters from their managerial contracts. He probably saw this day coming anyway after HBO bailed four years ago. After further thought I doubt it’s worth his time to do his own streaming PPVs.
HBO and Showtime effectively killed the sport on broadcast TV in the US. Little by little, newer stars were becoming harder to produce. Nobody knows who anyone is anymore. Boxing in the US is a niche sport.
It also didn’t help the pay channels when fans like myself realized it was sheer idiocy to pay for the privilege of watching a fight live. If you waited an hour after the fight was over, highlights from the promoters were already on YouTube, saving me the trouble of sitting through a potential 12 round snooze-fest and 100 bucks. The two of them bled the fans dry for fifty years.
Now, there won’t be any easy paydays or any excuses for the best to fight each other, besides cowardice. Time to start fighting and entertaining the fans again, palookas. No more networks are cutting guaranteed checks for modern day fencing, playground tag, or track meets anymore.
How quickly we forget 2023 is one of the best years in Boxing history. And the year isnt over yet. The fans are so accustomed to complain they cant notice a lot of progress has been made. Losing this network has nothing to do with you not able to enjoy a Boxing match with 2 skilled guys hitting and trying no to get hit. You either like Boxing or you just wanna see a fight. When people say “thats why Boxing fans are going to MMA”, they are talking about people like you. Not Boxing fans
I must respectfully disagree. One of the best years in boxing history? Boxing was once the second highest rated sport in the US (under baseball), now it is virtually irrelevant. 2023 did nothing to improve its stature. The two biggest bouts (Crawford-Spence, Canelo-Charlo) were total mismatches. PPV greed and moronic sanctioning bodies killed the fan base.
Good post, Bruce. You’re one of the best commentators on here, so do you have any suggestions for boxing?
I just don’t understand how you can watch nearly any and every baseball, football, hockey, basketball, tennis, golf, and almost any other professional sport you can think of, free on TV. You can catch the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NBA championship, or almost any other championship sporting event for free as well. Why is it that boxing can’t hold it together on any format or outlet so that fans can watch the elite fighters Square off. It’s a sad commentary on the sport of boxing, it wasn’t always this way. Why doesn’t somebody on top take a cue from these other professional sports and find the right marketing, advertising, and medium to support not only the sport and its fighters, but to offer it all affordably and regularly to the fans? If they wanted this sport to grow and maximize all around potential, they would stop funneling it through random promotions and media outlets while charging exorbitant prices. It’s honestly all pretty ridiculous and the fans and fighters both lose out.
Boxing is not broadcast like other sports because, unfortunately it has very few fans left. I remember when there were local boxing shows every week within reasonable driving distance from me (NE Ohio) and it was common to have two or three shows a week.
It seems like boxing popularity in most of Europe has changed little over the past 50 years, but it’s been a steady decline in the US with no end in sight.
WOW!! And to think I just saw Espinosa on FIGHTHUB basically shooting all of this down while criticizing Dana White! Typical lawyer whom I’m sure has a really nice Golden Parachute!!! Wonder if Canelo goes back to DAZN Lol
Heard PBC is thinking of Amazon prime or DAZN for their fighters. I agree with York, you can watch every other sport on television or some form of it (ESPN) , but boxing. Time to bring it back to the people for free.
RIP = PBC.
Perfect example. Butasi and azeez fight was going to be on peacock? Why? I would think you would want to give your fighter exposure. No one outside of England knows him except for the hardcore fan in America. The only thing I see coming is even more PPVs.
Buatsi fight is essentially being simulcasted on Peacock. Boxxer has a tv deal with a channel service in the UK that is ultimately owned by the same parent as NBC/Peacock, so it is just going to push that same feed in the IS over streaming without having to produce its own content.
I have to say I really enjoyed al Bernstein commentary. He made some really good observations and mixed in some hilarious humor. My favorite boxing commentator .
HBO & Showtime thrived for years off big name fighters & ultimately, greed got the best of them. The Jig is up.
Showtime would rather make woke anti-Trump shows in time for the “Election” than to continue to pay for whatever Boxing has turned into. Lol. Meanwhile Logan Paul and Ksi got 20 thousand fans to fill an arena in Manchester.
Bring back HBO please.
It wasn’t a big boom, just an almost imperceptible explosion and a tiny cloud of smoke rising, and that’s it. Now we have a group of people filling the unemployment documents
HBO boxing after dark was the shhhhhiiiiiii……. That and ESPN Friday night fights. Classics.
It all really started going downhill for Showtime after they asserted their wokeness by canceling Paulie Malinaggi. There were casual fans who tuned in just to hear Paulie’s commentary. He was entertaining, incisive in his observations, and truly added entertainment value to the broadcasts. At the end of the day, it’s about entertainment and branding, and I thought Paulie really helped shape Showtime’s brand as a hip and edgy boxing outlet. After he left, fans were left with Abner Mares, who had some great insights from a fighter’s perspective but was a boring commentator. Just goes to show what may make woke sense doesn’t necessarily equate to making business sense.
I fully agree!
Sweetness, hence pro box is shining with Paulie as a commentator. Those fights have pretty much been very good. F showtime.
First, all boxing fans should write to Showtime and let them know you’re canceling your subscription because of their decision to drop boxing.
Second, maybe a good boxing promoter can contact another TV network and sell the boxing product to them. After all, boxing put HBO and Showtime on the map.
This is fucking depressing as hell. Showtime consistently aired the most competitive bouts of all the boxing platforms!
This is a sad day for boxing
DAZN and ESPN are now the standard for boxing. Showtime is and has been going WOK!
Pbc should start their own streaming channel. Hire a broadcast team. They only needed showtime to give them money to pay their fighters. Start your own network and pay fighters via the revenue from stream and gate…Amazon prime is good…..the problem is Haymon. You can’t have a manager run a network. He gets a cut from each fighter so he doesn’t care about making big fights. It doesn’t really benefit him to do so. He milked the cow until it was dry.
There was a collaboration between Richard Schaefer, pbc and showtime to dismantle HBO boxing and Golden boy promotions .They we’re successful in knocking HBO boxing off the air but in the process they lost a huge court battle with golden boy promotions and had to pay a large sum of undisclosed money. With that money and guidance from Bob Arum, Oscar Delahoya was able to chug along and keep Golden boy promotions going. With Jim Lampley coming out of hiding and Max kellerman sitting on the sidelines might make it interesting in the entire realignment of the sport.
The only reason I even had showtime was to watch boxing. I too, am canceling my Showtime subscription at the end of this year.
You show them! lol
The only reason to have Showtime was for the boxing. They have some pretty good series too, but I don’t think I watched a movie on Showtime in 20 years! 90% of their content is obsolete programming that people would only watch because they’re bored out of their skulls. In 2 years, I don’t think Showtime or HBO will exist. This move will either push boxing further underground, or make it more accessible on network tv.
HBO is essentially gone, rebranded as HBO Max, and now just “MAX”
Let’s not forget that boxing can even score fights properly. When a sport refuses to learn there are ramifications. Boxing is in serious trouble.
‘can’ should be ‘cannot’.
ESPN will be next. RIP Boxing. Thank god for profesional midget wrestling!
I’m glad..the woke bs didn’t help..
If PBC goes to DAZN it would be great for the fans as you would think that many great fights could be done a bit easier since they would be sharing telecast platform with Golden Boy and Matchroom
But if Al Harmon wants to keep high percentage of telecasting bouts then he will definitely want Amazon Prime to be his partner, not sure Amazon would want Boxing though
I’d like to hear what one of the most respected posters on here, the legendary promoter J. Russell Peltz, has to say on this matter. Peltz used to promote great cards on the USA cable network.
I also wonder what the great promoter, Don Elbaum, would suggest. Elbaum used to promote a show weekly at the Tropicana in Atlantic City.
time to cancel out only kept showtime for the fights
I felt that one of the problems that I saw with both HBO and Showtime, is that they dealt with certain promoters, who promoted certain boxers, and what happened for me was that the matches they were showing were not very worthy of being seen. I think that is one of the reasons that there were probably dwindling watches on boxing. Also some people, if they were patient, might have been able to watch the matches on sites like YT. I know I saw some of them like that. Maybe a foreign language, but who cares.
Well…. goodbye to Showtime… Boxing is the ONLY reason I kept it…. HBO went down the same road & I dropped them like a hot potato too….