HBO has been the king of the fight game for my entire life. Now they are out of the game entirely.
45 years. That is how long HBO has been in the business of broadcasting the biggest fights in boxing. Barring a future change, this is also how long they will have ever been in the sport. 45 years. HBO’s VP of Sports Peter Nelson announced to his staff today that the network is ending its boxing programming. Nelson defended the decision to the presumably soon to be let go staff by stating that it “wasn’t a subjective decision” based on the reality that “audience research informs us that boxing is no longer a determinant factor for subscribing to HBO.” I wrote an article in the last couple weeks speculating that this may be in the works, but it still something else to read it actually happening.
I’m sure their reasoning is valid; I trust the network to know its own numbers. The question then to draw from that fact is to figure out why boxing is no longer a “determinant factor” in people subscribing to the premium network. Is it because boxing isn’t appealing commercially anymore? If that is the case, only HBO sees it. ESPN, FOX, Showtime, and upstart streaming service DAZN have all made absolutely huge financial investments into the combat sport in the past six months. ESPN and Top Rank started a relationship that the traditional sports giant deemed successful that they ripped up the initial deal to make a bigger one. FOX and Showtime both ponied up big very recently to be the co-homes of Premier Boxing Champions. DAZN is launching in America with its ten year, billion dollar deal with British super promoter Eddie Hearn as its flagship offering.
HBO itself just made a boat load of cash from the PPV rematch between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez. Not all were through the HBO PPV, but the event totaled 1.1 million buys at $85 a pop. Do the math there. No, the answer is not that boxing isn’t commercially viable. In fact, I offer the opposite answer. Boxing for the first time is too commercially viable for HBO to succeed. A few years back HBO lost a huge percentage of its stable when manager Al Haymon’s enormous roster of clients all left to form PBC, many of whom ended up on rival premium network Showtime. At this time, HBO decided to cut back its budget. This made sense as they no longer had the same amount of fighters to spend it on.
What I doubt they or anyone saw coming was Top Rank leaving for ESPN. That still left them with some top fighters still though such as Andre Ward at Roc Nation Sports, Canelo Alvarez at Golden Boy, Sergey Kovalev at Main Events, Gennady Golovkin at K2 Promotions, and Miguel Berchelt at Zanfer. They made moves too, or tried to in one notable case. HBO locked up Danny Jacobs at Matchroom Boxing and stayed in the bidding for Anthony Joshua’s services, though they eventually lost. Then Andre Ward damaged Sergey Kovalev’s value and promptly retired. Daniel Jacobs’s promoter Eddie Hearn signed the big deal with DAZN, meaning it would be unlikely that he would re-up with HBO when his deal expired. Zanfer and its high level Mexican roster quietly slipped over to ESPN, as did the UK’s second largest promoter in Frank Warren.
Boxing is healthy, as healthy as it has been in my adult life. In fact, it is so healthy that HBO stopped being able to make sense of it. They couldn’t monopolize the biggest fighters in the sport any longer in a world where Showtime stepped up and both ESPN and FOX are suddenly interested. The rise of the DVR and streaming are a big part of this too. For a while now the only linear television viewers have been consistently watching live is sports. They are recording everything else and therefore skipping the commercials. The quest for valuable commercial space is what has driven FOX into the market. Even though a PBC show won’t do huge numbers, the commercial slots for sale will be as valuable as they will be for much higher rated programming because those buying the ad time know that people will much more likely to actually see the commercial in question. Streaming is what brought ESPN to the table. They launched their OTT service ESPN+ and needed new content for it. Enter Top Rank stage left. When HBO no longer had all the talent, they no longer had all the boxing specific subscribers.
Let’s make no mistake about it. HBO is out not because the sport is struggling, but because the sport is thriving. HBO is out of boxing because it could no longer swim with the bigger sharks in the water.
I’ll miss HBO. I will. With so many huge fights under HBO production over my life, I’ve been conditioned to directly associate HBO graphics and the voice of Jim Lampley with the biggest matchups in the sport. They’ve always done a good job with it too overall. I am genuinely saddened to be reporting that they will no longer be with us. At the same time, it is a sort of bittersweet sadness. Overall, this will hopefully be good for the sport. The premium network still had a lot of world level talent under its banners. It didn’t have enough to compete on the level it needed to to stay in the business, but that doesn’t mean the likes of Canelo, GGG, Sor Rungvisai, Dmitry Bivol, and more aren’t valuable commodities. Presumably they will all need to land at either Showtime, ESPN, FOX, or DAZN now. Consolidating talent onto fewer networks mean there are more fights that can be easily made.
Plus, high level production talent is now available. HBO is reportedly holding on to Lampley to work on HBO Sports projects, but Max Kellerman and Roy Jones Jr are very likely to become free agents. Those are only the faces too. The innumerable behind the scenes talents in need of work will be exceptionally valuable to an upstart like DAZN or really anywhere else. Plus, there is one less subscription to contend with. HBO is synonymous with great entertainment, but boxing was a year round hook. Without it, why not just wait until the shows you watch come back and cancel it otherwise? The price of ESPN+ and DAZN added together is the same as HBO, a reality now much easier to stomach with HBO off the budget.
Goodbye, HBO. From George Foreman thrashing Joe Frazier in 1973 to the one final upcoming broadcast featuring a vacant middleweight title fight between Danny Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko, thanks for all the fights. Thanks for all the memories.
