According to Nielsen, Saturday night’s fight on HBO featuring Sergey Kovalev and Bernard Hopkins drew an average of 1.328 million of the network’s subscribers. The rating makes it the second-highest rated boxing event this year next to Chavez-Vera II.
A couple weeks ago, ESPN’s Dan Rafael compiled the highest-rated fights of 2014. Rafael reports that the peak for Saturday’s fight was 1.397M. Additionally, the undercard fight on HBO featuring Sadam Ali and Luis Carlos Abregu drew 882,000 network viewers.
- Chavez-Vera 2(HBO) 1.39M (peak 1.53M)
- Kovalev-Hopkins (HBO) 1.328M (peak 1.397M)
- GGG-Rubio(HBO) 1.304M (peak1.323M)
- Crawford-Gamboa(HBO) 1.208M (peak 1.286M)
- Marquez-Alvarado(HBO) 1.198M (peak 1.322M)
- Donaire-Walters(HBO) 1.088M
- Provodnikov-Algieri (HBO) 1.017M
- Salido-Lomachenko(HBO) 1.017M
- Kovalev-Agnew(HBO) 1.006M (peak 1.048M)
- Postol-Aydin(HBO) 1.002M (peak 1.1M)
- Kovalev-Caparello(HBO) 990,000 (peak 1.052M)
- GGG-Geale(HBO) 984,000 (peak 1.048M)
- Pascal-Bute (HBO) 982,000
- Garcia-Herrera (Showtime) 972,000
- Stiverne-Arreola 2 (ESPN) 940,000
Kovalev-Hopkins moves past GGG-Rubio as second on the list. The fight was dominated by Kovalev who put Hopkins down in the first round and controlled the rest of the fight.
Payout Perspective:
These are great numbers for a fight which pitted the 49 year old Hopkins against the surging Kovalev. It was a fight that may be the olive branch that might end the cold war between Golden Boy and Top Rank which would be a bonus for the fans. The viewership by HBO was likely due to the outlier that is Hopkins as there were several glowing articles about him (including a very good New York Times Magazine piece by Carlo Rotella). There was also a 24/7 episode featuring the two fighters. We will see now where both fighters go from here.
Huge ratings in Eastern Europe for Hopkins-Kovalev. Monster ratings!!!
Wanderlei was removed from his Bellator Appearance due to contractual obligations to the UFC! I called it!! Suspensions and retirements do NOT negate contracts..
great numbers for a non ppv fighter thats 49. hahahahah boxing doesn’t even have to try and it still gets huge views.
Being 49 is the only reason anyone watched this fight. It was the only thing the media talked about and the only reason they covered it. Also Hopkins using the race card like a ignorant street thug. It’s not hard to fight at 49 in a sport you pick your opponents.
How well did his few prior fights do? Some of his gate numbers slumped as low as 400k.
That is basically his last serious fight. Another aging star who is going to be retired shortly. They better find an American star quick or their ppv future looks bleak.
Again, Sal is just a smelly weirdo.
Hopkins vs. Calzaghe……..1.8m viewers with less subscribers.
Whats amazing is that this fight was on at 11pm east coast time. What the fuck Boxing? why cant you have your fights at a normal goddam hour? Do baseball games start at 11pm? How about basketbal games? If you want to be mainstream act like it and bump up these damn times to at least 7pm east coast time. More people will see it. Who wants to see fights when people are yawning.
hbo/showtime LOVE absolutely LOVE segmenting their ratings when it comes to boxing
the real average is 1,005,400 viewers for the program
these mother fuckers broke this event up into 5 separate pieces!
5 SEPARATE FUCKING PIECES LMFAOOOO
these fucks LOVE pretending that each little section is like a completely different show LMFAOOOO
for instance, one segment averaged 715,000 from 10:45 pm to 11:00pm and then the next pieces of the event are all sectioned off with their different averages, all together hbo has 5 separated numbers reports for this ONE event on the same fucking night………
ALWAYS trying to “juice” up their numbers
Demetrius Johnson vs John Dodson averaged 5.2 million viewers for the duration of their bout when they fought. should we cordon off that number from the true average and put together piecemeal averages for each fucking fight?!? (the overall average for UFC on FOX 6 was 4.2 million viewers)
stop fucking reporting hbo/showtime peak numbers and do your FUCKING RESEARCH!!!!
7pm est is 4pm pst. Do the math.
who cares if its 4pm in the west coast? Football and basketball games take place at 4pm on Sundays. 75% of the country lives in the east and central time zone anyway. Its not good to have people yawning during fights. The earlier these things happen the more you will grow your younger fan base as well. NBC had a fight last year with that Polish Boxer Adamek. He fought at 5pm east coast time against an average guy and it got 3 million views. By the way Truth Spitter who cares if the undercards had worse ratings? they featured bums. The true strength of the sport is shown by how many people watch the headline event. Unless of course there is a strong undercard.
TS – can you post your source. All the articles I can find have the same info that Jason is reporting, but I haven’t seen the raw data, just the secondary sources. Do you have a primary source?
d loves bring up the past. Thats all he has bahahaha all the ufc has is the past and dismal future and a pathetic present. What happened??? Bahahahah.
Sundays are an entirely different day from a tv marketing stand point. Friday and Saturday night events occur late, because most people are out running errands, working off a hangover, etc. during the day. People watch fights at night, not at 4pm.
Saldaqueef is too stupid to realize once again what those numbers from the past indicate.
D- I have watched UFC and Boxing fights with many people and they were yawning. My familiy was sleeping for the Cotto vs Martinez fight. They just couldnt stay up and they are in their 40’s. They are stuck watching the fight at that time. When Froch fought Groves at 5pm on HBO the fight got 750k viewers. When Adamek fought on NBC last year it got 3 million viewers. If you keep marketing at that time people will adjust. It happens all the time with baseball. You can run errands by 4pm & Definately by 7pm. This would only help the sport in my opinion
You do realize that you are not the norm, you are the exception which is why they air these fights when they do. If it was during the week and they were airing these fights at 10-11pm, then you would have a legit point. It is the weekend. Most people don’t have to get up the following day. And that is the time, they hit their biggest audience which is why they maintain those time slots for fights.
Your sample size of the Froch-Groves fight and the Adamek fight, again, are also the exception to the rule(by the way 750k is not a big number for an HBO fight).