ESPN’s Dan Rafael reports that HBO Boxing’s event featuring Sergey Kovalev against Nadjib Mohammedi drew an average subscriber viewership of 1.041 million viewers with a peak of 1.082 million.
In addition, the first fight on HBO on Saturday featuring Jean Pascal taking on Yunieski Gonzalez drew an average viewership of 883,000 viewers peaking at 1.082 million. The Pascal-Gonzalez fight was an entertaining one that went to Pascal despite a great showing by Gonzalez.
The HBO event drew more viewers than NBCSN’s PBC event even though, as Rafael points out, HBO has about 36 million subscribers while NBC Sports Network is in more than double the homes (81.5 million).
Kovalev’s March fight against Jean Pascal drew an overall average audience of 956,000 viewers but his fight against Pascal drew an average audience of 1.152 million peaking at 1.2 million. His fight last fall against Bernard Hopkins drew 1.328 million.
Payout Perspective:
Kovalev is showing that he is a draw and an asset to HBO’s stable of boxers. This Saturday’s fight was lower than his past two but that may be due to the less-than-stellar opponent. If Kovalev finds a fight with a bigger name, we can see viewership rise. However, it appears that he’ll be fighting in Russia in November against another Russian opponent.
“The HBO event drew more viewers than NBCSN’s PBC event even though, as Rafael points out, HBO has about 36 million subscribers while NBC Sports Network is in more than double the homes (81.5 million).”
This is a common misconception. Just because you have more homes that have access does not mean the ratings should be greater. If you take the same fight on HBO and put it on NBC Sports, the HBO show is going to draw more ratings. NBC Sports may have a lot of homes that carry it, but very few watch the channel. It is the very opposite with HBO as a whole.
We see the same thing going on with FS1/ESPN or even FS1 to Spike. The UFC’s numbers took a major dip once they went to FS1 and it had nothing to do with the quality of fights. Just the channels drawing power.
HBO is king of boxing–best production values, analysis, etc.–Although I do love Mauro Ranallo over at showtime since he pretty much does it all; play-by-play, color commentary–he is like the renaissance man of commentators. That aside… Sergey Kovalev is making quite a name for himself with that exciting aggressive style.
Hahaha. Mauro Ranallo is arguably more annoying than Jim Lampley. He is the worst thing that ever happened to Pride. Thank God he isn’t doing mma anymore.
Anyone noticed the site’s ppv blue book has been updated with UFC 189’s numbers at 950k?
Mauro Ranallo is horrible. I have no idea why anyone likes that guy. He is more annoying than Bas Rutten doing commentary which is saying a lot.
The best MMA commentary team is/was easily Jimmy Smith and Sean Wheelock of Bellator.
Mauro, Bas and Jim Lampley together is the commentating dream team. Done.
But back to the article – the show did well, and I imagine if Kovalev could find some real opposition it would do better. No one thought this fight was going to be competitive.
Didn’t hit a million. What do u know.
It would’ve been the same with Jose “180k ppv” Aldo.
Really the casuals who were gonna buy it were locked in already regardless of who fought Conor.
But nice bait n switch the UFC pulled. Maybe if they hype it enough they can hit 1m or even 1.1m
Didn’t Dana say they had to do over 1m to break even?
Wheres D to yell about overhead cost and losing money and all that nonsense.
4.4m>950k.
Hard to claim Conors the new PPV king when his ppv numbers dont have an “M” by it but a “K” as in 950k….
kovalev is on a roll….hahahaha…
New ppv king Conor McGregor can do 950k buys with a replacement opponent. Mayweather’s fight with Berto will do considerably less, I see it bombing badly.
McGregor the new king!!!!
Hey idiot, how is “Southpaw” doing? Oh yeah, it fucking bombed just like Mayweather’s shitty ppv will do coming up. Hahaha.
If you believe mcgregor did 950k buys then you believe anything sad
If you believe May-Pac did 4.4m buys because the promoters claimed it, and you don’t believe the 950k McGregor number, when we have an unbiased source reporting it, then you believe anything…sad.
D no one on this planet can name a movie made about mma, cuz they were all B movies.
By the way McGregor isn’t the new king. How could he be? That makes no sense.
Can somebody tell me to who had the biggest selling ppv this year?
CONOR MCGREGOR PPV KING OF COMBAT SPORTS!!!!!
Welcome to the new era!
HAHAHA!!