PBC on NBC Sports Network Saturday night drew an average of 247,000 viewers per Sports TV Ratings. The event featured a cruiserweight bout between B.J. Flores and Bebut Shumenov.
Notably, the event which aired from 9-12:18pm ET went up against HBO Boxing and a Sergey Kovalev title defense. Although the complete ratings are not in, it appears that the Kovalev fight drew slightly over 1 million viewers per Sports TV Ratings. The segment ratings for the HBO event looks to have done better than the 247K viewership rating as the lowest ratings for the 2 fight HBO event was 508K.
Payout Perspective:
Although we have to look back, this PBC event likely did the lowest TV ratings so far among all of the PBC events across all networks. When PBC appears on Bounce TV this weekend, one might expect lower ratings since not many viewers have Bounce or actually know of its existence. Flores and Shumenov are not known to many casual boxing fans which may have attributed to the low ratings. It would be interesting to see if viewership went up after the HBO event was over as Kovalev won with a 3rd round TKO.
saldathief says
poop too much too many places
Jesus is coming says
Who gives a damn about that card lmao fighting fans were on ufc and hbo card with pascal vs gonzalez fight of the night and the most sinister boxer in the game Kovalev which avg over 1.1 million
Diego says
NBC Sports is a crap network. Do they have any shows that get good ratings?
With that said, this is a terrible result for PBC. No two ways about it.
The Greatest says
Never liked Flores or gave a shit about him.
Hes trash.
Im glad no one watched it
d says
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWFUL!!!
PULL THE PLUG ON THIS SHIT ALREADY!!!!!
d says
Sal, why aren’t you pointing out how Dillashaw-Barao destroyed Kovalev in ratings. You know how you love comparing network boxing fights with cable ufc/bellator fights.
Eat that shit moron.
d says
WSOF beat this shit routinely. Hahaha.
Jesus is coming says
UFC card was on prime time fox and was one of the worst showings they ever had number wise .. . HBO has so many less viewers .. Who cares about cruiser weights that nobody knows al haymon Pbc has to many fighters he needs to have cards like this … It was on nbc sports ! Lol who cares he’s going to have plenty cards like this on bounce TV lol
d says
Jesus boy, you are as delusional as Sal and Gayest.
Dillashaw and Barao was arguably their best Summer show ratings wise. The overnights that came in did not include the main event. That will give it a huge bump.
I know HBO has many less viewers than FOX. Did you bother to read what I said? Wow.
WSOF outdrew that fight on NBC Sports almost every time. That was a horrible number even for NBC Sports.
The Greatest says
D no one cares about the Flores fight.
But thats why it was on the channel it was on.
The fight on bounce tv will be less.
Funny tho that the fights on TruTV and BET both did better ratings then this one.
But these cards have to exist when you got 170+ boxers you manage/advise.
The deal PBC has with NBC is 5 Saturday night shows, 6 Saturday afternoon shows, 9 on NBCSPORTS. Thats per year.
Thats 20 shows right there.
ESPN has 11 shows and one event that ABC will show.
Now thats 32 shows.
Add the 8 or whatever that CBS is doing, thats 40 a year and thats not counting Spike or Bounce, and then you add HBO, Showtime, Trutv and so on.
Spike, NBC, and NBCSN are set to have 73 cards by the end of 2017.
So yea your gonna get some bullshit fights
Jason Cruz says
@Diego, et al. If you want to play conspiracy theorist, you might think that the card was done just to spite Main Events Promotions and Kathy Duva as Kovalev fought in the same time on the same night. This rarely happens for obvious reasons.
d says
Yeah, lot’s of fights, horrible ratings, massive overhead, equals a bubble of hedge fund money set to burst.
There is no way they can continue to take in losses like this for much more than a year. Maybe two at the most. That will be after they lose the full 500m and Hayman can’t borrow a dime from even Mayweather after this debacle.
I know you don’t think rationally, but I am going to point this out anyway. This is a business model that after looking at the ratings is destined to fail. I don’t see a way in this world they get a legitimate deal and continue to put this on long term considering their body of work. They were expecting massive ratings. They aren’t there. PBC ratings on prime time on NBC are at best on par with the current UFC numbers and are worse in the key demo. That, plus the fact that their overhead costs are massive-probably something like 5x what the UFC’s are. Look at the purses you guys love to brag about. Look at all the gimmicks they added with their production, etc. It is doomed.
The Greatest says
UFC fans complaining about overheads and paying fighters too much, of course.
U understand little money not big money.
The plan is to get a deal with 1-2 networks.
At that point all the cards will be on those networks and it makes it easier to control.
d says
Retarded boxing trolls who don’t grasp the concept of overhead (already plural) and over paying purses of course.
The plan won’t work if you can’t cover the costs idiot.
Who is going to pay him 400-500m which is roughly his break even point for PBC shows that generate 3m viewers on network tv and 800k on cable for their big shows? The math isn’t there. The UFC is only getting 100m for equal viewers and better in the key demo. What makes you think NBC is going to pay a shitload more? They’ve even acknowledged the ratings have to increase and it is a long term play, but if they don’t see any improvement after a year, you have to wonder when the plug gets pulled because it is unsustainable.
saldathief says
This proves what I have been saying all along! PBC is a third rate boxing promotion.
George Gonzales says
I must admit d is spot on on everything. At this rate PBC cannot continue for much longer.
Diego says
I would love to see PBC’s numbers. If they are doing a time buy, I can’t imagine time on NBC Sports – the armpit of TV sports networks – cost them very much. At the same time BJ Flores ain’t working for free and they couldn’t have received a lot in terms of gate or ad revenue. So yeah, I think we’re all pretty clueless as to how PBC plans to make money.
The fight sucked anyway. It was terrible.