UFC on Fox 18 Prelims drew 702,000 viewers on FS1 on Saturday night according to Sports TV Ratings.
The event on Fox Sports 2 which preceded the Fox event improved over the 693,000 viewers on UFC on Fox 17 this past December.
The showcase fight of the 3-hour prelim event saw Tarec Saffiedine defeat Jake Ellenberger.
The event did slightly better than preliminary fight on the Kovalev-Pascual main event on HBO. That fight drew 701,000 viewers for the 39-minute fight.
Payout Perspective:
There’s a big difference when the UFC on Fox events have its prelims on the network versus FS1. In comparison, UFC on Fox 16 which aired on Fox drew 1.3 million viewers as opposed to the 693K (17) and 702K (18) over the last two Fox cards where the prelims were on FS1. Of course, time on the Fox network is valuable so putting prelims on Fox every time a Fox card airs might not be feasible.
d says
Good numbers for prelims.
On another note, with Khan-Canelo being signed, I guess it is clear Canelo wants no part of GGG. Goes to show you how ridiculous the sport of boxing is.
d says
http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/personal-finance/article57890703.html
More bad news for PBC
d says
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-al-haymon-boxing-20160203-story.html
d says
A look at 10 major and minor Premier boxing shows staged in California and Nevada last year reveals that promoters paid $19.2 million in purses and state fees for those fight cards, while collecting only $3.9 million from fans at the gate, according to the states’ records.
For last month’s Garcia-Guerrero fight in Los Angeles, the fight card’s purse totaled $3.2 million, versus only $508,620 in live-gate ticket sales.
Television advertising tracking firm Kantar Media said Premier collected $12.5 million in total ad revenue from 27 fight telecasts from March through September, an average of $462,963 per show. Premier also pocketed some undisclosed license fees from Spike TV for six fight shows telecast during that period.
Still, the advertising revenue for the boxing shows is paltry considering the costs, such as Premier’s $20-million NBC deal. The ad money also appears to fall short for even lesser time-buy arrangements, like the five CBS Saturday afternoon boxing telecasts in 2015 that cost Premier around $300,000 per hour, according to industry officials.
The Greatest says
Canelo-Khan, exciting fight. No bigger name couldve been made for Canelo than Khan, while we wait for GGG. I can bet you that Khan will be a better/bigger name than whoever GGG fights.
Marquez-Cotto is being negotiated, Klitschko-Fury II, Pacquiao-Bradley III, Ward-Kovalev, possible Canelo-GGG.
2016 has some big fights in boxing. Thurman-Porter is interesting as well. Garcia-Broner might happen
The Greatest says
Canelo-Khan, exciting fight. No bigger name couldve been made for Canelo than Khan, while we wait for GGG. I can bet you that Khan will be a better/bigger name than whoever GGG fights.
Marquez-Cotto is being negotiated, Klitschko-Fury II, Pacquiao-Bradley III, Ward-Kovalev, possible Canelo-GGG.
2016 has some big fights in boxing. Thurman-Porter is interesting as well. Garcia-Broner might happen
d says
HAHA. Here comes the spin doctor.
Canelo-Khan will do less than Canelo-Cotto did. Pac-Bradley probably won’t break 650k buys.
None of the other fights you mentioned will do anything relevant ppv wise and a few probably won’t happen anyway.
McGregor’s next fight will outdraw any boxing ppv this year.
Thurman-Porter is on Showtime because PBC couldn’t afford their purses.
I notice you didn’t respond to any of the horrible news I just posted about PBC being in financial disarray.
d says
*Thurman-Porter was bought by Showtime Boxing and is on CBS.
The Greatest says
Your PBC post is just rhetoric. They dont have full numbers, wheres the $420M they so called spent. Your postings dont equate $420M being spent.
Regardless since you like to talk money, Canelo-Khan will pull in big numbers off American PPV, possible UK ppv or tv rights, and Mexican TV vieviewership.
Canelo-Khan globally will be bigger than anything the UFC has done globally.
Pacquiao-Bradley will do decent ppv numbers and do big numbers internationally as its being drummed up as Pacquiaos final fight.
The Greatest says
Also most of PBCs shows aren’t very expensive, such as next weeks PBC on FS1 Jamel Herring vs Luis Flores, and the week afters Santiago vs Ruiz.
d says
The PBC report proves a variety of things:
First off, it proves that the 3 funds that originally financed the venture which were worth over 500m are now down to 80m. Those are facts reported by Waddell and Reed.
The LA Times article also details that of those 10 cards reported from CA and NV, they are averaging costs of 19.2m for purses and state fees only. PBC had 50 shows as of Jan. 31st which based on those numbers can be estimated to be 96m alone. Then we get into the time buys which cost 20m for just the NBC deal. Factor in all the other channels involved: FOX, CBS, Spike, Bounce, ESPN, ABC. It is safe to say the total for the time buys over the past 10 months is in the 80-100m range. Seeing how they funded the venture for 2 years up front and paid for those time buys, they are looking at a ball park range of 160-200m of time-buy money alone. Add that to the purses and you are looking at 256m-296m. Then on top of that you have to get into paying a staff to start up the huge company, you have to pay proxy promoters to put their name on the top of the card- that has to cost them at least 100k per card, how about taxes, insurance, production costs that they share. You are looking easily over 400m for that.
They still have the time slots for their shows for another year, but they obviously can’t afford to pay for all of their fighters purses because never in a million years would they dump a headlining fight like that unless they had to.
Canelo-Khan won’t come even close to what McGregor just did in his last fight which involved big tv contracts in both Ireland and Brazil. I’d be very surprised if that did very big US numbers. Likely around 700k buys at most. Khan isn’t what he once was in terms of draw. Canelo would do much more with GGG, but he is a coward and wants to avoid him.
Pac-Bradley is a snooze fest that very few want to see. It won’t do nearly as much as the last one did which didn’t do huge numbers to begin with.
PBC is going down in flames. No ratings, no money.
d says
*The 19.2 was not average those were the actual numbers.
The Greatest says
I want real numbers, not D’s estimations and “ballpark” numbers.
d says
Most of them were real numbers and my estimation was based specifically on the hard numbers given in the article x5 which was based on how many events they had. It is very fair to say my numbers are accurate. The other numbers like Waddell and Reed’s 3 funds being down to 80m are 100% accurate. The numbers match up, you are just in denial.
PBC is in the gutter and everyone who knows anything about the subject can see the writing on the wall.
The Greatest says
Ballpark numbers aren’t legit, especially when you’re at the wrong ballpark.
Waddell and Reeds funds are down because of other things they invest in not because of PBC. The article your even sourcing points out that PBC could lose up to $200M in a few years, so that obviously means they didn’t lose $420M in 10 months. That wouldn’t make sense.
Waddell and Reed manage over $104B, made revenue of $361M with earnings at $245.5M. So yea i think they’ll be fine.
Also they same article points out that ad sales are goin up for PBC.
If PBC goes down, than Showtime steps in and so does Top Rank, I know they want to move off TruTV to a bigger network. Haymon will then either restart back up on network TV or he’ll have to play ball with HBO or strictly stay on Showtime.
Khans a PBC fighter, hes fighting Canelo.
Any UFC fighters fighting Bellator fighters?
That’s my point, PBC or not boxing is going hard right now and will continue to go.
UFC, probably not.
The Greatest says
Ballpark numbers aren’t legit, especially when you’re at the wrong ballpark.
Waddell and Reeds funds are down because of other things they invest in not because of PBC. The article your even sourcing points out that PBC could lose up to $200M in a few years, so that obviously means they didn’t lose $420M in 10 months. That wouldn’t make sense.
Waddell and Reed manage over $104B, made revenue of $361M with earnings at $245.5M. So yea i think they’ll be fine.
Also they same article points out that ad sales are goin up for PBC.
If PBC goes down, than Showtime steps in and so does Top Rank, I know they want to move off TruTV to a bigger network. Haymon will then either restart back up on network TV or he’ll have to play ball with HBO or strictly stay on Showtime.
Khans a PBC fighter, hes fighting Canelo.
Any UFC fighters fighting Bellator fighters?
That’s my point, PBC or not boxing is going hard right now and will continue to go.
UFC, probably not.
d says
“Ballpark numbers aren’t legit, especially when you’re at the wrong ballpark.”
Says the guy who can’t even read.
“Waddell and Reeds funds are down because of other things they invest in not because of PBC. The article your even sourcing points out that PBC could lose up to $200M in a few years, so that obviously means they didn’t lose $420M in 10 months. That wouldn’t make sense.
Waddell and Reed manage over $104B, made revenue of $361M with earnings at $245.5M. So yea i think they’ll be fine.”
Waddell & Reed in general are down because of a variety of things. The PBC venture is literally less than 1% of the big hedge fund that they manage. Making revenue of only 361m out of 104b is horrible by the way, but regardless, if the venture fails, they will not continue with it regardless of how much money they manage. This isn’t a hobby, the are investing other people’s money into these ventures.
Also, the funds they drew from began at over 500m. They are down to 80m. These are facts. According to nearly every article published related to the subject including the initial one where the manager of the funds for PBC,
Read this part:
“The Kansas investment firm Waddell & Reed committed an estimated $425 million to $525 million to Haymon’s venture — a figure confirmed by three officials connected to Haymon’s firm Premier Boxing Champions.”
Those funds were taken from the three I posted which are now down to 80m. This is information that is literally on their website. There is nothing you can deny here. You are attempting to lump all of Waddell and Reed’s portfolio into PBC and that isn’t how this works. They only have 80m left of that which is why they are selling off fights. The point is they have blown through that money. It doesn’t mean they are total losses, just what they have spent out of the fund. The issue though is that they aren’t taking much back in from these fights. They are operating with losses in the 80-90% range. Go back and look at the numbers. They are only bringing in an average of roughly 460k per fight in ad money, and the gates are horrendously low- their big fights are only drawing 500k. Not to mention all of the other costs associated with this.
“Also they same article points out that ad sales are goin up for PBC.”
No they didn’t, you just make things up.
“If PBC goes down, than Showtime steps in and so does Top Rank, I know they want to move off TruTV to a bigger network. Haymon will then either restart back up on network TV or he’ll have to play ball with HBO or strictly stay on Showtime.”
When PBC goes down, it will be the end of boxing on network tv, because the proof of concept failed miserably with no reason to believe anything would alter the results. Boxing will go back to being nearly exclusively on premium tv. It is the only way it can function on a championship level.
“Khans a PBC fighter, hes fighting Canelo.
Any UFC fighters fighting Bellator fighters?
That’s my point, PBC or not boxing is going hard right now and will continue to go.
UFC, probably not.”
No, you do not have a point because you are completely incoherent.
After 10 months it has become very clear that PBC is an utter failure. They were expecting much higher ratings, much higher gates, a consistent, loyal following in the 18-49 demo and they have failed to do so. The still have the time slots for another year- but get used to seeing them sell off fights for this year as everyone who is an objective journalist has been pointing out.
The Greatest says
I don’t think you understand anything that you post. They “committed” to $425M, is not the same as they “paid” $425M.
You are a complete d.olt if you think they spent that much already.
PBC had the most watched fight on TV last year. Utter failure? Bigger than anything the UFC did last year, let alone you only like talking PBC because you try to not talk about all the records boxing is breaking outside of PBC. 4.6M ppvs, fights making Super Bowl revenue, single tickets costing more than a reebox payout for an UFC event, Canelo-Kirkland doing 2.3M on HBO, Canelo-Cotto 900K ppvs with monster payouts, Klitschko-Fury doing big numbers in Europe.
PBC isnt doing anything new but putting fights on network tv during PRIMETIME hours.
A HW match between Adamek and Cunningham did like 3.2M on NBC a few years back.
Leo Santa Cruz has been on CBS before PBC.
I think you think that if PBC fails its some weird validation for the UFC when in reality it proves that the UFC will never flourish like boxing.
If the UFC had to pay mma fighters that type of “boxing” money, the UFC would be extinct.
That’s why most UFC fighters make dirt, because the money isn’t there.
PBC also has more shows than the UFC. The UFC only had 41 events last year, and 20 title fights. Boxing has 68 belts. Think about it.
Way bigger sport, way bigger audience, much more money.
PBC will probably end up on NBC or FOX, or they can just sell big fights to the networks, which is what ive always wanted them to do.
The American audience isn’t big on fighting sports anymore. Boxing is still bigger than MMA in America but both are niche sports and that works for the UFC, but it doesnt for boxing. Boxing is so big globally that people like Klitschko have no reason to come here and try to win over the American audience. He makes so much more overseas that it would make no sense.
That’s whats faulting PBC. They have guys who expect big paydays while you have networks looking to pay them MMA payouts, which are laughable. Thurman and Guerrero made more money than the entire UFC roster on a UFC FOX show.
d says
No, I don’t think you can read anything or comprehend what was stated here.
Why is this so hard to comprehend? They had 3 funds from the big hedge fund through W & R:
Ivy Asset Strategy
WRA Asset Strategy
VIP Asset Strategy
These were estimated to actually be over 500m.
They now combined stand at 80m.
That’s not commitment, that is spent money.
These funds according to multiple sources were funds for PBC’s venture.
They are now selling off their biggest fights because they can not afford to operate without cutting costs.
I already explained to you how the costs add up. They spent so much money on purses, time buys, production, promotion, employees, etc.
The UFC on FOX has literally had 4 fights go over 4m avg viewers, PBC has had 0. The UFC uses lower ranked fighters for their tv shows, than PBC as well. PBC on cable is being outdrawn by Bellator. Even when the UFC does lesser numbers overall, they always outdraw them in the key 18-49 demo. PBC’s tv ratings are horrible. To make matters worse, they are spending 2-3x the costs for these events than the UFC does, which is what makes this completely unsustainable.
Boxing isn’t breaking any records outside of PBC. They had one huge fight which turned fans even further away from boxing because it was another big fight that was horribly boring. You will never see anything in boxing come anywhere remotely close to that numbers wise. As it stands right now, I can’t imagine any boxing ppv this year breaking 1m buys. I can all but guarantee at least 2 UFCs will, and likely will be more, possibly 3-4.
Klitschko-Fury did nothing even close to monster numbers. If McGregor fought in the UK or Ireland, he would demolish any numbers those two could even dream of putting up. How is Canelo-Cotto a record breaker on any level? You exaggerate worse than a politician.
” PBC isnt doing anything new but putting fights on network tv during PRIMETIME hours.
A HW match between Adamek and Cunningham did like 3.2M on NBC a few years back.
Leo Santa Cruz has been on CBS before PBC.”
The Adamek-Cunningham fight lost money and what is the point of any of this anyway?
“I think you think that if PBC fails its some weird validation for the UFC when in reality it proves that the UFC will never flourish like boxing.”
Another comment of yours that makes zero sense. The UFC ratings are much higher than PBC’s, they outdraw boxing on cable, they make more ppv revenue than every boxing promotion combined, they do bigger gates than every major boxing promotion combined every year. It is pretty clear who is flourishing and who isn’t.
“If the UFC had to pay mma fighters that type of “boxing” money, the UFC would be extinct.
That’s why most UFC fighters make dirt, because the money isn’t there.”
No, the money isn’t there to sustain ventures like PBC, the money would be there for the UFC because they draw bigger ratings, so they actually could pull it off. Boxing can’t which is why PBC was doomed to fail from the beginning.
“PBC also has more shows than the UFC. The UFC only had 41 events last year, and 20 title fights. Boxing has 68 belts. Think about it.
Way bigger sport, way bigger audience, much more money.”
More absurd analogies. The UFC isn’t the only mma promotion, remember Bellator? They easily outdraw PBC on Spike. Far less money in boxing these days, smaller audience as well.
“PBC will probably end up on NBC or FOX, or they can just sell big fights to the networks, which is what ive always wanted them to do.”
PBC will certainly end up off the face of the Earth by the end of the year. The financials are so bad and their ratings are far below their expectations. They failed to tap into the demo they needed and it is showing in their overall ratings. If the UFC received 100m per year with better ratings, have less than half of the costs that PBC does with better ratings than PBC, how in the world would it be possible for PBC to sustain their operations on network tv? It would be impossible long term. The only possibility is that the fund wants to continue risking more money-which will go right down the drain. I can’t imagine that being the case after 2 years when the ratings not only do not improve, but decline.
“The American audience isn’t big on fighting sports anymore. Boxing is still bigger than MMA in America but both are niche sports and that works for the UFC, but it doesnt for boxing. Boxing is so big globally that people like Klitschko have no reason to come here and try to win over the American audience. He makes so much more overseas that it would make no sense.”
Not really true. Maybe compared to the NFL, but for the most part, the ratings prove there is interest. It is just a failed business for boxing because of promoter’s poorly contracted deals with fighters.
The global market is less than half of what the American market is. Klitschko doesn’t come here because no one will pay to watch him fight here. He was drawing terrible numbers years ago when he was fighting in the US which is why he left. There are also many countries that prefer to watch mma over boxing.
d says
“That’s whats faulting PBC. They have guys who expect big paydays while you have networks looking to pay them MMA payouts, which are laughable. Thurman and Guerrero made more money than the entire UFC roster on a UFC FOX show.”
Yes, Thurman and Guerrero are overpaid. Haha. That is the point. They do not deserve to be paid over a million per fight and they are receiving that. It isn’t impressive, it is foolish for the promotion to do that. The UFC could start paying their fighters on FOX 1m+, but they aren’t incompetent like Haymon and co.