Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports reports that HBO’s showing of Nonito Donaire versus Guillermo Rigondeaux scored an average of 1.1 million viewers last Saturday night.
ESPN’s Dan Rafael reports that Nonito Donaire’s purse was $1.32 million while Guillermo Rigondeaux made $750,000.
The event took place at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in an interesting setup where the ring was on stage and most of the audience was on one side of the ring. Rigondeaux dominated the 2012 Fighter of the Year despite being put down by Donaire. Still, the Cuban fighter had enough to outpoint Donaire.
In addition, the TUF 17 Finale scored a 1.7 million viewer average the same night.
Payout Perspective:
The ratings reflect a positive trend for combat sports. Fight Club OC, the Southern California boxing promotion run by long-time promoter Roy Englebrecht received its largest gate for its bi-monthly fight series run out of Costa Mesa, California. Its Thursday, April 11th card had a gate of $61,013. Pretty good for weeknight.
The fight kicks off a spring of loaded boxing events on either HBO or Showtime. With Golden Boy publicly severing ties with HBO, it appears that both networks are amplifying its boxing coverage which is good for fight fans.
Tonight’s Alvarez – Trout fight on Showtime should surpass that number.
Not bad numbers for channels that have less households than FuelTV
HBO has 28 million
Showtime has 22 million
Or MTV 2.