Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports reported the ratings for Saturday night’s Sergey Kovalev-Cedric Agnew Fight on HBO. According to Iole, the event featuring Kovalev’s win averaged 1.006 million with a peak at 1.048 million among the premium channel’s subscribers.
It was the first time that Kovalev headlined an HBO show. But, Kovalev’s promoter, Kathy Duva, was pleased with the showing since it went up against the NCAA tournament.
Iole noted that Kovalev drew 464K in the 18-49 demo which doubled the average overnight viewership (242,000) for the WSOF 9 on NBC Sports Network.
ESPN’s Dan Rafael reported that the undercard featuring Thomas Dulorme and Karim Mayfield drew 742,000 viewers.
Payout Perspective:
As stated in the Iole report, the 1 million viewer average is a pleasant surprise since it faced competition from WSOF and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It is also a dramatic ramp up from the undercard fight. Kovalev is not a household name among the casual boxing fan although HBO hopes that it can market and groom Kovalev into a fighter that can continue to headline HBO cards.
How was the peak so close to the average viewers? What was the ratings for the lead in? How does a event peak at 1 million and average 1 million when there was 742k early in the event? Seems to be the peak would have to be a good bit higher than the average to over come the much lower early ratings.
Good questions. I wonder if the average is only for the Kovalev fight itself, otherwise the peak would have to be higher.
It was a good fight regardless. Kovalev dropped Agnew three times with straight lefts (jabs). You don’t see that every day.
@Diego: It was for the overall telecast from what I gather.
@BS: I will see if I can get this info
I don’t know how helpful knowing the lead in would be. I guess I was thinking with the peak and average so close. That fans from the lead in were dropping out as fans tuned it. Whoch would keep a steady ratings. But the question remains. how 742k-1,042K can average 1.006K.
The only conclusion I can come to ise the 742 was for only 15 minutes or so. Then the numbers jumped to 1 million and stayed there for a couple hours. The problem with this is numbers typically don’t jump 25% in an instant. A gradual climb would drag the average down. Also it is unusual for a combat sport to hold a steady ratings. Due to the set up the event with the main event at the end. Ratings typically get stronger.
Having both a sharpe jump of 25% and steady ratings for hours. Seems very hard to believe.
its clear to me the average of the under card was 742k and the average of the main event was 1.006 million so the high was 1.048 the low of the main event would be 960k . We are missing the X or unknown figure of how they calculated the under card average. So we take the 2 averages 1.006 and 742k and get an average view of the entire event at 874k. We are getting info from 2 different sources so its probably an estimate.
The problem with that is we are being told that isn’t a main event average but a entire card average. Even if that isn’t the case. I don’t think the average can be worked out like you did above unless the undercard and the main event were the same length of time. If one was 2 hours and the other was 3 hours. Then it makes you unable to average the two numbers together.
What are you talking about?? The entires televised event was less than 2 hours it was 2 fights not 30 fights like the UFC. Its great, boxing fans can watch an event and actually here real news about all boxing, not just one promotion Why does the UFC make believe that former champions and other organizations don’t exist? I wonder why the UFC has to do that?? LOL I think some of the million fans that tune in to HBO boxing do it for that reason.