Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV drew 581,000 viewers per Sports TV Ratings. The event, which featured Adonis Stevenson taking on Robert Karpency in the main event was a decrease in PBC viewership on Spike TV of 15% from August.
The average viewership for PBC on Spike TV after Friday’s event stands at 653,000. The event was preceded (and followed) by Bellator MMA shoulder programming promoting its event this Friday. The event officially aired from 9-10:49pm ET due to Stevenson’s TKO of Karpency.
| PBC on Spike | |
| 3/13/2015 | 869,000 |
| 4/24/2015 | 569,000 |
| 5/22/2015 | 772,000 |
| 6/12/2015 | 446,000 |
| 8/14/2015 | 679,000 |
| 9/11/2015 | 581,000 |
Payout Perspective:
In addition to PBC on Spike TV Friday night, Bounce TV held an event on Friday night as well. Also, a rerun of PBC on FS1 earlier in the night on Friday (6-8pm ET) drew 118,000 viewers which is a shade less than the 184,000 viewers it drew last Tuesday. The viewership has to be a little disappointing considering Stevenson is a light heavyweight champion. Realistically, a fight with Sergey Kovalev may never come to fruition due to promoter disputes.
Karpency is a household name boxer hahahaha
Robert who? As long as PBC keeps giving us crap fights they will keep getting crap ratings.
I actually watched the Trout fight because I happened to be zoning out in front of the TV when it came on, but otherwise I would have skipped that one as well.
Up your game PBC. I need more Santa Cruz v. Mares and less someone good v. someone I’ve never heard of.
Oh yeah, Deontay Wilder is busy training for his next fight later this month. His opponent is so unknown that the PBC website doesn’t even have his picture up. It just shows Deontay Wilder vs. Image Coming Soon. Brilliant. I wonder who will win. I’m all a-titter with anticipation.
Thats a pretty weak number for LHW champ, this is a major problem with PBC. Their matchmaking is bad 75 percent of the time.
Heard Porter/Thurman might happen, thats what PBC needs to do more of, great fights like that and less squash matches like this and Wilder vs some dude from the audience.
PBC on CBS last Sunday afternoon(Sep 6th) Dirrell-Rubio did 1.1m. PBC on NBC this past Saturday with Peter Quillin did 1.2m.
Quillin-Jacobs is set for a December showdown in Brooklyn. That should do great numbers.
More horrible ratings for PBC on both spike and CBS.
1.2m ratings is horrible for network tv.
PBC must be concerned with how much longer they can continue to put up these extremely poor numbers and survive financially. They’ve already burned through about 30% of their hedge fund in a few short months. They have to be banking on a real deal, but with these numbers, one can imagine that will be difficult to ascertain.
“d on September 14th, 2015 7:39 PM
More horrible ratings for PBC on both spike and CBS.
1.2m ratings is horrible for network tv.
PBC must be concerned with how much longer they can continue to put up these extremely poor numbers and survive financially. They’ve already burned through about 30% of their hedge fund in a few short months. They have to be banking on a real deal, but with these numbers, one can imagine that will be difficult to ascertain.”
—Its not horrible but its not great. Its decent. The CBS and NBC cards were afternoon cards of mismatches. But afternoon cards have faired around 1.1m-1.2m. Realistically not too many ppl are at home watching tv in those hours and if they were they probably weren’t excited to watch Dirrell-Rubio on CBS and Quillin-Zerafa on NBC.
The Wilder fight is on NBC and will probably do over a million as well. But that speaks more to the power of network TV and the laziness of most people in changing the channel than to the draw of PBC matchups.
I wonder what the break-even is for PBC when putting shows on a big network. If they can make money on a million viewers then great. But I doubt that is the case.
“—Its not horrible but its not great. Its decent. The CBS and NBC cards were afternoon cards of mismatches. But afternoon cards have faired around 1.1m-1.2m. Realistically not too many ppl are at home watching tv in those hours and if they were they probably weren’t excited to watch Dirrell-Rubio on CBS and Quillin-Zerafa on NBC.”
Not accurate. You are comparing them to other PBC cards. That is a low number. Even if it is afternoon, it is still CBS. If the UFC came on the afternoon on FOX, you can bet they would be doing better numbers than that with the same caliber of headliner.
1.2 on network in afternoon isnt bad d, its not amazing or anything but for combat sports in afternoon 1.2-1.6 mill for fights like this arent bad.
This is what PBC has to worry about the most
John S. Nash @heynottheface Sep 2
Zuffa & their 44m in losses with the UFC is going to be nothing compared to Haymon and Waddell & Reed. $165m & counting on PBC
They are burning through their war chest, they better hope they get a huge tv deal out of this thing when these pay for play deals are done.
I think Wilder does good numbers.
Ive seen some promos for it, and people tend to tune in when its the heavyweights.
Peaks over 3.5m. Maybe 4m.
Chris, what are you comparing those numbers to? Pretty fair to say you are comparing them to previous PBC cards. Those numbers aren’t good.
Yeah, but if they don’t get their ratings, they don’t get tv contracts. If they don’t get tv contracts, they fold. They can afford to lose money if they bring more in- but the only way to do so is to bring in big ratings which they certainly aren’t doing. And yes, they are already 30% through their loan. That money will be pretty much gone in a year. It is looking grim for PBC.
I seriously doubt Wilder hits 4m peak and the average will probably be in the low 2s.
Saying Floyd/Berto did 550k PPV buys.
I think if you put an average UFC fight night on Fox in afternoon it would do more but not much, 1 to 2 million viewers.
Also have to factor what else was on, college football etc. So to me doing in 1.5 mill range on network in afternoon isnt that bad.
Take WSOF, they put on great card a year ago in afternoon on NBC during UFC 175 Sat and they only did 700k viewers.
Chris, WSOF is a minor league promotion with horrible ratings. It is really not fair to compare the two. PBC has a massive financial backing with top tier stars fighting for them. It would only be fair to compare UFC with them and I feel like the UFC would draw considerably more with a similar caliber fight card.
Is that your prediction for Floyd/Berto or are you hearing that from someone?
there is a strong audience for boxing but if you have it on 14 different channels at different times and crappy cards 3/4 of the time you wont get strong numbers. these numbers dont mean much anymore because the fights are all over the place and matchmaking sucks.
Rafael is saying early reports of 550k ppvs but nothing is concrete.
Also with Wilder, I think hell do good numbers for his PBC debut since hes a HW but i can see the numbers being just average since his opponent is a no name.
Wow. That is historically bad. Not surprising, I predicted it would be in the 600k range.
Now with Mayweather gone, Pacquaio with one fight left, it seems like boxing’s ppv numbers are really headed for a massive down slide.
These are just estimates, nothing is final yet.
But historically bad? How?
Out of his 15 ppvs this will rank at number 12. Only his first 3 did worse.
Out of 191 UFC ppvs, Mayweather-Berto out sold around 150 of them.
Doesn’t seem that historically bad at all.
“There is a strong audience for boxing but if you have it on 14 different channels at different times and crappy cards 3/4 of the time you wont get strong numbers. these numbers dont mean much anymore because the fights are all over the place and matchmaking sucks.”
I agree 100%. It’s getting too difficult to track all the different fights being put on. And when I do find them, they are generally horrible mismatches. I had high hopes (though low expectations) for PBC. I don’t particularly like the way Haymon has done business in the past, but I figured that the one benefit of PBC buying up all the fighters is that we would get some good match-ups. That has generally not been the case, which is a big disappointment. They need to get on one or two networks, get a regular time-slot and get good match-ups.
I’m tuning out more than I’m tuning in these days, and based on their trend in ratings, it looks like I’m not the only one.
I feel like PBC is hoping that by boxing out the other promotions they will expand their stable of fighters and wind up putting their competitors out of business. It’s a high risk, unknown reward proposition. If you fail you burn through hundreds of millions of dollars and have nothing to show. If you succeed you burn through hundreds of millions of dollars and face lawsuits.
I can’t figure out what other strategy they have.
They should have done what the UFC did and just bought out Top Rank and Golden Boy. I imagine it would be cheaper.
Yes, historically bad for Mayweather. He hasn’t had a ppv go that low since he fought Baldomir back in ’06. Floyd Mayweather is also the biggest draw for boxing. This is a very poor showing considering who the headliner is. More importantly the cost of his promotions back then were no where near the cost they were for this fight.
Your statistics for comparing UFCs to this are not some type of equivalent because you are taking the top draw in boxing and comparing it to all UFC ppvs. The UFC has far more ppvs than Mayweather fights and most are with low tier stars. Not to mention the amount a Mayweather fight costs to promote.
Showtime lost more money for this fight than probably any fight they’ve ever had in the history of their company.
Mayweather promotes himself. And according to alot of sources they made good money off this deal.
44mil revenue just off May-Berto ppv buys.
Showtime did virtually no promos for this fight or the Pacquiao fight.
This PPV sold 550k because his next fight will sell 2-3mil.
Every one knows hes goin for 50.
Mayweather does promote himself, but Showtime produces his events and they paid him 32m for the fight. Plus other production costs. The ppv paid them very little as Showtime only makes a small percentage for the fight. The only one’s who made out here are Berto and Mayweather. Showtime took a big hit.
44m is not what they made off of May-Berto buys. They actually made around 15m for the promotion if that 550k is accurate. The SD/HD buys are typically split 50-50 according to anyone who has analyzed ppv buyrates and the promotion gets roughly 40% of the split from the providers.
It doesn’t matter if Showtime does no promos. They have to pay for the production which includes paying the commentators who are not cheap, paying for the entire film production crew, cameras, etc. This costs millions.
Floyd Mayweather has officially retired. He will never fight again. Anyone who saw his reaction after the fight was over where he fell to the ground because he knew that was it, realized, he is actually done this time. There will be no 50.