Andre Ward’s return to the ring Saturday night drew 1.064 million HBO subscribers according to Sports TV Ratings. Ward defeated Sullivan Barrera by unanimous decision in what many believe is a tune up for bigger fights (i.e. Sergey Kovalev).
HBO Boxing drew 1.064 million from 10:55pm-11:42pm ET on Saturday night. This included 506,000 in the adult 18-49 demo. The other fight shown on the broadcast, Joseph Diaz, Jr. defeated Jayson Velez in a featherweight matchup. That fight drew 756,000 viewers overall and 363,000 in the adult 18-49 demo.
Payout Perspective:
Ward’s fight did better than Terrence Crawford last month and was the highest-rated program on sports cable Saturday night. The biggest sporting event Saturday night was the NCAA Men’s Basketball Regional Finals on CBS. Despite Ward being a polarizing figure, he can be a draw for HBO.
big fights coming for boxing with ward back in the picture and a lot of action this month
Good ratings.
this one started what appears to be a season of excellent matchups for the next 2-3 months thats for sure. Good ratings, would have liked to have seen another 500K but since the NCAA ball captured over 11m viewers, even more impressive.
Has beens Mir and Hunt drew bigger numbers.
What channel was that on D? A premium cable channel?
Premium channels draw the best ratings for boxing. The UFC was on FS1 which draws horrible ratings outside of the UFC and NASCAR. You want to compare PBC numbers? They are even worse.
The article is about hbo boxing not pbc
You ignored my first point.
and in comes the “boxing vs mma” mess…..
It was a good ratings performance for HBO. Andre Ward has a tendency to be boring, and he’s fought only sporadically in the past few years. However this fight was his first at LHW (175) and is a set up to a fight with Kovalev that fans are buzzing about, so the ratings were solid, even thought Ward’s opponent is relatively unknown.
Ward fought well and showed that he can hang with bigger guys. Now HBO has to capitalize on its momentum and try to get the Ward-Kovalev fight schedule ASAP. Not sure how easy that is – I assume they have different promoters.
I think both will have another fight before they mix it up in November. Ward is one slick well schooled ring general thats for sure, he just thoroughly outboxed the #1 contender who was bigger and stronger than him….and a Cuban at that with over 300 amateur fights if I am not mistaken. Excellent performance, the style matchup between Ward and Kovalev makes it interesting..strength and power vs. slick movement and skills. The fact that Kovalev has already killed one fighter makes it that much more interesting….he is a dangerous fighter who has suffered no noticeable psychological damage from killing Simikov.
Ward is boring to the unsophisticated because their undeveloped ability to understand what is happening right in front of their eyes. The ability to see the subtle indication of an attach and to have spider sense to avoid the attack and to respond with your own attack is next level stuff. It simply flies over the head of a lot of spectators. I ain’t mad at them for not understanding but I see them. Actually, I prefer Ward to what Floyd was able to do so many times in his record setting career. We must bear in mind that everyone will not prefer champagne, some will want beer.