PBC Boxing on Spike TV drew 531,000 viewers on Friday night according to Sports TV Ratings. It ranked third on Friday in terms of sports programming on cable television.
PBC on Spike featured Adonis Stevenson and Thomas Williams, Jr. with Stevenson getting the KO.
PBC drew 167,000 viewers in the adult 18-49 demo. for the 9-11:09pm ET time slot. In its last showing on Spike TV, it drew 180,000 in the A18-49 demo. The last Bellator show (159) on Spike TV, drew 283,000 viewers in the A18-49 demo.
The ratings slightly improve from its last showing on Spike TV this past April.
PBC on Spike TV 2016
April 1, 2016 – 873,000
April 29, 2016 – 513,000
July 29, 2016 – 531,000
Payout Perspective:
The ratings are on par with the last April show. Interesting to note that the audience for boxing in the adult 18-49 demo is significantly less than Bellator’s demo. This may be due in part to the sport of boxing skewing to an older audience.
Boxing having an older audience has been true since the mid 90’s. Some people say even going back to the early 80’s.
Boxing is considered an “adult sport” for some reason. I got into boxing as a teenager, around 16 years old but I started watching the sport regularly when I turned 18.
Boxing can be very exciting, the Stevenson/Williams Jr. fight showed that, and I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the sport has struggled with young viewers for decades. As I said, boxing can be very exciting so why are young/younger people turned off by it? I wish I knew…
@ French-Canadian Boxing Fan absolutely false. The boxing Heydays of the 90’s (Tyson era) were LARGELY made up of teenagers like myself. Boxing has failed to maintain interest with the younger generation. For people under 40 it’s all MMA. Unless boxing gets rid of its multitude of fake belts, champions that never fight top contenders and it’s terrible promotion it will most likely vanish as a mainstream sport the way kickboxing did.
@jf
Tyson may have drawn a young crowd but not that many other boxers did at the time.
In the mid to late 90’s, Ring Magazine was worried about the lack of young fans in the sport of boxing. In fact, that’s when Max Kellerman debuted on ESPN as a youth figure to try to bring younger people into the sport. Kellerman looked and talked like an MTV VJ at the time and older boxing writers hoped he would bring in the young crowd.
Kickboxing was never really mainstream as far as I know, it was always in-between life and death.
What real stars has kickboxing ever produced? Nobody like Tyson, De La Hoya, Chavez, Hopkins, Holyfield, Lewis, Morrison, Gatti, Whitaker, Jones Jr. etc… Kickboxers have also never made any money compared to boxers, soccer players, NBA players, MLB players, NFL players, tennis stars etc…
Kickboxing was a sport that Blackbelt magazine was hyping with its martial artist writers who, bitter and envious of the big money and fame high-end boxers were getting, would write juvenile articles bashing boxing while propping up every other martial art on the planet. That stuff was written in the mid 90’s. Kickboxing was so unprofessional that most fights that took place in the 90’s have no records registered anywhere. It is as if they never took place, they only exist in the memory of those who saw them at the time.
Boxing is huge worldwide, it’s not going away lol
This fight may have been exciting but it’s not a fight anyone really wanted to see. Adonis Stevenson v. “who is that again?” was never going to set records.
We’ve seen it time and again, if you want ratings, you need to put on compelling fights. The day Stevenson decides to fight some real opposition, he may get some real ratings.
“Tyson, De La Hoya, Chavez, Hopkins, Holyfield, Lewis, Morrison, Gatti, Whitaker, Jones Jr. etc”
None of those guys are boxing anymore which is why people, especially the youth, are not interested in boxing anymore.
Even guys like Michael Moorer were entertaining. Ray Mercer, George Foreman’s comeback, Riddick Bowe, etc. Boxing was highly entertaining in the 80s, 90s, and early 2001s. I remember Thunderbox and Toughman even made it onto television.
Mayweather may be one of the greatest boxers ever, but his fights are boring as hell compared to Roy Jones Jr. Guys like Roy Jones also had compelling matchups that you wanted to see and ultimately delivered. You got your money’s worth when you paid for a PPV. Name a boxing PPV recently that wasn’t extremely disappointing?
The youth aren’t much interested in MMA either, but its future is a lot brighter than boxing. A gym I was at saturday night for UFC 200 was packed with teenagers and young adults playing basketball and lifting weights. Nobody cared about UFC 200 that was happening in their own city! The NBA and NFL are what the youth are mostly interested in and for good reason, they deliver on entertainment generally and the price is right.
The most exciting boxer I can think of these days is Amir Mansour and ever since he got under management with Haymon he is boring now too and his career has stalled.
Who cares about boxing being bigger outside the USA? Hasselhoff has #1 songs in Germany, totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, he still isn’t Prince or even Justin Beiber for that matter. If you aren’t big in the USA, you are just a big fish in a small pond at best with the exception of soccer.
Don’t forget, “not going away” isn’t really a good indicator of the health of an industry. Kickboxing and muay thai aren’t going away either and those sports have no popularity.