Over the last couple of days Premier Boxing Champions showed that despite its alleged demise it is going nowhere. Last week, it brokered a deal with Showtime and today it announced a deal with Fox.
The Fox deal allows for PBC events to be aired on Fox and FS1 with an annual boxing budget of $50 million according to Ring.tv. The new deal with Fox starts in December and will have 10 “championship-level fights on Fox” with “at least another 12 shows on FS1.” The $50 million Fox budget adds to the $50 million Showtime budget announced last week.
In comparison, Eddie Hearn’s new DAZN streaming service which begins later this month has an estimated annual budget of $125 million.
The Showtime deal is set for 3 years and calls for a monthly series of events presented by PBC on Showtime. There was no indication of the duration for the Fox deal in the initial reports.
Payout Perspective:
Many had written off PBC for blowing through a lot of money in its life cycle and due to poor ratings would not have made it to the end of the year. However, the deals with Showtime and Fox ensure it a huge budget to compete with Hearn’s new upstart streaming service and Top Rank’s contract with ESPN. It will be interesting to see how PBC addresses the low ratings on Fox which have not kept up with UFC events which air in the same time slot on Saturday nights.
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