Boxing Coverage on TV in the UK

[colinthfc]

The other Saturday night I felt gutted watching the Valuev v Holyfield on a poor quality stream from my laptop. The night before I was unable to get any coverage at all of the Skelton European title fight.

I have been a Skysports subscriber for years, and have taken on Setanta for an extra £12.99 per month, and what do I get for my money?

Friday night fight night - 2 hours from 9.30 or 10pm most Fridays
Bunce's boxing hour each Thursday
Saturday night shows and through the night shows on Setanta every few weeks.
Eurosport - American and European fights during the week here and there
ITV - Hennessy promotions

Now contrast this to other Sports:
Football - 24/7 coverage Premiership, Championship & vurtually every league in Europe
Cricket all the tests
Golf even has it's own channel on Setanta
Horse Racing has 2 channels
The coverage of the PDC Darts Championship is superb

I accept getting the rights to fights can be expensive, but the up and coming fighters from abroad would surely give their rights up for free to build up their profiles.

Why is Friday fight night on so late?
Why is it limited to only 2 hours?
Why can I not what the fights in the same order as the punter in the arena and have a night of it in the armchair?
Why can I not press the red button and see earlier bouts or highlights?

If Setanta is the 'Home of Boxing' can they give boxing fans a channel just like their golf counterparts.

[dwilson]

Friday night fights is on late because that is the time the headline fights take place on a Friday night. The name gives it away.

It is limited to 2 hours because usually before we get to see a good Rugby or Football match and most people are not interested in seeing a 2-0-0 fighter going in against a 0-3-0 fighter.

Seeing the earlier bouts by red button would be a very good idea. Often we miss a few gems.

We do get alot of good boxing on tv but unfortunetly it is not a bigger sport than horse racing for your betting public. Cricket has all the England tests and we get to see all the big British fighters fight. The reason Skelton and Holyfeild were not on tv is because nobody is mad enough to watch that shit.

[Ilesey]

The other Saturday night I felt gutted watching the Valuev v Holyfield on a poor quality stream from my laptop. The night before I was unable to get any coverage at all of the Skelton European title fight.

I have been a Skysports subscriber for years, and have taken on Setanta for an extra £12.99 per month, and what do I get for my money?

Friday night fight night - 2 hours from 9.30 or 10pm most Fridays
Bunce's boxing hour each Thursday
Saturday night shows and through the night shows on Setanta every few weeks.
Eurosport - American and European fights during the week here and there
ITV - Hennessy promotions

Now contrast this to other Sports:
Football - 24/7 coverage Premiership, Championship & vurtually every league in Europe
Cricket all the tests
Golf even has it's own channel on Setanta
Horse Racing has 2 channels
The coverage of the PDC Darts Championship is superb

I accept getting the rights to fights can be expensive, but the up and coming fighters from abroad would surely give their rights up for free to build up their profiles.

Why is Friday fight night on so late?
Why is it limited to only 2 hours?
Why can I not what the fights in the same order as the punter in the arena and have a night of it in the armchair?
Why can I not press the red button and see earlier bouts or highlights?

If Setanta is the 'Home of Boxing' can they give boxing fans a channel just like their golf counterparts.

Agreed on all accounts. :good

[GazOC]

Horse racing and golf has the level of activity to support dedicated channels, I don't think boxing does.

[alba]

the problem with doing a boxing only channels is you only could show so much...maybe they could do a channel showing both ufc/mma and boxung

[silverman]

Problem is that fights cost lots of money. Most big fights where subscription channels look to make some big bucks (hatton, calzaghe, etc) are in middle of night so fewer new people buy in.
When you look at those figures that Setanta released a bit ago ... it was celebrating that around 350,000 people tuned in to watch Haye v Barrett. But that's less than half of their football audience .... i'm sure they announced their first million audience for some average football match around that time.

[Headphone]

Also alot of boxing fans or part time fans as some call them are only interested in the bigger fights.

[Cobbler]

If the things you suggest were commercially viable, then someone would do it.

[Addie]

It's hard work being a Boxing fan in the UK, but Setanta do there best and are showing Margarito vs Mosley, so it's an absolute must for me. I've been a subscriber pretty much since the Calzaghe/Kessler fight, and it's come to the point where I can't go without it. ITV just shows British fighter who, bless them, are not the best fighters in the world and never have been to be perfectly honest.

[cityofgod]

Its hard to watch fights you know the results of.

[robpalmer135]

quite simply all the other sports mentioned get bigger audiences. and you can understand why if you look at things from outside the box. if boxing had 1 world champ per weight, and less weight classes, we would have all big fights on tv.

also boxing is a nightmare for advertisers, most do not wanna be asocitated with the sport because of the violence, and with football, golf, cricket, tennis, you get guarenteed spots, with boxing the main fight could be over in 1 round, then the guy at gillette who spent £30,000 on his 30 second ad inbetween round 5 has to explain to his boss why 5 people watched it and no shaving foam got sold that month.

boxing is now a niece sport and will rarley be on free tv from now on.

think about this as well, how the world cup final be free for everyone to watch, the most watched sporting event, but sky put khan vs presscott on ppv, makes no sense at all.

[LHL]

On boxing day i was completely hungover until i seen the line up Nuts Tv the day was devoted to boxing the Benn Eubank series then Eubank Vs Watson Kotv Classics i thought i was still drunk reading the line up... Is Nuts Tv really going away ?

[Jetset78]

Problem is that fights cost lots of money. Most big fights where subscription channels look to make some big bucks (hatton, calzaghe, etc) are in middle of night so fewer new people buy in.
When you look at those figures that Setanta released a bit ago ... it was celebrating that around 350,000 people tuned in to watch Haye v Barrett. But that's less than half of their football audience .... i'm sure they announced their first million audience for some average football match around that time.

A big time boxing fight costs the same as a single Prem football match to air.

TV rights to boxing really isnt expensive in the grand scheme of things.

[robpalmer135]

A big time boxing fight costs the same as a single Prem football match to air.

TV rights to boxing really isnt expensive in the grand scheme of things.

This is absolute bullshit mate, im sorry but why make such a false and stupid comment. sky pay 1.1mil per premiership match, they paid way more than that for Hatton vs Mayweather, probs like 5mil and HBO around the same. now i bet you if you put Man Utd vs Liverpool on BBC1 at 9pm on a wednesday, and Hatton vs Mayweather on ITV1 at the same time, both live, United vs Liverpool would absolutley trounce it in viewers.

the TV money makes up for 75% of the revenue for fights, thats why all the big fights still happen in america because of HBO paying a fortune for it, sure there vegas casinos to, but why would calzaghe and jones fight at MSG and draw 15,000 max when they could get 60,000 in wales, because tv money was so big.

boxing as a spectator sport is probably as popular as tennis or golf. in tennis and golf the day to tournements (the equivilent of a british title fight) are hid away on sky and setanta, but when it comes to the grand slams and majors there on BBC, however with boxing they stick the biggest fights on PPV. because of this the sport of becoming mroe and more unpopular as nobody can bloody watch it. andy murray is a bigger household name than calzaghe because everytime murray has a big match its on bbc1, everytime calzaghe has a big fight you gotta fork out £10 or subscribe.

over the next 6 months the new sports minister is reviewing which sports will HAVE to be on terrestrial tv. remember the ashes cricket was on channel 4, then it got taken of the list (which includes olympics, fa cup final, world cup, wimbledon, the open). which should pertition that any unification world title fight involving a british fighter should HAVE to be broadcast on free to air tv.

in terms of sport on tv were 10 years behind the yanks, if you wanna be a boxing fan in the future dig deep, expect more in subscription channels and ppv.

face facts guys you like a nieche sport.

[Cobbler]

face facts guys you like a niece sport.

No niece of mine is taking up boxing...

[Grievesy]

No niece of mine is taking up boxing...

:lol::patsch

[srb31079]

I'm a bit of a boxing whore. I've even paid £14.95 for the last two Khan shows on SBO and no doubt I'll continue....

[Cobbler]

I'm a bit of a boxing whore. I've even paid £14.95 for the last two Khan shows on SBO and no doubt I'll continue....

Purely as an matter of interest, where can one find actual whores that are happy to work on such a basis?

[srb31079]

Purely as an matter of interest, where can one find actual whores that are happy to work on such a basis?

You don't see them often but when they do come out of hiding it has to be seen to be believed....plus they're low maintenance :iak

[Jetset78]

This is absolute bullshit mate, im sorry but why make such a false and stupid comment. sky pay 1.1mil per premiership match, they paid way more than that for Hatton vs Mayweather, probs like 5mil and HBO around the same. now i bet you if you put Man Utd vs Liverpool on BBC1 at 9pm on a wednesday, and Hatton vs Mayweather on ITV1 at the same time, both live, United vs Liverpool would absolutley trounce it in viewers.

the TV money makes up for 75% of the revenue for fights, thats why all the big fights still happen in america because of HBO paying a fortune for it, sure there vegas casinos to, but why would calzaghe and jones fight at MSG and draw 15,000 max when they could get 60,000 in wales, because tv money was so big.

boxing as a spectator sport is probably as popular as tennis or golf. in tennis and golf the day to tournements (the equivilent of a british title fight) are hid away on sky and setanta, but when it comes to the grand slams and majors there on BBC, however with boxing they stick the biggest fights on PPV. because of this the sport of becoming mroe and more unpopular as nobody can bloody watch it. andy murray is a bigger household name than calzaghe because everytime murray has a big match its on bbc1, everytime calzaghe has a big fight you gotta fork out £10 or subscribe.

over the next 6 months the new sports minister is reviewing which sports will HAVE to be on terrestrial tv. remember the ashes cricket was on channel 4, then it got taken of the list (which includes olympics, fa cup final, world cup, wimbledon, the open). which should pertition that any unification world title fight involving a british fighter should HAVE to be broadcast on free to air tv.

in terms of sport on tv were 10 years behind the yanks, if you wanna be a boxing fan in the future dig deep, expect more in subscription channels and ppv.

face facts guys you like a niece sport.

Its not bullshit at all, nor is it false or stupid - know what you are talking about before insulting others. This information was stated by the head of sports at Setanta who is actually in charge of budgeting for the boxing and football that it airs on the channel.

And the word is 'NICHE' - now go and do your homework

Geez :roll:

[Claypole]

No niece of mine is taking up boxing...Unless you can find a niche for them.....

[Claypole]

I think people are being overly picky if they're complaining nobody covered Valuev v Holyfield. We now have several channels regularly covering boxing, it gets more coverage than other minority sports.

If people want to watch more boxing than is shown on the telly, then may I suggest actually attending a live boxing show? We don't have to be slaves to the TV.

[GazOC]

Unless you can find a niche for them.....

Whats Cobblers nieces niche like?;)

[robpalmer135]

its a good thing nobody coverd valuev vs holyfield.

[Chinny]

Can't really agree with this thread. I think we do pretty well now. All the major UK promoters have a TV deal and we get most of the decent overseas stuff, mainly on Setanta.
The problem is some of the fights which slip through wouldn't do so if the people controlling the purse strings knew the first thing about boxing.
I'm thinking all three Vasquez-Marquez fights here. Unforgivable :patsch

[El Cepillo]

This is absolute bullshit mate, im sorry but why make such a false and stupid comment. sky pay 1.1mil per premiership match, they paid way more than that for Hatton vs Mayweather, probs like 5mil and HBO around the same. now i bet you if you put Man Utd vs Liverpool on BBC1 at 9pm on a wednesday, and Hatton vs Mayweather on ITV1 at the same time, both live, United vs Liverpool would absolutley trounce it in viewers.

the TV money makes up for 75% of the revenue for fights, thats why all the big fights still happen in america because of HBO paying a fortune for it, sure there vegas casinos to, but why would calzaghe and jones fight at MSG and draw 15,000 max when they could get 60,000 in wales, because tv money was so big.

boxing as a spectator sport is probably as popular as tennis or golf. in tennis and golf the day to tournements (the equivilent of a british title fight) are hid away on sky and setanta, but when it comes to the grand slams and majors there on BBC, however with boxing they stick the biggest fights on PPV. because of this the sport of becoming mroe and more unpopular as nobody can bloody watch it. andy murray is a bigger household name than calzaghe because everytime murray has a big match its on bbc1, everytime calzaghe has a big fight you gotta fork out £10 or subscribe.

over the next 6 months the new sports minister is reviewing which sports will HAVE to be on terrestrial tv. remember the ashes cricket was on channel 4, then it got taken of the list (which includes olympics, fa cup final, world cup, wimbledon, the open). which should pertition that any unification world title fight involving a british fighter should HAVE to be broadcast on free to air tv.

in terms of sport on tv were 10 years behind the yanks, if you wanna be a boxing fan in the future dig deep, expect more in subscription channels and ppv.

face facts guys you like a nieche sport.

Agreed. :good

[ishy]

I think Setanta or Sky(preferably Setanta) need to tie up a deal with Golden Boy and then we would have more or less ALL of the big fights on British TV.

Still can't believe that not even one fight from the Marquez v Vazquez trilogy was on British TV.

[Headphone]

The problem is that not many people will get up in the early hours of the morning to watch two fairly big names in the US.