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IS ESPN, YOUR BOXING AUTHORITY?
Last time out, I analyzed some of ESPNs recent moves in thearea of boxing, and that it appears the network that calls itself YourBoxing Authority is positioning itself in a place of power within thesport. Bold decisions like snapping up The Contender reality series,and adding eight more shows to its 2006 fight schedule lead fans to proclaim ESPNthe hopeful new savior of the sweet science in the United States. Butlets put aside the question of whether boxing can actually be saved atall i.e. returned to at least the most recent glory days of the 1980s and take a look at whether ESPN has the resources to do it.
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IN 2005, ESPN IS NETWORK TELEVISION!
Many a fan and commentator laments the absence of significant boxing onnetwork television. But the television landscape is different now than itwas a decade or two ago when fights were appearing regularly on ABC, NBC andCBS. Today, 78% of homes with TV receive ESPN, whichamounts to more than 80 million homes. When you consider that the NFL,college football and basketball, and the NBA migrated to cable over thelast decade as well, you can pretty much be assured that anyone who doesntreceive ESPN is either economically deprived, or theyre not asports fan anyway. The all-sports network is not a side dish to the sportsfan as it was in the early 1980s. No, increasingly it is the maincourse.
FANS GETTING THEIR BEST DOLLAR VALUE
So as far as the boxing audience is concerned, being on ESPN isas good as network TV in 2006. The other big-time boxing outlets, HBOand Showtime, could never serve this role, as HBO is in just28 million homes, while Showtime does less than half of that. So ESPNpasses the grade on that count.
EXPANDING THE BOXING CALENDAR
Another advantage unique to ESPN is the volume and regularityof airdates it has to offer. With 48 shows in 2006, ESPN maybroadcast almost as many live cards as HBO and Showtime combined. Thereis no reason that exciting young prospects like John Duddy, Lamont Peterson andAndre Dirrell couldnt appear several times over the course of a year, allthe while building a fan base.
NETWORKS ALL HAVE THEIR MODUS OPERANDI
Showtime took that approach recently with Mike Arnaoutis, andwas rewarded by some of Sho Boxs more exciting fights and theemergence of a potential star who many boxing fans will associate with Showtime. ESPNfeatured many exciting prospects in 2005 and could do the same as Showtime. Theaudience would begin with the hard-core fight fan, but unlike on Showtime,momentum could cross over eventually to the general ESPN viewer. Ifpromoted intelligently with The Contender, and the networks ESPNClassic boxing fare, the results could be spectacular.
CAN THE BRISTOL BOYS CREATE NEW FANS?
Most observers would agree then that should they choose to, ESPN basedin Bristol, CT, could indeed be the conduit to systematically create andpublicize the next generation of boxings superstars, a role that has beenfilled haphazardly at best by boxings few television outlets (ESPNincluded) over the last decade or so. But will they choose to? That iswhat we wait to find out.
ALL BOILS DOWN TO DOLLARS & SENSE!
Unlike HBO and Showtime, ESPN will need to turn aprofit on boxing to justify everything they do with it. The premium cablenetworks operate by paid subscriber base and are not so handcuffed by ratingsand advertising pressure. Obviously, they aim to defray the cost of theirboxing programming or turn a profit with their pay-per-views, but boxing isreally just another investment in original programming HBO andShowtime use to lure and hold their subscriber base.
BRISTOL BOYS, NEED TO TURN PROFIT!
ESPN however is going to have to directly generate significantadvertising revenue from its fight broadcasts, and herein lays the biggestchallenge. Since 2004, ESPN has stopped paying the promotersof its fights a substantial rights fee, which reduces the ability of thepromoter to stage top-flight bouts. Instead, the promoter is responsiblefor lining up sponsorship for the event, of which ESPN takes apiece. So although a mediocre match-up on Friday Night Fights may onlygenerate a .6 television rating, it is being done at a fairly low cost. Shouldthey decide to financially back the cards as theyve done in the past, theratings increase is going to have to substantially outweigh the costs, andthats never guaranteed.
FOX HAS QUALITY FIGHTS, AND YET SUB-PAR RATINGS
Good fights do not equal automatic ratings. For reference, Fox Sportsmanaged just a .37 rating (just a couple hundred thousand households) for the GlennJohnson-George Jones fight, featuring the number one contender in the lightheavyweight division against a top ten opponent. In the end, ESPNmay decide to continue to play it safe for meager ratings and low costs, whichwill send us all scrambling around begging some other entity to step in and saveboxing from its own devices.
Lou Ciaccia
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