Showtime is leaving the professional boxing market

Showtime has announced that it is leaving the professional boxing broadcast market. The news marks the end of an era for a genre whose fortunes have been defined by cable television and pay-per-view shows for decades. Now the second – after HBO, which left back in 2018 – and the last key player of the “classical” format has said goodbye to it, which is either no longer able to compete with the new format, with an emphasis on the Internet audience, or is slightly disappointed in the one that passed in terms of demand from the public and profitability.

About Showtime later this year stops showing professional boxing matches, its parent company Paramount Global said. It said in a statement that the “difficult” decision was made “as it implements a strategy to more effectively use resources and distribute content offerings across the business as a whole.” The final event that viewers will be able to see on Showtime, therefore, will be the match on November 25 between two famous super middleweights (up to 76.2 kg) – David Benavidez and Demetrius Andred.

It is clear why this news was perceived in America and throughout the world boxing community as a shock.

The fact is that it marks the end of an entire era – an era when the entire landscape of professional boxing was largely determined by cable television.

She opened up in 1973, when HBO burst into the market in the main martial arts genre and began organizing pay-per-view broadcasts for top fights, when a subscriber acquires the right to watch a specific show or a specific event within its framework. And the number of such purchases (and their price) soon became the standard measure of the commercial success of matches. Revenue from television has become the main source of income for tournament organizers and the fighters themselves.

In 1986 HBO had a competitor in the form of Showtime, which was also interested in professional boxing, and quickly found itself on an equal footing with it. Already in the 1990s, the channel had, for example, the great heavyweights Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield under contracts, and later other stars were added to them, including the enormously popular welterweight Floyd Mayweather.

This situation also created problems. Rival channels did not allow “their” fighters to participate in the shows shown by their opponents. But sometimes they managed to come to an agreement for the sake of very top fights. Just such a “joint” match set a record for generated income. In 2015 it met Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, a boxer with a deal with HBO. The total amount of revenue from the fight significantly exceeded $500 million. The lion’s share of it came from pay-per-view: TV channels reported 4.6 million purchases.

HBO left boxing yet in 2018. This has already been perceived in the boxing world as a signal that cable TV channels are having a hard time fighting against the more “traditional” players that have burst into the market along with TV channels, like ESPN, and players of a fundamentally new formation, more focused on the Internet audience, such as the streaming service DAZN. Now Showtime has followed HBO. Moreover, which is doubly significant, after what at first glance was a rather successful season for itself in terms of boxing content. In 2023, Showtime aired several top fights at once, including, say, a fight in which Saul Alvarez in September defended the title the undisputed super middleweight champion of the world by defeating Jermell Charlo, or World Boxing Organization (WBO) belt holder Tim Tszyu’s victory over Brian Mendoza last weekend.

This circumstance forced a number of media resources, such as ESPN, Sportingnews, to suggest that another important reason for the channel’s separation from its almost native species is disappointment in it as a way to make money. Indeed, the feeling that boxing has lost popularity, that in this sense it is no longer inferior to, for example, mixed martial arts, arose several years ago. Since then it has not disappeared anywhere. The easiest way to back it up is with numbers.

In this year’s Showtime package, the April fight of famous lightweights (up to 61.2 kg), in which Gervonta Davis received the status of perhaps the most resounding hit knocked out Ryan Garcia.

The number of purchases of his broadcast amounted to 1.2 million. On the one hand, an excellent figure, on the other hand, whatever one may say, it is significantly lower than the peak figures from the last decade. At the same time, for the vast majority of fights, even those involving boxers with excellent track records, in the current decade the bar of 1 million purchases is something far beyond the horizon.

Showtime’s parting with boxing also gives rise to a rather interesting intrigue. In fact, the channel’s connection with him has recently been maintained only thanks to a contract with the influential American promoter Al Haymon and his company PBC. From January next year, its huge roster of celebrity clients, including Saul Alvarez, Jermell Charlo, David Benavidez, Gervonta Davis, Errol Spence, Deontay Wilder, Tim Tszyu, Caleb Plant, will be available to other media resources. ESPN, however, has no doubt that Al Haymon is already in talks with potential partners, highlighting DAZN and Amazon Prime Video as favorites.

Alexey Dospehov