medved wrote:hi there, been lurking for a while and finally decided to post something.
as the title says, why is there no boxing on terrestrial TV anymore? everything seems to be on sky or setanta and at rediculous times (3am)
i really enjoyed it when ITV had the big fight night, regardless of who was fighting. it was exiting and i would watch it with the wife or my father. nowadays the only way i get to see a boxing match is via an obline stream, which cuts out a lot or is jerky.
there seem to be loads of fighters that are fighting regularly and could do with the TV exposure. i'm not able to attend the fights live but like to see how the british and euro scene is going
i have an interest in boxing now, but there seems to no reliable way to keep watching it on telly now.
It's quite simple, for the broadcaster, as a value proposition, it simply doesn't stack up for a number of reasons.
1 They have to deal with promoters who stage shows, who have their own profit margins and fighters to protect, and who aren't generally happy about having other rival promoters fighters sharing the same bills. This is analagous to a TV channell only being able to show manchester united games, or only games that manchester united approved to participate in.
2 There is little quality control in boxing, and a contract with a TV company, especially an exclusive one, is effectively carte blanche for a promoter to serve up whatever he feels.Therefore the TV channel can end up with dire mistmatches - see Audley Harrisons career on the beeb for the ultimate example.
3 Big time boxing is exceedingly expensive. For the non beeb channels, the only way to recoup this is through advertising revenue or PPV. Unfortunately for them, the boxing fan base is not very big, and also advertisers often are turned off by boxing, and therefore advertising spend is not going to be that high.
If two high profile fighters need paying, the promoter has no choice but to make the fight a PPV and on a premium channel by and large.
