I think you'd be surprised at the naivety of television executives, how many people within ITV these days, actually have much knowledge of boxing now.Furey wrote:Surely this has to be ITV testing the waters of there PPV platform and model?
That's how I see it anyway, as surely anyone with a brain never mind one of the largest television production outfits on the planet can see that these type of mismatch 'events' will flop at box office.
Hopefully this is just them testing there model and we will see proper meaningful fights, it's good to have terrestrial TV back involved but if they won't be delivering good fights then it's pointless.
They may well buy into the Eubanks blarney, and think that this fight is going to garner lots of views, when in fact, it seems extremely unlikely, unless they spend a fortune on advertising first, boxing isn't what it was in Eubank Senior's heyday, it doesn't get anything like the coverage in the papers it once did, nor or national news, so they will have to punt this hard.
It can be done, but not without spending some up front, and even then, is it going to convince people to part with their hard earned?
Surely more sensible to do this on terrestrial and look at the advertising revenue, after all, people are far more likely to tune into a free fight, and if the figures are high, there's plenty of money to be made on advertising revenue on prime time TV.
I have a sneaking feeling this will flop, and ITV may well fall back out of love with boxing, but I could be wrong, god knows I have been before.