Showtime's Porter-Garcia Main Event Peaked at 690,000 Viewers

[Ruthless-RKO]

Shawn Porter-Danny Garcia was the most-watched of six boxing matches televised Saturday night on premium cable channels.

Nielsen Media Research ratings released Tuesday revealed Showtime’s main event between Porter and Garcia drew a peak audience of 690,000. An average of 619,000 viewers watched their entire 12-round, 147-pound title fight.

Showtime’s tripleheader Saturday night from Barclays Center in Brooklyn aired mostly at the same time as an HBO “Boxing After Dark” tripleheader from The Forum in Inglewood, California. The peak viewership for HBO’s broadcast was 421,000 during its second fight – a 12-round draw between Filipino super flyweights Donnie Nietes (41-1-5, 23 KOs) and Aston Palicte (24-2-1, 20 KOs).

The bout broadcast before Porter-Garcia, a comparatively boring welterweight fight in which Cuba’s Yordenis Ugas out-pointed Argentina’s Cesar Barrionuevo, was watched by a peak audience of 510,000 and an average audience of 447,000. Ugas (23-3, 11 KOs) became the mandatory challenger for Porter by beating Barrionuevo (34-4-2, 24 KOs, 1 NC) in that 12-round WBC elimination match.

The opener of Showtime’s tripleheader Saturday, an action-packed, 10-round heavyweight brawl between Adam Kownacki and Charles Martin, drew a peak viewership of 503,000 and an average audience of 395,000. Brooklyn’s Kownacki (18-0, 14 KOs) beat St. Louis’ Martin (25-2-1, 23 KOs) by unanimous decision in a fan-friendly fight in which both boxers demonstrated grit and durability.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Not the best numbers for a big fight. Onviously it doesn’t include those that streamed it.

HBO played a part in it with SuperFly 3..

UFC was also on..

I hear College Football is back on top. Not sure if any of it clashed.

[SenorPipino]

Wonder if the thought of a Canelo-Golovkin preview on the HBO telecast also helped cut into Showtimes numbers.

Obviously Porter-Garcia was the fight of the night, but interest in the PPV match a week later probably lured quite a few viewers to HBO.

On it's own, I would have expected Garcia-Porter to top 800,000. It was well hyped and featured 2 fairly high profile fighters, even to casuals

[Ruthless-RKO]

On it's own, I would have expected Garcia-Porter to top 800,000. It was well hyped and featured 2 fairly high profile fighters, even to casuals

Yeh. that sounds about right to me. Plus like I said many thousands would have caught it via the Showtime legal stream service.

[Mexi-Box]

Ouch, horrific numbers.

[Ruthless-RKO]

It does say HBO peaked when Nietes fought which means viewers dropped off for the Estrada fight.

Did Estrada’s fight clash with Porter-Garcia?

[SenorPipino]

And yes, the season opened Saturday for American college football.

Undoubtedly that played a role, (games were on network television as well as most sports cable networks during the fights) but that's true every fall.

[pizzakid13]

I wasn't interested in two guys who already lost to the WW champ. So I watched superfly3.

[jamamb]

man, those dont seem like good numbers for a fight like this.