Top Rank and ESPN to split in Summer 2025

[Ruthless-RKO]

REPORT: ESPN TO PART WAYS WITH BOB ARUM’S TOP RANK, END EXCLUSIVE EIGHT-YEAR CONTENT DEAL

ESPN’s exclusive, eight-year content partnership with Hall-of-Fame promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc. will come to an end this summer.

The Ring has confirmed that Arum’s company is tentatively scheduled to air its final card on ESPN on July 26. The fights and site for what will be at least a doubleheader had not been scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon.

Evan Korn, director of communications and fighter development for Top Rank, declined comment when reached by The Ring.

The news of Top Rank’s split with ESPN, which was first reported Tuesday by frontofficesports.com, has been rumored within the boxing industry for several months. It is widely viewed as a negative development for the niche sport because premium cable channels HBO and Showtime stopped broadcasting boxing in 2018 and 2023 respectively and FOX essentially ended its content agreement with Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions in 2022.

Multiple sources have informed The Ring that Arum and Top Rank president Todd duBoef, Arum’s stepson, have had discussions at least with representatives from Max – the streaming service that includes content from former Top Rank partner HBO, TBS and TNT – and DAZN, which works with Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, allegedly’s Queensberry Promotions and [Dmitriy] Salita Promotions.

Top Rank is believed to seek multiple streaming partners with which it can work once its deal with ESPN ends.

It has ascending, undefeated contenders on its roster, three of whom – lightweight Keyshawn Davis, junior middleweight Xander Zayas and lightweight Abdullah Mason – will fight Friday night at Madison Square Garden’s Theater in New York. The company also televises and streams bouts through its deal with ESPN for two of the top four fighters on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list, Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue (No. 2), the fully unified junior featherweight champ, and Russian knockout artist Artur Beterbiev (No. 4), boxing’s undisputed light heavyweight champion, as well as WBO junior welterweight champ Teofimo Lopez.

The company has parted ways, however, with four-weight world champion Terence Crawford and the undefeated fighter Crawford has helped develop, unbeaten WBC lightweight champ Shakur Stevenson, and former undisputed lightweight champ Devin Haney in recent years. Crawford is ranked third on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list and Haney is rated 10th.

Former WBC heavyweight champ Tyson Fury, which Top Rank also co-promoted with Warren’s company, announced his retirement for the umpteenth time last month as well.

Top Rank’s deal with ESPN began in unforgettable fashion in July 2017, when Australian underdog Jeff Horn upset Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao by unanimous decision to win the WBO welterweight title at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Horn’s hometown.

ESPN and Top Rank entered a new seven-year agreement in 2018 because ESPN executives were pleased with viewership that often exceeded averages above 1 million for main events in the first year of the deal. Also in 2018, the basic cable network launched ESPN+, the streaming service through which it offers live fights, press conferences, weigh-ins and shoulder programming.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Bob gonna look for multiple streaming platforms.

Who else really is there?

It’s gonna be DAZN.

Shame that cable has lost boxing.

Showtime, HBO, FOX and now ESPN.

[Ruthless-RKO]

It might mean the end of Top Rank’s deal with Sky in the UK, which I really liked and it gave Sky some good content. Far more than what Boxxer was giving.

[aumonier]

Boxing on TV in France was mostly these last years Top Rank Cards on RMC Sport (previously on BeIn Sport, and RMC also had PBC cards until 2023), so it could mean far less boxing on TV in France, with Canal + doing almost nothing for years (except cards with Tony Yoka as main event) and now only DAZN offering boxing. But DAZN is not very popular in here (but the concern in France is not on boxing but on football).

[joshj909]

Hope it's DAZN so there's fewer subscriptions and less obstacles to make fights.

Bob must be close to fully retiring, voluntarily or "forcibly", right?

[Ruthless-RKO]

Hope it's DAZN so there's fewer subscriptions and less obstacles to make fights.

Bob must be close to fully retiring, voluntarily or "forcibly", right?

His son in law has already took more control over the business.

[Evander]

Sounds like a re-brand.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Top Rank searching for new options as ESPN lets current deal expire - Lance Pugmire

ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports broadcasting, has decided it can make do without Top Rank. The legacy promotion is twisting in the wind as it heads to a summer expiration date on its time with ESPN with no new deal in place.

Front Office Sports first reported the news Tuesday that ESPN intends to withdraw from its eight-year partnership when its current deal expires later this year. A Top Rank official previously told BS the final Top Rank on ESPN card was expected to occur in July.

While Top Rank officials declined to identify the current contract’s ending as a permanent split between Top Rank and ESPN, one official said the report’s timing is “nefarious” because Top Rank is actively working with others to broker its next major broadcast/streaming deal.

ESPN is seemingly honoring any remaining leverage for Top Rank by declining to comment on the Front Office Sports report.

Still, it had been stirring for months that ESPN intended to withdraw from its union with Top Rank when this current deal expires later this year, and Top Rank has been actively negotiating with other broadcasters.

Front Office Sports reported ESPN has informed Top Rank that it can exit its deal before its scheduled summer expiration date should the promotion strike another broadcast agreement.

As it heads to a Friday card on ESPN headlined by promising lightweight contender Keyshawn Davis fighting new WBO champion Denys Berinchyk at the Madison Square Garden Theater, Top Rank is plotting a broadcast or streaming future with “two or three” partners, according to a company official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

The most prominent player in those discussions has been Warner Bros. Discovery, which would offer Top Rank a broadcast home on Turner Sports and a streaming platform on HBO Max, according to an official familiar with the talks.

The charismatic Olympic silver medalist Davis fighting for a world title offers Top Rank a welcome jolt as the talent in their stable has diminished in recent years. Ex-heavyweight champion Tyson Fury lost his belt to Oleksandr Usyk and retired. Four-division champion Terence Crawford and three-division champion Shakur Stevenson left the company. Three-division champion Vasiliy Lomachenko is sidelined by injury. And two-division champion Teofimo Lopez participated in two modest shows before rejecting a March date.

While ESPN retains ties to combat sports as the cable and streaming home to the UFC, the sports giant could also still offer a home to boxing with UFC parent company TKO moving toward participating in a boxing league.

Top Rank has upcoming ESPN spring cards headlined by the March 29 Mikaela Mayer-Sandy Ryan women’s lightweight title rematch and an April 5 lightweight title eliminator pitting contenders Raymond Muratalla and Zaur Abdullaev.

The promotion is also planning a Las Vegas return by Japan’s undisputed super-bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue, perhaps on Cinco de Mayo weekend.

A Top Rank spokesman expressed appreciation for the promotion’s “existing relationship with ESPN,” as an “industry defining experience.”

Losing the reach of ESPN is viewed by many, including those in the company, as a black eye given the network’s global reach for a sport that boasts worldwide appeal.

ESPN’s departure follows the exodus of HBO and Showtime from the sport, and further emphasizes DAZN as the leading streaming power in the sport given its ties to Saudi Arabia financier Turki Alalshikh.

Alalshikh is staging a February 22 card in Saudi Arabia featuring title fights in the heavyweight, light heavyweight and lightweight divisions on DAZN.

Topping the card is the undisputed light heavyweight title defense by Top Rank-promoted Artur Beterbiev of Russia.

Alalshikh has plans for similarly formidable cards and bouts to come on DAZN, including pitting Crawford against fellow four-division champion Canelo Alvarez in September.

[freddy73]

This seems to have gone quiet, surely a deal must be in place or almost by now if the ESPN deal ends in July?

[Ruthless-RKO]

Top Rank will have three new broadcasters ‘within the next few weeks’

Bob Arum hopes that Top Rank will finalise its new broadcast agreement in the coming weeks.

The promotional powerhouse’s contract with ESPN is to conclude by the end of July, eight years after the start of a collaboration that at one point was intended to deliver 54 promotions a year.

Despite suggestions regarding Top Rank’s potential demise, Arum expects the new broadcast picture they enter to have an increased number of dates than exists in their expiring agreement with the influential ESPN.

He is also confident that Top Rank’s fights will be broadcast on both free-to-air and streaming services, but played down the prospect of – as had been rumoured within boxing circles – Top Rank working hand in hand with Premier Boxing Champions, whose promotions have been featuring on Amazon and who, like Top Rank, are among the decreasing number of influential promoters not committed to DAZN.

“Within the next few weeks,” Arum told BS when asked when he expects their new agreements to be secured. “It’s a little complicated, because when we were with ESPN it was one outlet – ESPN – and now there’ll be three outlets with Top Rank Boxing.

“More [dates] than we have now. Both streaming and free to air.

“Our contract is over at the end of July.”

Asked about a potential model with PBC, he responded: “No. [But] we’ve always been open to collaborate with PBC. It’s having their fighters fight our fighters – it’s as simple as that.”

From the perspective of their new broadcast partners the heavyweight Jared Anderson will likely represent one of Top Rank’s most valuable assets – even in a stable in which the IBF lightweight champion Keyshawn Davis and the featherweight Bruce Carrington are among their most promising young fighters.

The 25-year-old Anderson’s career has stalled since he was so recklessly matched with Martin Bakole and suffered his first defeat in August 2024. He returned in February when he defeated Greece’s little-known Marios Kollias, but asked for their plans regarding the heavyweight, Arum replied: “Ask Jared Anderson. He has to get over what happened to him with Bakole.

“I’ll be talking to his management in the next few weeks. Hopefully we get him back in action, but at this point I don’t know.

“[We will have a date for him] as soon as he’s willing to get in the ring and fight.”

[Ruthless-RKO]

‘It would be a tragedy’: Bob Arum doesn’t want to see Ali Act amended

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Arum on finding Top Rank a new broadcasting partner
“You see what’s happening with streaming and what’s happening with the networks, so when we make our new deal — and we had a great deal with ESPN and they were great partners — and when we make our new deal we want it to be with the best possible opportunity for exposure and we’re being very, very cautious of where we’re going to go, who we’re going to go with, and whether it’s going to be streaming or over the air or a combination of both.

“And that’s why I left behind in Las Vegas all of my people who are having meetings as we speak with various companies, because we see that Paramount realized the value of combat sports and they paid this enormous amount of money to UFC and while we don’t expect to get the same kind of money I think it bodes well for us that NBC, Peacock and Starz and other entities that are programming buy all or part of our product.

“In other words it may not be possible for us to make an exclusive deal with one entity but we can make a deal with two or three, put the sausage together and achieve what we’re looking to achieve, which is the greatest exposure for our product.

“…Netflix is always in play because they have so much money. But Netflix, I don’t think, has shown any interest in doing boxing on a regular basis. They would rather spend a lot of money for what they believe to be a blockbuster event and show it that way…Canelo vs Crawford is I think the first real fight they’ve had on Netflix but it’s clearly a big fight and worldwide it’s going to get a huge audience.”

[gilgamesh]

Good. I pay for one app, and when that 1 app has only 1 Boxing promotion on it, ESPN ain't it.