Lomachenko-Commey Fight Drew Peak Audience Of 1,243,000, Averaged 1,129,000 On ESPN
Later Saturday night, Showtime’s telecast of a live tripleheader that featured Nonito Donaire drew about as well as could’ve been expected based on the extremely late start time for the main event.
Donaire’s fourth-round knockout of fellow Filipino Reymart Gaballo was watched by an average of 187,000.
The Donaire-Gaballo bout didn’t begin until 1:13 a.m. ET. The 39-year-old Donaire (42-6, 28 KOs) knocked out the previously unbeaten Gaballo (24-1, 20 KOs), the mandatory challenger for Donaire’s WBC bantamweight title, with a right hand to the body.
The co-feature of Showtime’s broadcast, Cody Crowley-Kudratillo Abdukakhorov, drew a peak viewership of 215,000.
That 10-round welterweight bout began at 12:11 a.m. ET. Crowley (20-0, 9 KOs), a southpaw from Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, got up from a second-round knockdown and thoroughly out-boxed Uzbekistan’s Abdukakhorov (18-1, 10 KOs) to win a unanimous decision (98-91, 97-92, 95-94).
Nielsen’s numbers for Showtime include only those that watched live on that premium cable channel as well. Like ESPN+, ViacomCBS, which owns Showtime and BS.com, does not release its streaming numbers, which account for a significant number of viewers.
As a premium network, Showtime has slightly less than a third the number of subscribers as ESPN, a basic cable channel.
DAZN, which streamed cards from Russia and England on Saturday, doesn’t release its streaming numbers, either, nor are those figures tracked by Nielsen.