BoxRec

It seems that a lot of fans are really not happy with the boxing coverage from sky at present and it’s more than just a couple of things that are putting people off. Going through the recent threads, the main gripes seem to be:

1) Pay Per Views – Poor healdliners or very uncompetitve cards. If you were to bet on the 6 fights offered by the bookies (Smith, Cleverly, Sexton, Gavin, Saunders & DeGale) you could only get a price of 4/7 for an accumulator. Is that type of card really worth £15?
2) Bias – Nelson & the commentary team failing to notice anything of value from Groves and jumping for joy at the sheer thought of DeGale landing a punch.
3) Team Numbers – How many presenters does it take to ruin a fight? I’m not sure exactly but sky seem to have found that number, doubled it and put a team together. They need to take the best ones forward and bomb the rest.
4) Lack of the undercard – This one is open to interpretation but I think the majority of fans want to see live action on tv when they’ve stumped up £15 rather than the aforementioned team talking about the same old sh!te for 3 hours in preparation for the big fight. Haye v Harrison had one live undercard bout (I think) & it was only Saunders, Gavin & Cleverly on Saturday.
5) Skysports News Presenters – ‘Stateside v Amir Khan, do you fancy it?’ I think that says it all. When you're overcrowding a studio on fight night, surely you can get one of those people to talk to the fighters


I think all of the aboveWhat else do sky need to do to get you happy to purchase ppv’s?

They need to overhaul their staff in front of the cameras.

There's far to much bias on show, especially during the commentating and it's coloring the action in their favour.

It's gotten so bad I actually dread the impending Froch and Klitschko fights as Watt pours scorn on everything and ruins the excitement - whilst Rawlings blathers all over Klitschko's million-pound entrance.

They to learn when silence is better than chat. I wish their mic's were powered down until the first bell seriously.

Johnny Nelson has annoyed me more and more in the build up to the last weekend's fight.

His bias towards Degale was an absolute disgrace and he deserved a reprimand in my opinion.

Also, his rehearsed jokes with Adam Smith do nothing but make me cringe.

Drop PPV completely I don't care if it means fighters get less money, they can can do one of two things to rectify that - 1) fight more frequently or 2) get a second job.

The entire Sky Sports commentary and punditry team needs an overhaul.

Less talk, more action.

jim watt starts off with an opinion on how things will happen and twists his entire commentary to suit that pre-existing opinion...

whoever said he pours scorn on things is also correct...is it that hard to find someone a little bit more enthusiastic about the sport and it's trappings?

Taking the original topics:
1. PPV) One of the reasons that boxing is getting left behind in terms of popularity compared to other sports is that its still being run to make promoters and other organisers rich rather than provide top entertainment for the fans. A sport cannot survive long term if its business model is simply to fleece fans regularly about the quality of a PPV and hype it beyond all belief to support this. I have no problem paying a wee bit extra to see the real greats of the game in great matchups but we are now in a bizarre time where its free to see Pacman on sky but you have to pay to watch groves degale which is essentially two prospects very early on in their careers. The justification for paying an extra amount on top of the already high price of a sky sports subscription seemed to be simply that 'they didn't like each other in their amateur days'. People on tv saying A-Farce had a real chance against Haye is the sort of thing that makes our sport a laughing stock and loses us credibility. I suppose we have to take responsibility too: there is a very easy way to get rid of substandard ppv's and that's for everyone to simply boycot buying them.

2. Bias) I agree that often the sky team seem to be obsessed with one boxer over another but I don't think its bias per se. I think, taking saturday night as an example, they've just been so swept up in the degale hype that they haven't been able to look objectively at what's going on in the ring. I was surprised as I really like Darke and don't mind Watt either, but there were several occasions where I definately though groves landed the better shot but the commentators only mentioned degale landing. You do see this in other sports, where for example commentators bang on about how amazing the style of football arsenal play is when they might be getting outplayed by the other team at that particular time. It's as if they've decided what they want to see rather than just calling what they are seeing.

3. Team Size) Completely agree it should be reduced. I think they have a large team to provide a better viewer experience but it actually works the opposite for me where I often wonder why someone is there just to do one thing. I like Bob Mee but do they really need to employ someone to read the rules for 10 seconds before the fight? I like the fact that Sky are making an effort with boxing and trying new things but often less is more in these sorts of events.

4. Lack of undercard) I think Sky are in a difficult position here. On one hand I think for these weak PPV's of late they should be showing as much of the event as they can to try and provide some kind of value. On the other hand I realise that most TV sports viewers are not as obsessed with boxing as we are and they need to get the balance right between an impactful show that doesn't just drag on forever and something for the die hard fans to really get their teeth into. It's a tough one though - when they show a big concert on tv they don't show the 7 support bands that were on stage earlier in full and there is a reason for that: most of the viewers don't have time/interest to sit through it all. One thing I don't agree with is mindless waffle for an hour instead of the undercard. The problem recently is the undercards are so poor/one-sided on the PPV's that they wouldn't provide much entertainment anyway!

5. Sports news presenters) Sports news presenters will always be picked (trying to be careful what I say here) on a combination of their looks, personality and sports knowledge, rather than their sports knowledge alone. It's the same the world over. I've lived in the states and am a huge fan of all of the american sports, and i am amazed almost on a daily basis about how the SSN presenters don't seem to know who some of the most famous baseball players (for example) are. I often hear their names completely mispronounced. Surely it can't be that hard if your full-time job is to know about sports that you would have an in-depth knowledge of most sports you cover. Groves fighting Amir Khan in the states? Is the head of sky sports not a boxing man? What does he think of comments like that?

apophenic wrote:jim watt starts off with an opinion on how things will happen and twists his entire commentary to suit that pre-existing opinion...

whoever said he pours scorn on things is also correct...is it that hard to find someone a little bit more enthusiastic about the sport and it's trappings?

People often say this about Watt, I cannot see this. On the Sky Sports Promo's he went for Degale, but gave Groves a lot of credit throughout the actual contest - had Groves in a handy lead at one stage only for Degale to comeback - but was his card seriously out? Did Degale not actually win more of the rounds from the 9th?

He will admit when he is surprised by a fighter, isn't that a good thing though? Did anyone expect Groves to box the way he did? He was impressed with the gameplan and it changed his opinion of Groves.

He's very enthusiastic when it comes to Manny Pacquiao and the in ring skills of Mayweather. Yeah he was negative a bit on Saturday when it came to Degale.... but he had every reason to be, this was supposed to be the best prospect in the UK - a world champion in the making and he was clueless for the most part.

I can identify with many of the complaints already mentioned but I'll just mention the one thing I really hate and cannot understand: Adverts between rounds on PPV fights. HBO don't do it, Showtime don't do it, the only ones who do are Sky - and it's taking the piss. Obviously I understand the value of advertising revenue but in my own case, with Boxing Monthly, I set a figure for the amount of editorial pages I am willing to give up to adverts, which often costs us money. But people do not buy BM to read adverts and people don't buy PPVs to watch adverts. We already pay for any form of Sky coverage at all, then we are asked £15 on top for a PPV. Sky are absolutely coining it at our expense and it's inexcusable and disrespectful IMO. No one else in the world does it, just them. And it's wrong. Particularly as Sky TV as a whole is so fond of telling us how much they are in profit at the end of each financial year. Stop it Sky, stop treating us like mugs.

stujones wrote:

apophenic wrote:jim watt starts off with an opinion on how things will happen and twists his entire commentary to suit that pre-existing opinion...

whoever said he pours scorn on things is also correct...is it that hard to find someone a little bit more enthusiastic about the sport and it's trappings?

People often say this about Watt, I cannot see this. On the Sky Sports Promo's he went for Degale, but gave Groves a lot of credit throughout the actual contest - had Groves in a handy lead at one stage only for Degale to comeback - but was his card seriously out? Did Degale not actually win more of the rounds from the 9th?

He will admit when he is surprised by a fighter, isn't that a good thing though? Did anyone expect Groves to box the way he did? He was impressed with the gameplan and it changed his opinion of Groves.

He's very enthusiastic when it comes to Manny Pacquiao and the in ring skills of Mayweather. Yeah he was negative a bit on Saturday when it came to Degale.... but he had every reason to be, this was supposed to be the best prospect in the UK - a world champion in the making and he was clueless for the most part.

Going back to Haye v Valuev, he was also extremely negative about Haye that night and commentated as if Haye had done nothing and in no way did he have any chance of winning the fight. I can't remember the exact scorecard he gave but he had Valuev up by a few.

Have read this morning (was the daily mail though) that 170,000 people bought the fight on saturday

I do agree Freddie that on away trips for the British fighter he can sometimes get it wrong. The worst one was the Colin Lynes vs Branco fight..... where in fact he was saying "I would score that round for Lynes, the Italian's won't so I will score it for Branco". I guess he has seen too many "dodgy" decisions in his time and knows the Brit needs to do more.

On the Haye vs Valuev fight, I have to say I thought he called it correct. For what it's worth I thought Haye didn't do enough. It wasn't that long ago when the likes of Brian Magee (vs Tsyspko), Howard Eastman (vs Abraham) and Michael Carruth looked like they out worked their opponent not to get the decision - Magee and Carruth certainly worked harder than Haye. Similarly, Carl Thompson boxed Ralf Rochigiani's head off in the rematch only to get it via a narrow split decision.

stujones wrote:I do agree Freddie that on away trips for the British fighter he can sometimes get it wrong. The worst one was the Colin Lynes vs Branco fight..... where in fact he was saying "I would score that round for Lynes, the Italian's won't so I will score it for Branco". I guess he has seen too many "dodgy" decisions in his time and knows the Brit needs to do more.

On the Haye vs Valuev fight, I have to say I thought he called it correct. For what it's worth I thought Haye didn't do enough. It wasn't that long ago when the likes of Brian Magee (vs Tsyspko), Howard Eastman (vs Abraham) and Michael Carruth looked like they out worked their opponent not to get the decision - Magee and Carruth certainly worked harder than Haye. Similarly, Carl Thompson boxed Ralf Rochigiani's head off in the rematch only to get it via a narrow split decision.

but he should call it how he sees it not how he thinks biased judges may score it.

because that ruins not only the result (via bad judging) but also the fight having to listen to him disparaging everything.

apophenic wrote:

stujones wrote:I do agree Freddie that on away trips for the British fighter he can sometimes get it wrong. The worst one was the Colin Lynes vs Branco fight..... where in fact he was saying "I would score that round for Lynes, the Italian's won't so I will score it for Branco". I guess he has seen too many "dodgy" decisions in his time and knows the Brit needs to do more.

On the Haye vs Valuev fight, I have to say I thought he called it correct. For what it's worth I thought Haye didn't do enough. It wasn't that long ago when the likes of Brian Magee (vs Tsyspko), Howard Eastman (vs Abraham) and Michael Carruth looked like they out worked their opponent not to get the decision - Magee and Carruth certainly worked harder than Haye. Similarly, Carl Thompson boxed Ralf Rochigiani's head off in the rematch only to get it via a narrow split decision.

but he should call it how he sees it not how he thinks biased judges may score it.

because that ruins not only the result (via bad judging) but also the fight having to listen to him disparaging everything.

True, although I think it was only the once he did do this as far as I can remember (for me a very bad night, but everyone can have one). I think he didn't think Haye did enough no matter what the venue was and he did start to close up the fight by stating "Valuev is just doing nothing now".

But for me, he is spot on 90% of the time and IMO he has a great voice and is so articulate. Gets the Psychology of the fight game spot on, senses the body language of fighters.

All about opinion, but Jim Watt should not be even thought about being dropped - use him more... in a less is more approach, have Watt doing post fight and the co-commentary (like he used to do on ITV) - Get Rosenthal on board (Commentating and Presenting).... keep Darke on board (I know he is on a reduced scheduled), Keep McGuigan, and have Smith and Ed Robinson for interviews - maybe one of the other members (Nelson, Piper, McCrory, Oliver, Moore, Rob Reid - I would get him on board etc) if the fights involves a person from their weight class, area, or a ex opponent/friend.

Another thing I would do is reduce the Prizefighters, its overkill now.

Glyn Leach wrote:I can identify with many of the complaints already mentioned but I'll just mention the one thing I really hate and cannot understand: Adverts between rounds on PPV fights. HBO don't do it, Showtime don't do it, the only ones who do are Sky - and it's taking the piss. Obviously I understand the value of advertising revenue but in my own case, with Boxing Monthly, I set a figure for the amount of editorial pages I am willing to give up to adverts, which often costs us money. But people do not buy BM to read adverts and people don't buy PPVs to watch adverts. We already pay for any form of Sky coverage at all, then we are asked £15 on top for a PPV. Sky are absolutely coining it at our expense and it's inexcusable and disrespectful IMO. No one else in the world does it, just them. And it's wrong. Particularly as Sky TV as a whole is so fond of telling us how much they are in profit at the end of each financial year. Stop it Sky, stop treating us like mugs.

Too true, the amount of ways that Sky manage to find to wind up their "customers" knows no bounds, and this is just another grating example and why their rep is so bad. Just another reason to cancel my sub.

MightyWarrior wrote:

Glyn Leach wrote:I can identify with many of the complaints already mentioned but I'll just mention the one thing I really hate and cannot understand: Adverts between rounds on PPV fights. HBO don't do it, Showtime don't do it, the only ones who do are Sky - and it's taking the piss. Obviously I understand the value of advertising revenue but in my own case, with Boxing Monthly, I set a figure for the amount of editorial pages I am willing to give up to adverts, which often costs us money. But people do not buy BM to read adverts and people don't buy PPVs to watch adverts. We already pay for any form of Sky coverage at all, then we are asked £15 on top for a PPV. Sky are absolutely coining it at our expense and it's inexcusable and disrespectful IMO. No one else in the world does it, just them. And it's wrong. Particularly as Sky TV as a whole is so fond of telling us how much they are in profit at the end of each financial year. Stop it Sky, stop treating us like mugs.

Too true, the amount of ways that Sky manage to find to wind up their "customers" knows no bounds, and this is just another grating example and why their rep is so bad. Just another reason to cancel my sub.

Everytime I threaten to cancel my sub I get it cheaper, £25 a month for the entire Sky Package at the moment.

banjo wrote:Everytime I threaten to cancel my sub I get it cheaper, £25 a month for the entire Sky Package at the moment.

Nice one Banjo. Cue barrage of cancellation calls to Sky

Glyn Leach wrote:

banjo wrote:Everytime I threaten to cancel my sub I get it cheaper, £25 a month for the entire Sky Package at the moment.

Nice one Banjo. Cue barrage of cancellation calls to Sky

Honestly Glyn I do it everytime the sneaky bastards raise the price, same with car and motorbike insurance too.

Personnally, I'd like to see MORE adverts- how about during the fight. No-one cares about the first thirty seconds of the round anyway, so how about skyfuckingvegasdotcom avderts? Also, I'd really rather JUST watch the in studio experts, maybe they could drop the live fight action altogether?



But seriously, some good points.

A PPV show, and indeed any show, should be about showing quality live boxing action, less of the chat and "magazine" type stuff they have (expert analysis etc).

Adverts between rounds belong on free to air tv, and nowhere else.

There ARE live fights going on, why not show them?

I wouldn't care if they dropped the studio analysis part altogether.

I retract my previous statement and now demand a PPV advert channel

The other thing, I think they get the "atmosphere" wrong. They way they talk they make it seem like a casual dinner party, a bit of friendly chat and banter.

They really should aim to build a bit of tension and excitment.

Nicky Piper, for example, is wonderfully articulate, but comes across more as a mild-mannered teacher than a fighter. They sacked Gary Mason for swearing- but thats the sort of attitude you need.

Bunce is good at that- he at least sounds excited.

stujones wrote:

apophenic wrote:jim watt starts off with an opinion on how things will happen and twists his entire commentary to suit that pre-existing opinion...

whoever said he pours scorn on things is also correct...is it that hard to find someone a little bit more enthusiastic about the sport and it's trappings?

People often say this about Watt, I cannot see this. On the Sky Sports Promo's he went for Degale, but gave Groves a lot of credit throughout the actual contest - had Groves in a handy lead at one stage only for Degale to comeback - but was his card seriously out? Did Degale not actually win more of the rounds from the 9th?

He will admit when he is surprised by a fighter, isn't that a good thing though? Did anyone expect Groves to box the way he did? He was impressed with the gameplan and it changed his opinion of Groves.

He's very enthusiastic when it comes to Manny Pacquiao and the in ring skills of Mayweather. Yeah he was negative a bit on Saturday when it came to Degale.... but he had every reason to be, this was supposed to be the best prospect in the UK - a world champion in the making and he was clueless for the most part.

Agreed, I think Watt's good value, he can read a fight, he can go on a bit for sure but absolutely know's his onions.

whicker wrote:The other thing, I think they get the "atmosphere" wrong. They way they talk they make it seem like a casual dinner party, a bit of friendly chat and banter.

They really should aim to build a bit of tension and excitment.

Nicky Piper, for example, is wonderfully articulate, but comes across more as a mild-mannered teacher than a fighter. They sacked Gary Mason for swearing- but thats the sort of attitude you need.

Bunce is good at that- he at least sounds excited.

I think Barry McGuigan always comes across as very passionate, whether or not you agree with his views

Agree Glyn, I do like McGuigan and he seems to be a lot down the middle than when he was back on ITV under the last Warren contract. Every Warren prospect seemed to be a world champion in the making with McGuigan back then.

I think Piper on his day can actually show some passion also. I remember his views on women's boxing in the early days (sorry Jane) and also I thought he was the only one who called it right when it came to Lewis vs Holyfield 2. Whilst everyone was just going nuts, Piper said - Well done Lewis, but that wasn't impressive, not nearly as impressive as the first fight.

freddydoesdallas wrote:It seems that a lot of fans are really not happy with the boxing coverage from sky at present and it’s more than just a couple of things that are putting people off. Going through the recent threads, the main gripes seem to be:

1) Pay Per Views – Poor healdliners or very uncompetitve cards. If you were to bet on the 6 fights offered by the bookies (Smith, Cleverly, Sexton, Gavin, Saunders & DeGale) you could only get a price of 4/7 for an accumulator. Is that type of card really worth £15?
2) Bias – Nelson & the commentary team failing to notice anything of value from Groves and jumping for joy at the sheer thought of DeGale landing a punch.
3) Team Numbers – How many presenters does it take to ruin a fight? I’m not sure exactly but sky seem to have found that number, doubled it and put a team together. They need to take the best ones forward and bomb the rest.

4) Lack of the undercard – This one is open to interpretation but I think the majority of fans want to see live action on tv when they’ve stumped up £15 rather than the aforementioned team talking about the same old sh!te for 3 hours in preparation for the big fight. Haye v Harrison had one live undercard bout (I think) & it was only Saunders, Gavin & Cleverly on Saturday.
5) Skysports News Presenters – ‘Stateside v Amir Khan, do you fancy it?’ I think that says it all. When you're overcrowding a studio on fight night, surely you can get one of those people to talk to the fighters


I think all of the aboveWhat else do sky need to do to get you happy to purchase ppv’s?

my biggest gripes are:

a) ffs stop all the growling shouting and forced delivery and rabid shouting of the overcrowded pundits team......mcrory is really dead wood after almost 20 years, like hansen and linaker on motd he is complacent and adds nothing interesting to proceedings. Have the pundits talk in turn.

B) dave darts has to go....annoying

c) the ludicrous beyond the ropes voiceover ffs the guy speaks with a serious baritone and gravitas of a bbc royal correspondant at a state funeral

d) more and more relavent american action as we have seen recently.

E) bring in jim rosenthal as a anchor to replace darts.

F) get danny williams in as a commentator and get rid of rawlings unless he is with mackenzie. Without mackenzie he is like cornflakes without the milk

g) get rid off all the noisy music at the same time as voiceovers of a hughlight reel or stats reel...:.....i know this is a generic sky sports disease on all their sports coverage so fat chance

Did I mention that Sky should let us enjoy the ring entrances ?

Instead they turn off the crowds, turn down the entrance music and procede to say "Bernard Hopkins is coming to the ring..... here he is... making his way to the ring.... Hopkins... here he comes.... making his way to the ring..... "

Just pipe down please. Or provide us with a 'red button' option of a different or zero commentary ?

I can appreciate if it's just a PCM modulation sound conversion, but if it's piped out in Dolby D they can give us that option surely ?

When I watched the first Hopkins vs Pascal on Premier it was mint as it was the Showtime version. Same for Froch vs Taylor.

When Rawlings came on blathering all the way through BH v JP II from the get go it made such a difference.

The producer needs a boot up the arse.

G0mez wrote:They need to overhaul their staff in front of the cameras.

There's far to much bias on show, especially during the commentating and it's coloring the action in their favour.

It's gotten so bad I actually dread the impending Froch and Klitschko fights as Watt pours scorn on everything and ruins the excitement - whilst Rawlings blathers all over Klitschko's million-pound entrance.

They to learn when silence is better than chat. I wish their mic's were powered down until the first bell seriously.

absolutely spot on gomez . this is exactly what i wanted to say......on german tv when klitchko makes an entrance the commentators are silent........and look at the shit we have to put up with......david hayes ring entrance is always ruined by jim watt moaning over the music and crowd......when will these blokes stop feeling they need to rant every second as if they are trying to justify their presence.......in fairness watt is a great pundit and color man but he does ruin ring entrances. mcrory is a lost cause.....always has been....we had the bizarre spectacle during the pascall bhop 2 ring entrances of mcrory his microphone cranked up to the max taking it upon himself to do the play by play mans job blathering on about hopkins trying to become the oldest world champ at 46 and just as he closes his cake hole, rawlins starts immediately about the same bloody point he tells us hopkins is trying to become the oldest worlf champ at 46........listen to it again it is plain bizarre dont these guys listen to each other and feel the need to repeat each other.....so the viewer misses out on enjoying an expensive ring walk production.......i was so upset i didnt know what to do......my first impulse was to run up to the tv and do a rambo.....but i didnt wanna mess with this 37 hundred pound lcd tv........what was mcrory thinking about........what was he trying to prove....this trend of employing non trained journalists and instead ex sportsmen has gone to the dogs in the case of boxing.....cricket might have educated wordsmiths like gower, mark nicholas, hussein and nick knight but in boxing we get barely literate hush puppy wearing crumpcakes like mcrory growling on and on....he needs to be dismissed....silly rabbit doesnt he know tricks are made for kids...we used to have the best boxing play by play men, journalists to a man, eammon andrews, harry carpenter,des lynam, jim rosenthal.....and if we didnt have them we had men who knew to only open their mouth when it was something useful coming out men like henry cooper, and yes jim watt.