Brook-Porter brings in 661K viewers on Showtime

By Boxing News - 08/19/2014 - Comments

Kell Brook vs Shawn Porter(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Scott Gilfoid: Last Saturday’s Showtime card head-lined by Kell Brook vs. IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter brought in less than spectacular ratings for Showtime, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.

Porter’s numbers are down from his previous fight against Paulie Malignaggi from last April. We’re talking a big drop off in numbers. The Porter-Malignaggi fight brought in 897,000 viewers on Showtime compared to the 661,000 for the Porter-Brook fight. What was especially sad about the Brook vs. Porter ratings is that the Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka fight did far better in averaging 808,000 viewers on Showtime. That was a terrible fight too.

That’s obviously not good for Showtime, because they can’t be too pleased at seeing their ratings tank. It’s hard to explain the drop off, but I think it had a lot to do with casual boxing fans in the U.S not having clue one who Kell Brook is and deciding not to bother watching the fight.

You can also look at all the awful clinching that Brook was doing during the fight as a possible reason why the viewer numbers were down. I had to literally force myself to watch the fight because it terribly boring due to Brook holding Porter any chance that he could get.

It was just so awful to watch. The referee working the fight Pat Russell needed to pull Brook to the side and give him a warning about the clinching so that boxing fans could see an entertaining fight. Instead, we saw Brook clinching at will for 12 rounds, making the fight unwatchable for me.

The one fight that did better than last time was the Anthony Dirrell vs. WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika fight in the co-feature. The fight averaged 574,000 compared to 446,000 for their first fight last December.

“Porter-Brook main event averaged 661k viewers. Porter’s last fight on Showtime vs Malignaggi averaged 897k, so big drop-off,” Rafael said on his twitter. “Figueroa-Estrada averaged 341k viewers, way down from Figueroa’s last fight on @SHOsports (545k vs Belmontes). Bika-Dirrell 2 averaged 574k viewers. 1st fight averaged 446k viewers. Sat’s SHOsports card averaged 514k viewers (down 11% on its ’14 average of 578k).”



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