Boxing coming to NBC in March

By Boxing News - 01/04/2015 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Casual boxing fans will get a chance to see boxing on NBC in March rather than having to subscribe to the major premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime in order to see the sport.

A commercial that aired last Saturday during the NFL game between the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers revealed that boxing will be shown on NBC in March. This is something that will benefit the fans in the United States.

This could potentially drive up interest in the sport of boxing in the United States, because boxing hasn’t been televised on the main channels like NBC in ages. NBC has a huge amount of people that watch their channel and this could help the sport a great deal if they show fights on a long term basis. It would definitely be a huge step in making boxing more main stream in the U.S instead of just a niche sport that reaches few people in America.

It’s unknown right now if this is going to be just a short term thing or whether it will continue for the remainder of the year. It’s likely that NBC will be testing this on a trial basis in order to see what the appeal is from fans. It’s hard to imagine that NBC will stick with boxing if the ratings are low. This means that it’s going to be extremely important for the fights to be appealing and competitive to the fans.

Al Haymon, the high powered adviser, has reportedly signed a deal with NBC. This could be a good thing if the fights are going to be interesting, but it’s difficult to picture the bigger names in Haymon’s stable fighting on NBC rather than on Showtime.

The money will have to be good enough for them to want to fight on the network. If they’re receiving big change from Showtime for fighting on their network then it’s hard to imagine that they’ll be interested in taking the smaller money to fight on NBC.

Haymon has a huge stable of fighters signed with him, so it’s possible that the American boxing fans can see some of his fighters in his stable. Will it be guys like Amir Khan, Adrien Broner, Deontay Wilder, Marcos Maidana or Adonis Stevenson? I doubt it very seriously even though Haymon has those guys signed with him. If NBC is willing to pay to see those guys fighting on their network then it’ll work, but that’s the big question.

NBC has the money to televise these guys’ fights, but it’s unclear whether they’ll want to take a risk in purchasing the fights if they don’t know what the fan reaction will be to them.

It would obviously help if Haymon were to setup competitive fights with his stable of fighters instead of some of the mismatches that we’ve seen recently, but that’s the big question. Will Haymon be willing to put his fighters at risk by matching them against the best or will he choose to strategically match them in mismatches or fights that are close to being mismatches.



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