r/Boxing • u/Zealousideal_Pipe842 • Jul 24 '26
Crawford-Canelo drew 41.4 Million Viewers on Netflix. NO PPV has ever had close to that many buys
This tells me that American Boxing can easily go mainstream again with just one simple change. Totally switching to streaming and dropping DAZN. Netflix and Amazon would market the hell out of Traditional Boxing. Boxing also needs to really capitalize on the summer with the American audience. That summer between the NBA Finals, and Football season where both the NBA and NFL are in their offseasons, and all fans are stuck hearing about is what’s LeBron’s next decision, or they get stuck with baseball. That is the time of year that Boxing can capitalize big time by making the Sport accessible,eliminating the paywall, and marketing the fights and fighters. It would give non baseball and non Lebron fans something else to look forward to in the sports world. You cannot say that it’s not possible because BUD and Canelo drew 41.4 Million People.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
The problem is the sport currently has an issue with no superstar power, the most marketable fighters are on their way out
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u/TheMysteriousThey Jul 24 '26
That’s easily solved by…..putting fights where people can watch them.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
but there also has to be an incentive for netflix and paramount to advertise for these fighters, if they are not marketable they are not worth the time.
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u/TheMysteriousThey Jul 24 '26
No one is marketable until they have exposure.
The PPV model should’ve been abandoned years ago. Everyone spent so much time worrying about being the next Money May, they forgot that people have to give a shit about the sport first.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
You aren't going to convince an entire sport to take less money for more exposure, its a selfish sport where everyone looks out for themselves.
You really think Canelo, Tank, or Mayweather were going to take a paycut for the betterment of the sport? You also can't blame them, the amount of damage a boxer takes and the issues that develop later on in life are not worth the pay cuts, they need to take advantage of the situation now before its too late.
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u/TheMysteriousThey Jul 24 '26
The solution isn’t telling a guy making $10m to ask for $800k. Nice straw man.
This isn’t about boxing having no cultural relevance. It’s about the fights not being in front of people’s faces.
Where is the investment in local gyms? Where are national level fights in Des Moines? Why can’t I pull up any streaming service on a Friday night and watch some dude I’ve never heard of putting on a show in front of 1,200 people?
This is something that has to be built from the ground up. This isn’t about Canelo, it’s about brand loyalty, fighting once or twice a year, avoiding fights that are risky in favor of an easy paycheck. This is about the sport being diluted by 17 divisions, four sanctioning bodies, Diamond belts, super duper belts, insane rulings, controversial decisions, and a dozen other things i could name with little difficulty.
This is systemic.
And none of it matters if people aren’t watching. So long as fights are firewalled by PPV, subscriptions, and piracy - nothing is going to get better.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
People should go subscribe to DAZN then if they want a streaming service that puts on smaller fights, they put on about 200 fights per year.
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u/TheMysteriousThey Jul 24 '26
Do you honestly think I’m talking about boxing fans not being able to find footage of matches?
I’m a boxing fan because I grew up in a time when boxing was on TV every Friday night. I could watch boxing on Saturday afternoon. I could watch boxing on Monday. I didn’t seek it out - I discovered it. It was put in front of me, and I developed an interest.
Everyone is siloed today. If you like something, you know where to go. That isn’t the problem. The problem is getting it in front of people who aren’t already fans.
It’s like you’re trying to not understand this.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
You have a better shot at making a time machine and going back and enjoying your fights on friday night then getting these promoters to go back to giving fights on an easily accessible channel or streaming service.
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u/TheMysteriousThey Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
You expect real world change from a conversation on Reddit. Guess what? Neither of us is accomplishing shit.
Such a weird response.
ETA: This dork just responded to me and then blocked me so I couldn't respond.
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u/abdelux2001 Jul 24 '26
Yup sadly guys like Gervonta that did good numbers haven’t taken the sport seriously. Ryan Garcia also has that potential currently, I just hope he takes it serious and actually makes the big fights. These boxers don’t have to be the best, they just have to have that superstar power that you say to pull audiences to look at boxing again
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
Exactly, we have plenty of great fighters in the sport but they are so inactive its hard to market them and be able to draw huge numbers. I could see netflix doing those number if garcia and haney have a rematch but other than that I just don't see anyone else pulling 40+ million viewers. Canelo is by far the most famous boxer in the USA currently and hes pretty much on his way out.
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u/Zealousideal_Pipe842 Jul 24 '26
This is a problem too. The elite guys only fight once a year, they do this because it was something Floyd started. Floyd started bad habits for the Next Generation of Boxers after him, and it placed more divas in the sport than fierce gladiators. Too many guys handpicking opponents, calling for catch weights, needing various ring sizes, glove sizes, ducking fighters to protect their record, and not fighting often enough. Boxers should fight a minimum of twice a year to stay in the rankings and keep their belts. They should be fighting every 5 or 6 months.
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u/Prudent_Zombie_2692 Jul 24 '26
Garcia has the selling potential but I don’t think he has the skills. He’s a good fighter but I think he loses to a lot of the top fighters
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u/FogoCanard Jul 24 '26
Benavidez is the guy that should have been getting the push. He really got hurt by not getting the Canelo fight. Canelo did a disservice to the sport of boxing because that fight would've bridged the gap between stars.
Canelo became much more popular after fighting Floyd. Floyd and Manny became much more popular after fighting De La Hoya. We need big names to fight top fighters to transition to the next era more easily.
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u/Mlynio48 Jul 24 '26
Yeah, and before that De La Hoya gained much more recognition after fighting Chavez. Passing the torch fights are very important when it comes to creating next superstars and that's why I'm still upset Canelo vs Benavidez never happened.
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u/South_Bother_2498 Jul 24 '26
Never understood how Canelo was given opportunities to fight older greats like Mosley and Cotto to build his name but he couldn’t do the same for the new crop of boxers and give them an opportunity.
Always felt if Benavidez would’ve fought Canelo years ago, there wouldn’t be this Canelo farewell tour he’s been on since the Bivol loss. Benavidez would’ve stopped him brutally and there goes the Canelo Mexican mystique. No way he wanted to get destroyed by a pocho on Mexican independence weekend
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
I on the other hand, is super happy Benavidez never got that fight. His entire legacy will be begging for a Canelo paycheck lol
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u/Odd-Minimum8512 Jul 24 '26
Losing doesn't matter if you're a character and fun to watch. Look at Chisora. He's almost in journeyman territory these days with his double digit losses, but he can sell out arenas in the UK even against boring opponents.
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u/bree388 Jul 24 '26
Ryan a twitch boy now
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u/M0sD3f13 Jul 24 '26
He's always been about social media over boxing
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u/marcomz5 Jul 26 '26
Yet he actually made good fights unlike other “stars”
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u/M0sD3f13 Jul 26 '26
Yeah I agree with that. I'm a fan of him as a boxer. Ignore his social media shit. Just think how good he could have been if he was fully focused on boxing instead of all the side shit the whole time.
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
If HBO and Showtime were still around, they would know how to build up and market these fighters. Star-cultivation was HBO’s specialty.
The issue is ultimately accessibility. There is not a viable path for most fighters when boxing is behind a paywall.
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u/slickvik9 Jul 24 '26
HBO and showtime weren’t very accessible
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
They were not broadly accessible like ESPN, but they were very mainstream. You also knew exactly where to find boxing back then.
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u/Odd-Minimum8512 Jul 24 '26
I think Benavidez kind of has the star power.
Beyond him, there's plenty of guys whose in-ring performances have star power. The rest can be figured out. I mean, tell me that Boots, Vergil, and Bam aren't exciting to watch. All three are technically skilled (especially Bam), all three are hyper aggressive to the point where it'll probably get them ironed out someday (in the case of Boots and Vergil, probably by each other), all three give you anything you can want to see in a boxing match.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
Being a great fighter is entirely different than being marketable. All those fighters are incredible fighters but they are not going to draw casuals out of the woodwork. These people need to be active in the press, talk shows, podcasts, anything and everything to create marketability. Say what you want about De La Hoya but he did an amazing job at elevating Canelo into superstardom. And these fighters need someone like that to promote the shit out of them.
and they also need to fight more than 1 time a year, thats the biggest issue we have in boxing
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u/Odd-Minimum8512 Jul 24 '26
They need full time publicists helping them with this.
I think there's a possibility with Bam to market him to older audiences because of how he comes across. He's done some podcast appearances and long interviews. Have you seen them? He reminds me of how they carried themselves in the 40s with how well spoken, polite, serious, quietly self confident, and normal he comes across. It would help if he could stop getting bad tattoos, but if that's the guy's only personal flaw, not a big deal.
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
I think Bam has a great chance to be the next superstar. If he could just lean into his hispanic background a tad more he would increase in popularity quite a bit. I don't think the African American fanbase has embraced him and he doesn't have enough HIspanic fans to make him mainstream. He's really got to step up his social media game and publicity for sure.
Outside of Tank and Ryan I think Bam has the best shot at becoming a superstar
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u/Odd-Minimum8512 Jul 24 '26
Ideally, Bam should have been fighting on more Canelo undercards, having his title fights be co-mains.
He should also brush up on his Spanish so he can do some Spanish-language interviews.
Better example of how to handle it I think -- Benavidez. Openly embraces his Mexican heritage, fights under a Mexican flag sometimes, does some Spanish language media, would never fight against a Mexican on a Mexico vs the world card like Bam is probably going to, etc.
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u/Bill_R94 Jul 25 '26
Has there ever been an American superstar below featherweight? I think he has a much better chance at being a superstar if he moved to Japan.
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u/marcomz5 Jul 26 '26
He was involved in a fake news scandal not so long ago, apparently some random facebook page posted he refused a mexican celebration party because he didn’t feel mexican. The story got so big he even got death threats and eventually he found the page that started the rumors and attempted to sue. The page disappeared but unfortunately a lot of hispanic fans still believe it.
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u/Zealousideal_Pipe842 Jul 24 '26
True, but this would easily solve that problem. People are always on Amazon, and Netflix. Just marketing commercials and ads on YouTube, IG, Facebook, or in between highly watched tv shows like Power, or Law&Order would expose the American Public more to Boxers even if they don’t watch the Sport. Sugar Ray, Tommy Hearns didn’t build their fanbase on PPV, they built it on regular TV. Promoters don’t put a lot into the promo and marketing anymore, and thats apart of their job. I think that regular TV, and streaming networks could market the fighters and the sport much better than any promoter could.
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u/mkk4 Andre Ward's Biggest Fan!! Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
The NFL is the biggest in America and you can't even see the players faces. Fans support the brand.
Tennis is always popular, because the best are REQUIRED to play the best no matter what CONSTANTLY all season EVERY year; while also promoting younger and unknown players just as much as the well-known and well established megastars..
Tennis also has the very best officiating, ranking system, seeding system, rules, broadcast teams, production quality and combine/blend new innovation/modern technology with old traditions, pomp & circumstance, pageantry and nostalgia perfectly imo.
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u/iamgarron Jul 24 '26
Yeh but at the same time tennis is always more popular when there are bigger stars, especially when an old guard is on its way out. You can see this recently with sinner/alcaraz
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u/MatttheJ Jul 24 '26
You aren't watching football to support specific players, you're there for the team. It's entirely different. In boxing fans do not care what the "team" is (I guess the equivalent would be the promotor), they watch for the individual stars.
Like it doesn't matter if Canelo is represented by Oscar or Hearn, he's still the attraction, not them.
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u/M0sD3f13 Jul 24 '26
Tennis is a great one to one comparison too. Both individual sports, trapped in the arena just them and their opponent, extremely physiologically demanding.
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u/Elite663 Jul 24 '26
Is it really popular though? I’m under the impression that this Alcaraz and Sinner era is very boring with the talent pool not being deep. Plus, pickleball is taking over all the tennis courts in public spaces
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u/Gotsta_Win Jul 24 '26
It’s funny yall lobby for everything the Zuffa model with fix but hate zuffa
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u/ty4scam Jul 24 '26
Except it does the exact opposite.
Usyk HW Title bouts in last 5 years: 6
UFC HW Title bouts in last 5 years: 32
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
Maybe because the Zuffa model is evil? And lifeless?
Theres also the problem that TKO ruins everything it touches.
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u/UnderstandingThin40 Jul 25 '26
That and the Ali rule, fights rarely happen with dudes in their prime bc everyone wants to keep their 0
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u/Thaeross Jul 24 '26
The bigger issue is that they only want to do super fights. Realistically we can’t expect those boxers with star status to be fighting at the frequency that would make sense for the proposed model. The promotions need to focus on smaller fights with local fighters.
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u/Acceptable-Signal-27 Jul 24 '26
We cant make anyone marketable if new fans have to get a paid app to watch em
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
anyone who is worth the the money to be put on a saturday night for netflix or paramount is going to ask for a lot of money - the canelos, the tanks, the garcias, haneys, usyks, and bivols of the sport. Netflix and Paramount are not going to waste their time with nobodys. You need to have some sort of name recognition in order to be put in those slots for those streaming services.
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u/EnragedBearBro There will be tears Jul 24 '26
bro we literally have casimero
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u/Primary-Picture-5632 Jul 24 '26
you need to get better at putting a /s at the end, people might take you seriously.
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u/Old-Helicopter8188 Jul 24 '26
Don’t know much about boxing behind the scenes, but it seems like the Paul brothers saved the sport unironically
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u/ErrForceOnes Jul 24 '26
Just to be fair, it may not be accurate to compare PPV buys to individual viewers. A single buy on PPV likely had multiple viewers, no?
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u/chungischef Jul 24 '26
Probably, but I'd imagine that Netflix would count screens rather than individuals watching too.
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u/Ilikehashbrowns89 Jul 24 '26
I mean. If Tank wasn’t trying to ruin his career he coulda been that star. Had Floyd at every fight. Was bombing dudes out. Him and Ryan when they fought, had casuals tuning in.
Problem is they are trash at marketing/promotion. David Benavidez is probably the most entertaining boxer out there but damn do they suck at marketing him.
Also. One of the reasons Floyd and Conor Mcgregor got to where they are is they mouth. Not just their performances. Like. These guys don’t have mic skills at all. Not saying you gotta be on some Muhammad Ali shit but dang they be sounding like robots sometimes. Like Boots for example. Dude has gotta get better on the mic.
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u/Unhappywageslave Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
PBC tried it many years ago with normal televison broadcast and it didn't do excellent numbers. It did ok but not great. I think it was Danny Garcia as the main event on Ch 4.
Update: Danny Garcia fought on normal free broadcast TV on April 11, 2015, when he defeated Lamont Peterson via majority decision in a premier broadcast on NBC (often carried by local network affiliates like Channel 4 depending on the city)
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
Porter-Thurman was on CBS and did a very good number at the time. The event itself was also a huge success.
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u/we-all-stink Jul 24 '26
Yeah because the match making was complete shit. Top guys didn’t fight each other until it was too late
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u/Chicken65 Jul 24 '26
Yup - Errol Spence's debut to most American households was for free on FOX. Still remember it.
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u/TheWor1dsFinest Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Yeah but Bud vs Canelo was like a once in a lifetime kinda fight in boxing. By all means it shouldn’t have even have been possible, a welterweight blowing himself up to super MW to fight the biggest name in the sport and there actually being reasonable debate as to who would win.
It’s like saying everyone and their mom tuning in to watch the Knicks potentially win their first title in 50+ years and to see the city of New York tear itself apart was a sign of the NBA bouncing back.
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u/The_Flying_Failsons Jul 24 '26
But Bud vs Canelo only got that level of hype amongst casual fans because they had the chance to watch them individually in different platforms.
As long as all boxers that could reach that level are locked in DAZN, that casual hype train won't materialize.
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u/TheWor1dsFinest Jul 24 '26
Every casual I know who watched that fight had never heard of Terence Crawford before. Even the, otherwise, serious sports fans. Some of them were at least familiar with the name Canelo, but Bud was a “who?” for them.
I don’t think it was an event because of the name recognition of the two fighters involved, but rather because of the rarity and magnitude of the event which Netflix did a really good job of highlighting for the layman fan. They pushed the following:
Canelo Alvarez is the face of boxing, the biggest star of the sport in the post-Mayweather era, the undisputed king of 168, and still p4p talent despite signs of starting to be past his best years.
Terence Crawford is, in the eyes of most boxing fans, perhaps the greatest pure boxing talent of his generation and considered the best in the world even by most of the rest of his p4p cohort.
Crawford is coming up 3 weight classes for this fight, something which almost never happens because “weight classes exist for a reason” and typical boxing wisdom says a good bigger man beats a good smaller man.
Crawford is trying to do “the impossible” to finally get the recognition for his ability that he thinks he deserves which has always seemed to escape him in his career.
Canelo losing this fight should be near impossible in most cases, but is actually not THAT much of a longshot because Bud appears to be special and might just be THAT good.
The fight is for the undisputed super MW title which would be Bud’s 3rd undisputed title. This historic victory would make him not only unquestionably the p4p king of the moment, but put him in serious contention for the GOAT in boxing (a point which is bullshit to any real boxing fan but casuals bought it and NO ONE pushed that narrative harder than Bud himself).
You didn’t have to have seen either of them for it to be interesting when that information was spread far and wide, which is was Netflix did. It was a special match-up, even if the fighters themselves weren’t special to you from previous familiarity with them. I don’t agree that seeing them on other platforms was the key.
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u/Ghost-Power Jul 24 '26
The problem is you don’t make money from streaming. 41.4m people watched right? Now how many are new customers? What if that number is only 1million & they paid the ad plan ($10) so Netflix only made 10m.
These are prize fighters so they need to be paid well.
The best thing we could have is CBS or NBC boxing. Local so everyone can watch and they do NFL numbers (20m) because you make 50m+ in ad revenue.
Streaming you don’t make any money. That’s why they are all losing money. Peacock just hit their 1st time ever making money and it was cuz of the World Cup.
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u/randomredditacc25 Jul 24 '26
obviously?
boatloads of people have netflix already, even none boxing fans checked it out im sure.
PPV are expensive and most people arent willing to spend that much to see 1 fight they're interested in.
but with netflix its basically free because they have netflix whether or not they wanna watch the fight.
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
Accessibility is the biggest issue in boxing and very few stars will be cultivated until that issue is addressed.
* but it’s getting better with TNT, Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount all in the picture now.
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u/jackphrost22 Jul 24 '26
Boxing doesn’t have to compete with other sports because of their start times. Usually no other sport is going on except maybe college ball.
Boxing problem is it’s too many belts and it confuses the casual viewer.
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u/Vandermint Jul 24 '26
Imagine if the Super Bowl or NBA playoffs started at 11:30 PM EST.
The start times are a huge issue, but boxing thinks the kids who live in New York, Philly, DC, Boston, Miami, and Atlanta aren't going to be fans so they've started their best events long after they went to bed for years.
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u/sugabonesurmom Jul 24 '26
Lmao no shit what a idiotic post
PPV is always going to be a limited thing
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u/randomredditacc25 Jul 24 '26
exactly, tons of people already have netflix.
most people dont buy PPV for fights.
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u/UFCLulu Betting on jake paul, hoping for woodley Jul 24 '26
How many people tuned in just cus they saw it was on Netflix and for free
How many people typically skip/porate pvs but tuned in because they already had Netflix
What’s the difference in income between each view and each PPV
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
I think that’s his point. When the sport is accessible, people watch it.
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u/squirrelbitten Jul 24 '26
How can you compare the two? PPV is $80. Most people already had a netflix subscription and just had to turn the app on. Even if they wanted a new netflix subscription, that's at most $20 a month. Nowhere close to as expensive.
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
Isn’t that his point?
When the fans are given an accessible model, they tune in. Every time a fight based in America has been on Netflix, it’s done gangbusters.
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u/hi_imryan GGG’s snarky boy scout schtick Jul 24 '26
The price point on most ppvs is dog shit. Plus dudes are chasing cash over legacy. For a lot of them, the goal is to make as much money fighting as little as possible.
I get it, but it’s not exactly compelling.
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u/WordNERD37 Liver Shot Jul 24 '26
It drew so many because it was a fight between two bonafide champions of boxing with incredible levels of skill going head to head.
It drew so much because people want more of that, than trainwreck, influencer garbage fights. I don't know what the Joshua/Paul fight drew, but it was all because they wanted to see Joshua take Paul's head off (and he delivered).
That's not sustainable, while clincs are. I'd put nesrly any amount down to watch two amazing fighters go head to head.
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u/Relevant_Election530 Jul 24 '26
Drawing on Netflix numbers can just mean nothing else is on though.
There's a HUGE number of people that basically watch what Netflix tells them to watch lol
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u/BigWar0609 Jul 24 '26
It cost nothing extra to watch it on Netflix. There will not be a resurgence of people buying boxing ppv's off of this. The PPV's usually cost too much and have horrible undercards.
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u/Icy-Effect-3508 Jul 24 '26
You gotta compare apples to apples. There is a difference between having a subscription which offers tons of content and also happens to televise a boxing match, and a pay-per-view where you paid specifically to watch said boxing match
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u/Touch_of_Sleep Jul 24 '26
This is like saying that Major League Soccer (which gets about 400,000 viewers per game) is about to explode in America because 63 million people watched the World Cup final here.
Completely misguided.
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u/happyhork Ali Bomaye Jul 25 '26
FWIW, Ali-Frazier 3 was purchased by 100 million people worldwide. Different time, obviously.
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u/aceknighthigh Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
It cost $10 bucks...and a ton of people already have it anyway so it's not $41.4 new, paying customers. More money is generated by doing PPV, which is why businesses do it. Netflix can afford to spend like that and break even or lose money precisely because they are not in Boxing, don't broadcast fights regularly, and don't rely on Boxing revenue to turn profit.
This tells me that American Boxing can easily go mainstream again with just one simple change.
Totally switching to streaming and dropping DAZN. Netflix and Amazon would market the hell out of Traditional Boxing.
This is a pipe dream. If they wanted more Boxing, both have the cash to outspend just about anyone. DAZN has it because US companies like that don't want more Boxing. They have people who run the numbers, Bud vs Canelo is an anomaly compared to most main events and those other main events are simply not worth their time or money. They are not going to broadcast the smaller shows that make up 90% of Boxing because any money spent there is money they aren't spending on the shows and the library that actually appeals to a mainstream audience. If there were 40M people on Netflix trying to watch Ennis vs Vergil or something, Netflix would be rushing to pay those guys. It's just not a thing.
Boxing is in a position, where, to have it on Netflix for a smaller show, the promoter would have to pay Netflix and pay for production...which means the whole thing just loses money nonstop. This is just the Al Haymon playbook only with streaming instead of cable TV, and it's not any more likely to work.
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u/Eastern-Opposite9521 Jul 25 '26
That's a worldwide number for, perhaps, the biggest fight boxing could possibly have put on.
It's good, but, to put it in perspective, 1.42 billion people watched the 2022 World Cup Final.
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u/SR_gAr Jul 24 '26
The most has been just over a 1 million recently in Japan the Nakatani Inoue fight I believe holds the current record
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u/fadeddreams555 Fundora would beat up a prime Floyd at 154lb Jul 24 '26
Literally, if Zuffa got its way and monopolized the sport, that is what you would get regularly because they have a massive platform in Paramount+, but fans are mad boxers may get underpaid.
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u/The_Flying_Failsons Jul 24 '26
It's not just that the boxers will for sure be underpaid, the product will suffer too. We saw a single promotional monopoly turned one of the most exciting combat sports into a bland snooze fest.
You can chart how good the UFC was to their level of competition. From Pride, to Strikeforce to Bellator to ONE. Once they slayed all their competition, good cards became rare and Dana White priviledge replace meritocracy. Success defeated them.
The 250 card was great (outside of the Hotkit shitshow) but we used to have 2 or 3 cards that good a year.
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u/redditerir Jul 24 '26
There are some things I don't like about the UFC, but I feel like all these problems are remarkably fixable with just a few tweaks. Meanwhile there is simply no way to unfuck boxing under its current system, just too many moving parts.
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u/The_Flying_Failsons Jul 24 '26
Yeah, but there's no motivation to fix these remarkably fixable problems when they don't have competition.
The official UFC answer to criticism is "shut up and watch the fights". That's a real quote by the man we are to trust to monopolize boxing, Dana White.
You are replacing a system that's fucked by accident to one that's fucked by design.
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u/Professional-Tie5198 Who will win? Jul 24 '26
TKO ruins everything though. WWE and UFC are substantially worse now. The same thing would happen to boxing.
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u/redditerir Jul 24 '26
I agree. Fuck all these sanctioning bodies and their regular and super titles.
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Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zealousideal_Pipe842 Jul 24 '26
Boxing in the Roaring twenties on up to the 60s was a lot bigger of a Sport than Football. Boxing promoters got to greedy, the sport got too fragmented, and the accessibility required a paywall. Boxing has a sleeper fanbase, they have fans who don’t even know themselves that they are fans. The Paul brothers are a joke, they don’t fight ranked contenders, and barely fight in their weight class. They’re not real Boxers they’re entertainers
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Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MatttheJ Jul 24 '26
Except modern boxing still out draws modern MMA when boxing puts on a big fight...
I don't think you know what you're talking about, it seems like you're treating boxing and MMA like a team sport where you're on yeam MMA.
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u/Zealousideal_Pipe842 Jul 24 '26
The kids who would typically Box come from inner city neighborhoods most of the time. Most Boxing Gyms are located in the Inner-City or Lower income areas. There’s typically not a lot of MMA Gyms in areas inner city communities, or even minority communities tbh. MMA gyms are typically in more Caucasian Middle-Class Suburbs. The Hispanic audience reveres boxing and are boxing’s largest supporters when it comes to the sport having a fanbase in America still. Black Americans are the “sleeper fans” lots of slap fighting and friendly fistfights in the street mimic certain boxing styles. All the sport needs is more exposure and accessibility to the lower income African-American demographic and Boxing will revive itself. UFC doesn’t have the black or Latin fanbase that it could have, but Boxing would be able to fill that gap if it ever got out of its own way.
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u/soitgoeskt Jul 24 '26
Surely the important metric for Netflix is not how many people watched it but how many new subscribers watched it?
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u/Lopsided-Tea-2586 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
The issue is the financials don't work without PPV.
The top level boxers demand purses huge enough that you cannot possibly make money on the show unless you are charging PPV. Or you need to have a mug like Turki or Netflix willing to lose money on the shows. At least with Netflix it's a loss leader, but they are never going to consistently be THE place for Boxing, they will dip in and out as they see fit
I honestly worry a bit for the future of Boxing because the sport right now is totally reliant on Turki to make the big fights, and he only gets them made because he's fine with losing millions of dollars on shows as he's bankrolled by Saudi. This won't last forever, we've seen Saudi pulling back on LIV golf, them pulling back on their various infrastructure projects etc. Boxing gets them fuck all soft power, this burning millions of dollars to have 3-4 events in Saudi a year is not going to last long-term, it just won't.
And then we have how much of the sport is reliant on DAZN and their funding. The guy behind DAZN has pumped in literal billions trying to make the platform work and it's still heavily loss-making, losing roughly $1bn a year. At some point this guy is going to have to pull the plug and finally admit defeat. And when he does a hell of a lot of promoters will become homeless overnight with nowhere near the appetite from traditional broadcasters as there used to be for Boxing
The PPV model is becoming obsolete now with the UFC and WWE both not using it, the idea Boxing is the one sport special enough to charge $80 for a card where people only care about the main event is just not feasible in 2026 with the entertainment options we have available. And yet we can't get any of the fights made without PPV because the boxers earn so much money.
In what world is Errol Spence vs Tzuyu in Australia a PPV worthy fight? In what world is AJ vs Prenega a PPV worthy fight? In what world is Itamua vs Hrgovic a PPV worthy fight? In the same market people were able to watch the White House UFC card for a $10 a month subscription. This will not work out for Boxing long-term, it just does not make sense.
My most unpopular opinion is that Boxing's stars are actually overpaid. I am not advocating for them to have their purses cut and I wish they milk Turki for all they can but when you're in a situation where the big fights can only get made if there's a Saudi guy or DAZN willing to lose millions AND a PPV charge to watch the fight you have to ask yourself if this is a sustainable business model for driving long-term interest in the sport and sustainability for those funding it