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Egg Shen

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2 minutes ago, jimufctna24 said:

Mick "Shades of KFC" Hennessy has a show on CH5 this evening. Coverage begins at 9pm.

Cheers for the heads up, I reckon 90% of me watching live combat sport in the last year has been due to reminders from you and @Egg Shen!

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8 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

They should have went with Wilder/Fury 2 straight away. I understand the idea to build it and make it bigger but you cant say that it doesnt look they've got it all wrong.

Fury wasn't anywhere near ready in all reality. He's taken the route that will give him the greatest chance of winning.

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in what way though? he beat Wilder on pretty much everybodys cards, another few months in the gym to shake off a little more weight then go back in with him, why not? He had a pointless fight with Schwarz and a tough yet needless fight with Wallin that will leave him with horrendous scar tissue, plus the question marks around his camp which probably have some merit them. do you think hes in a better place to fight Wilder in February 2020 than he would have been in early 2019? Physically or popularity wise.

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2 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

in what way though? he beat Wilder on pretty much everybodys cards, another few months in the gym to shake off a little more weight then go back in with him, why not? He had a pointless fight with Schwarz and a tough yet needless fight with Wallin that will leave him with horrendous scar tissue, plus the question marks around his camp which probably have some merit them. do you think hes in a better place to fight Wilder in February 2020 than he would have been in early 2019? Physically or popularity wise.

Well, I'm guessing that the team of professional advisors, trainers and his promoter probably knows the game a bit better than a couple of guys shooting the shit on a wrestling forum, right? If it made sense to go right back in, and it was a viable option on both sides, they'd have done it.

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It may have made sense when they laid out their perfect gameplan leading into the rematch, but that doesnt mean things could go wrong along the way, and it also doesnt mean that they may have massively over-estimated the popularity of both guys coming out of their fight. The over whelming reaction from most boxing media im reading (and not going off the opinion of wrestling fans on a forum) is that they've made a bit of a mess of it all.

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From WorldBoxingNews.net:

Quote

Channel 5 Boxing – Nicaraguan Francisco Fonseca was forced to withdraw from a main event UK show after falling ill just before his scheduled bout with Alex Dilmaghani. The 25 year-old was checked on by doctors when throwing up in his dressing room. Fonseca was eventually deemed too sick to participate. It’s a huge blow to promoter Mick Hennessy after securing a prime slot on Channel 5 for the main event. Channel 5 subsequently canceled the broadcast of the show. The boxing was replaced by a prison documentary.

A boxing journo is claiming that they later tried to go through with the fight. Dilmaghani even put his gear back on. But they called it off for good at around 9:30pm (15 minutes ago).

The boxing itself with restart at 10pm. Not sure if CH5 will show it. 

 

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2 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

It may have made sense when they laid out their perfect gameplan leading into the rematch, but that doesnt mean things could go wrong along the way, and it also doesnt mean that they may have massively over-estimated the popularity of both guys coming out of their fight. 

Again, the kind of moneymen who run these television and broadcast companies don't make decisions involving the kind of coin you're talking about lightly. They don't "massively" misjudge anything. Gambling is for people who have no money. Obviously it's a sport and anything can happen, but when they lay out a deal they do so with a higher than average chance of success.

I can see it now...

"Okay Mr Pitaro, even the most casual of boxing fans know that boxing in general, and heavyweight boxing in particular has been in the shitter for years now in the US. We actually have a heavyweight champion who's knocked out 40 of his 41 wins, but he can't seem to generate any interest at all. But... there's a mouthy cunt from the UK who has a fairly technical style and isn't known for knocking people out. He's essentially unknown over here in the US, but fuck it. What do you think?"

"Sure! See if he'll take £80 million! I know we'll likely lose a fortune, but fuck it! It's only money, right?"

There's absolutely nothing in Fury or Wilder's past to suggest that they'd suddenly start pulling in huge crowds in the US regardless of how they did against each other, especially with the opponents Fury was slated to face. You think they don't know that, Ebb? You think the people who are very well paid to know what will sell didn't have a fucking clue? That they don't know but a bunch of journalists and fans do? Come on man.

There's going to be money made in this deal. Be it from advertising that they've sold during the Fury comeback tour, or whatever, culminating in the big one against Wilder. There's plenty to these deals that people like me, you, and those who write about the sport don't know.

Could it have went tits-up? Of course it could, it's combat sports. Anyone can lose unexpectedly. Your man AJ is a classic example of that. 

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qYou're talking like these people cant get it wrong Dave, go and read about the position Showtime are in with Deontay Wilder, they massively over calculated what he was worth when staging the Breazeale fight, so much so that they've not decided to stage to the Ortiz fight because they lost so much money on it, and Wilder was Showtime's main man. This is a time where all the promoters are trying to get their slice of the heavyweight pie, its the new 'golden era' so they say. Promoters are throwing around silly money to try and get a man in race, there'll all willing to take massive risks because of the potential rewards.

That said, you can bang on about how we aint experts all you like, but i dont think any promoter would willingly put on an event in a 20,000 seat arena to sell 3,000 tickets. That isnt a good look whatever way you cut it and whether they are playing the long game or not.

Edited by Egg Shen
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5 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

You're talking like these people cant get it wrong Dave, go and read about the position Showtime are in with Deontay Wilder, they massively over calculated what he was worth when staging the Breazeale fight, so much so that they've not decided to stage to the Ortiz fight because they lost so much money on it, and Wilder was Showtime's main man.

Oh, they can get it wrong, but not to the extent that you're believing. If it was all as simple as we believe none of these deals would have been signed. Like I said, a casual boxing fan off the street would have been able to tell you that the interest in any boxing within the US outside of a few names at most is lukewarm at best.

The people responsible for these deals did not expect to recoup their investment from attendances. Not a chance. They did not expect that Fury would become an overnight sensation after the Wilder fight. Certainly not to the extent where he's drawing the break-even amount of $20 million per fight from gate and TV revenue. 

Do you really think that the people running that show, the guys being paid a fuckload of dough to manage a sports network worth multiple billions of dollars, actually believed that they'd recoup $20 million+ from staging Fury against Schwarz or Wallin?

You're missing the big picture. Attendances and PPV sales are part of the picture, but they don't play even close to the level of importance that they did years ago. 

For example, ESPN running their first fight show of their deal with Top Rank immediately after Baker Mayfield's Heisman Trophy acceptance speech. You think that was a coincidence? Of course not, they did that in the knowledge that they could go to the advertisers who were already paying big money for exposure during the speech ceremony and show them figures to suggest that a decent chunk of that demographic will stick around after the Mayfield speech to watch the fights. I'm sure they call that the bridge method, where they piggyback off a prime time event with something that could attract the same audience, thus being able to upsell on the advertising.

ESPN have already admitted that it plans its boxing schedule around the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star game. It does that for a reason. 

Whenever there's a boxing event shown on ESPN, the advertising across the board is now a collaborative process between promoter and TV platform rather than two entities doing their own thing. Often in the past you'd find the TV company selling their 30 second advertisement slots while the boxing promoter sold the ad space on the ring and the stanchions along with the various boards around the arena and so on.

Not the case now with ESPN and Top Rank. The advertising, and the actual deal between ESPN and Top Rank itself, is and was all dealt with by CAA, the world's most valuable sports agency. We're talking a company that's been involved in this game since 1975, and which currently holds $5.39 billion of contracts, more than double its nearest competitor.

You honestly believe that these types of people are making huge errors in judgement that the likes of you and me could recognise? 

You, and many of these website writers, are looking at the boxing deals as stand-alone ventures, which isn't the case. The likes of ESPN covers literally hundreds of MLB, NHL, football, American college football, tennis, rugby, basketball and so on. Boxing is just one piece of the larger jigsaw, and the advertising deals sold for these events will bridge across events and even different sports. 

There's a fuckload more to these deals than you seem to realise. 

5 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

That said, you can bang on about how we aint experts all you like, but i dont think any promoter would willingly put on an event in a 20,000 seat arena to sell 3,000 tickets. That isnt a good look whatever way you cut it and whether they are playing the long game or not.

Of course they would. You don't think promoters have projections when it comes to ticket sales? You think they simply book an event and hope that they score enough sales to fill an arena? 

Again, you're looking at this from the most basic, rudimentary level possible. There's more to booking an event in a venue than just matching up the number of ticket sales.

Does the promoter or TV company already have a deal in place with the company who owns this venue (and likely others around the country)? Very rarely does a boxing promoter sign two fighters to face each other then sit down with a pencil and paper and think "right, so, we're likely to get around 10,000 fans at the most. Let's find a 10,000 seater arena then."

These arenas are usually under management by agencies who run multiple arenas. These agencies deal with placing events in the facility, and these agencies will have a number of buildings in their charge, in multiple cities. The TV companies and boxing promoters forge relationships with these agencies, and deals are struck that way.

For example, an agency may be having problems filling an arena over a certain month. There's nothing much going on at that date in that city. Up steps ESPN and Top Rank who say "we'll bring a fight to the city and the building on that date, but you'll have to give us X arena on X date with a decent discount in return."

Or, in many cases you'll find that a promoter/TV company will sign a deal with a building agency for multiple dates over multiple cities over a fixed period for a decent discount. The use of that arena you're talking about could simply have been a case of "okay, we have dates we still need to burn through this year on this deal, so we may as well use X arena as one of them than go out and get a separate deal for a smaller place that would end up costing us more money."

As for "the look," the only people who give a shit about that is you, the other internet boxing fans (who probably don't even spend money on the cards anyway) and a handful of boxing writers who hammer out content on websites that see 100,000 hits on a good month. It looks fine on TV, because they have stagers who can shift an audience around and fuck about with lighting so that the watching audience don't have a clue.

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Thats a decent post Dave, i have no idea if what you are talking about is correct with regards to advertising/venues because frankly i know fuck all about that stuff, but i do know that a guy reportedly making $12 million dollars per fight (though its since been reported that Fury made $1 million to fight Wallin) needs to be doing more alot business than he has been if ESPN or Top Rank are looking to make money from this thing. 

Also, whats your thoughts on Wilder and Showtime? thats pretty much proved that these guys aint recouping the money they are being paid for these fights.

Then again, I seem to remember you championing Golden Boy MMA when it was pretty clear to everyone that it was a huge flop, and you made some reference to it being a show they'd have planned to take a loss on with the plans to build for the future and how Oscar and his team knew what they were doing. How did that pan out? just saying...

 

 

Edited by Egg Shen
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