Haymon Updates

Haymon's new deals are very interesting. The biggest update in boxing in a while. For the sake of boxing, let's hope he is successful. It's great to see boxing on free network TV. Hopefully, he can expand the number of casual fans.

Never mind the potential Ali Act violations of Haymon essentially acting as a promoter, while hiring a fake promoter to save face, it's remarkable how he duped Showtime and HBO with the same strategy. He had them overpay for bad fights and then moved to another network to make the good fights (See Andre Berto). HBO had a great 2012. Bad 2013. Showtime had a great 2013. Bad 2014. Now he's moved his fighters from Showtime to NBC although I hear Showtime has a right of first refusal on certain fights.

This is different than any recent boxing concept because the funding isn't coming from cable networks and ticket sales. Rather, it's being paid by advertisers. It hinges on Haymon's ability to sell advertising space to companies and use the proceeds to repay the investors. His game is that if he can show he gets a lot of viewers, like UFC did on Fox, he can probably convince a big network like NBC or Fox to pay a large fee for a contract with dates in the future.

If he can't repay the investors with a fee or advertisements, this model won't make it to 2016. It really comes down to whether he can build boxing up to where it was pre-HBO/Showtime, circa late 1970s. If he can, he can bring in more advertisers and make more money. What's great for fans is that in order to get good ratings he's going to need to make good fights, which is something in the past he has been reticent to do. Now personally, I don't think Garcia-Peterson at 143, Thurman-Guerrero and Broner-Molina are GREAT fights but they ain't bad to start. I'm not convinced because even in those fights there are still A-sides and they're not fighting each other. Guerrero looked bad the last time out and hasn't logged a good win at 147 in his whole career. Molina was stopped by a big puncher in his last fight. How much does he have left? Garcia has too much size for Peterson at 143. Why not a Thurman-Garcia-Broner round robin instead? To me, this is just a taste. I want the whole meal.