HBO’s Boxing Card Outperformed Showtime’s Card Last Saturday

    0
    1143

    box_g_bradley_chaves_b1_300x300It was the last big fight weekend of the year for HBO and second to last for Showtime as the two networks went semi head-to head with their telecasts from the same city. HBO’s card was headlined by Tim Bradley taking on Diego Chaves while Showtime countered with its card headlined by Amir Khan and Devon Alexander.

    Nielsen Ratings had the HBO Main event as the most watched bout of Saturday with an average of 960,000 viewers peaking at 1.1 million viewers. The show overall averaged 841,000 viewers making it the second lowest rated World Championship Boxing event of 2014.

    A mile away Showtime countered with Khan-Alexander with lower ratings. Khan-Alexander averaged 762,000 viewers peaking at 887,000 viewers.

    HBO won the head to head on Saturday and throughout the year. HBO does have a bigger subscription based by 25% or so. You can see why colliding cards hurt both viewership’s and why numbers like 1.4 million viewers gets the boxing media and fans very excited.

    But if you were to average the two main events, the viewers would be at about 864,000 viewers with a peak of 993,500. Combined the numbers aren’t all that impressive either with the peak not even hitting two million. In retrospect, a college football game on ESPN will net about 14 million average viewers.