Stephen Espinoza On The Future Of Showtime Boxing: “Where Things Go In The Long Run, Who Knows?”

By: Sean Crose

“It’s a change that’s pretty common within the industry,” Showtime Sports’ honcho Stephen Espinoza says to Fight Hub in an interview launched Thursday. “This is just a furtherance of what’s been happening across the industry.” Espinoza is speaking right here concerning the merger of his community with Paramount+. News of the merger has led some to surprise if boxing will now not air on Showtime, a lot as HBOs lengthy operating boxing broadcasts have been iced a number of years in the past. Espinoza made it clear that nothing is altering for Showtime Boxing…no less than for the second.

“In the short term there is no change,” he says. “Where things go in the long run, who knows? It’s a difficult economy out there. But right now the company is definitely committed to the sport, committing to the sport beyond just 2023, and I haven’t heard anything that changes that.” The reality, in fact, is that boxing – within the United States, no less than – has been in a state of standard decline for a while now.

“Low viewership is a problem,” Espinoza admits within the interview. “It is. There’s not a network in the business that is going to continue committing to something that has low viewership.” Yet Espinoza signifies the state of affairs is extra complicated than it might seem at first blush. “What the metrics are for making that decision,” he says, “are something that’s far more complex than just look(ing) at the Nielson Ratings and saying 250,000 people watched this or saying hey we only got 200,000 people watching the Tank pay per view replay. It’s a pay per view replay. We didn’t pay for it to start with. That’s not an investment of resources.”

The instances are little doubt altering. Indeed Espinoza signifies that the April superfight between Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia shall be marketed in a way that’s geared in the direction of social media (which each Davis and Garcia excel in). “This one I think even more so is going to be a social media promotion,” he says. “We don’t have to do a multi city press tour to create content…this will be the first social media boxing promotion.”