The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Colorado Springs, Colorado—Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao have agreed to follow World Anti-Doping Agency rules for their fight in May.
That was a major sticking point that led to the end of negotiations in 2010, when the boxers first tried to put together a fight.
As part of the agreement, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency can take blood and urine samples from both fighters at any point between now and the bout May 2 in Las Vegas. They will also be tested after the fight. Samples will be sent to labs that can test for human growth hormone, EPO and anything else on WADA’s prohibited list.
USADA CEO Travis Tygart said that by making the agreement, the fighters were sending “a strong statement of the importance of clean and safe competition.”
Boxing is about to put on its richest fight ever.
Mayweather and Pacquiao can attract hundreds of millions of dollars, but the superlatives of their planned May bout don’t reflect the state of a sport that has drifted toward a pay-per-view business model.
“It certainly wasn’t a big mistake to the promoters and people that made a lot of money off of it and still do, so in that regard they came out fine. The top fighters came out fine. But nobody knew who any of the other guys were,” Al Michaels said on a conference call this week. “It was very difficult for a guy to be an up-and-coming guy and to get some notice. I think to that degree, on balance, it was not good for the sport.”
On Saturday, Michaels will host the debut of a series of fights designed to showcase the other guys. Keith Thurman, Robert Guerrero, Adrien Broner and John Molina Jr.—the four fighters to appear in prime time on NBC—are hardly up-and-comers. But they’re the sort of boxers for whom success doesn’t guarantee becoming a household name.
And these days, that means pretty much everyone other than Floyd and Manny.
So top manager Al Haymon’s company created “Premier Boxing Champions,” making a major investment to get the sport back on traditional network TV. There will be five Saturday night broadcasts on NBC. Both NBC and CBS will also show fights on Saturday afternoons.
PBC marks the first prime-time bouts on NBC in nearly three decades and the first regular live boxing series on CBS in 15 years, as the sport migrated to premium channels HBO and Showtime along with pay-per-view.
“It was great for us,” said Stephen Espinoza, head of Showtime Sports. “But in some ways, it stunted the growth of the sport.”
Showtime may miss out on some appealing fights because of PBC. But it can promote its own bouts to a broader audience during the telecasts on partner CBS. And like many others in the industry, Espinoza hopes PBC can grow the sport, ultimately benefiting everyone who broadcasts fights.
So he and plenty of colleagues across networks are crossing their fingers for strong ratings Saturday on NBC, he said.
Meanwhile, the timing of the Mayweather-Pacquiao matchup can’t hurt. Espinoza recalled that the 2013 bout between Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez produced a “halo effect” that boosting ratings for all of Showtime’s boxing programming.
The trend in recent years is for major sports to migrate from traditional network TV to cable. Now boxing is doing the opposite, finding itself in a state that a broader audience trumps the short-term revenue gains of pay TV.
AP