Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn has cast doubt over the sustainability of Premier Boxing Champions’ broadcast deal with Amazon Prime Video.
PBC will have their debut show on Amazon Prime Video on March 30 when WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu 24-0 (17) faces former WBC and WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman 28-1 (22) in a 12-round non-title bout at a catchweight of 155-pound. The card will be a pay-per-view.
Up until last year PBC shows were broadcast on Showtime before the American TV giant withdrew from the boxing market. Rival promoter Matchroom have long had their cards broadcast on global streaming platform DAZN.
In an interview on The MMA Hour, Matchroom boss Hearn spoke about the state of the sport in a fractured and rapidly changing broadcast market.
“I like our spot, I think we’re in a great position,” said Hearn.
“Again, we backed DAZN and they backed us many years ago when we believed streaming was the future. There’s been a lot of potshots from people saying ‘oh they’re on an app’. Right now, PBC are also on an app and I think they would do anything to be with DAZN right now.
“The Amazon deal looks to be a pay-per-view only model with no regular shows. It’s impossible to run a promotional company or a promotional business and develop fighters unless you have a schedule that can do so. You can’t just have pay-per-views.”
“I’ve been there before, when I was with Sky, we were doing so many pay-per-views, you end up kind of like stuffing a load of fights together to make them a pay-per-view. And if you look at the first offering on Amazon, coming up on March 30th, that’s a classic example of a card you’ve just bundled together to try and convince the consumer that it’s pay-per-view.
“Tim Tszyu against Keith Thurman, I mean I find Tim Tszyu really exciting, nobody knows who he is in America. Keith Thurman hasn’t boxed for two years – it’s an absolutely dead fight.
“There’s some good stuff on the fight, ish, [Rolando] ‘Rolly’ [Romero] against [Isaac] ‘Pit Bull’ [Cruz]. But what you end up doing – you know the only way you can run your show on Amazon is pay-per-view so you have to build one. And if it’s the wrong time for your key stars… it’s okay putting Gervonta Davis against Frank Martin or something like that as a pay-per-view headline.
“It reminds me a little bit actually of when we were starting with DAZN. I did my first ever show on DAZN in Chicago [in 2018] – when I look back now, it was an unbelievable card. It was Jessie Vargas against Thomas Dulorme, it was Artur Beterbiev against Callum Johnson. There was three or four other world championship fights on there. It was a panic job. Jarrell Miller was fighting. It was ‘stick a load in and hopefully it’s big enough’. But it didn’t have the standout main event.
“That’s the problem when you do a Thurman against a Tszyu – it’s just gonna bomb. If you continue to do pay-per-views, we always talk about the price point for the US market – $79, $89. It has to be ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, it has to be Haney-Garcia – it has to be the one that you as the consumer, the fight fan, say ‘I’m not missing it – boys, girls, let’s get round the house, let’s make a night of it’.
“That’s a Haney-Garcia, that’s a Canelo against Munguia, that’s a Joshua against Ngannou, that’s a Fury against Usyk – they’re pay-per-view fights. Not Thurman-Tszyu with Rolly on the undercard and Jaron Ennis against his mandatory. Bomb.
“And that is the problem with pay-per-view in this country and worldwide as well.”
