Last month, when Paramount announced its plans to discontinue the Showtime Sports brand at the end of 2023, it felt like the end of an era.
Showtime has aired boxing for 37 of its 46 years as a network. Five years ago, HBO also stopped airing boxing after 45 years.
Many wondered what it meant for Premier Boxing Champions, promotor Al Haymon’s series of fights that has an exclusivity deal with the network. We now seem to have our answer.
Michael Benson of TalkSport reported via Ariel Helwani that PBC is “very, very close” to a broadcast deal with Amazon Prime to replace its outgoing Showtime deal.
‼️ Al Haymon's PBC are reportedly now “very, very close” to a boxing broadcast deal with Amazon Prime after Showtime announced that they are set to leave the sport at the end of this year. [According to @ArielHelwani]
— Michael Benson (@MichaelBensonn) November 27, 2023
It’s hardly a surprise in 2023 when traditional cable is eschewed in favor of streaming services, especially for a sport like boxing which is becoming more and more niche and losing mainstream popularity.
Unlike many other streaming services, Amazon Prime already has live sports streaming experience with Thursday Night Football every week, making them a natural fit for more live sports streaming.
Amazon has said in the past that Prime has over 200 million subscribers. However, it’s unclear how many of those people actually utilize Prime Video instead of the other parts of the subscription such as expedited shipping. Regardless, it’s a chance for Haymon and the PBC to get far more eyes on the product than they ever could have on Showtime.
