With Showtime Sports shutting down as of the end of this year, its various properties needed new homes. That included its boxing rights, which mostly are with Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions. And on Thursday, that company and Amazon announced that PBC will be coming to Prime Video next year on a multiyear deal. That will see pay-per-view events available there to everyone (without a Prime subscription required), and a PBC Championship Boxing series coming for Prime subscribers (as well as notable shoulder programming of new docuseries and archival events). Here’s more on that from a release:
PBC features over 150 active fighters across various weight divisions, including top contenders and current world champions. Since its debut in 2015, PBC has presented the biggest mega-events in the sport of boxing, including 2023 blockbusters David Benavidez vs. Caleb Plant, Gervonta “Tank” Davis vs. Ryan Garcia, Errol Spence vs. Terence Crawford, and Canelo Alvarez vs. Jermell Charlo. The addition of a world-class sports property like PBC is another one of the many benefits that come with Prime, which provides unparalleled savings, convenience, and entertainment, all in a single membership.
Prime Video will distribute PBC’s industry-leading pay-per-view (PPV) events in the U.S, with the first event anticipated for March 2024. PBC PPV fights will be available for all viewers to purchase, regardless of Prime membership. Additionally, in the U.S. and select countries, Prime Video will exclusively stream a PBC Championship Boxing series of events, showcasing top matchups among boxing’s current and rising stars. Details on specific cards, dates, and locations will be announced at a later date. In addition to the live PBC events, Prime Video will continue to grow its Original sports content offerings, with behind-the-scenes PBC docuseries, live weigh-ins, as well as on-demand access to previous events, highlights, archival footage, and more.
“We are thrilled to join with Premier Boxing Champions to bring the best boxers in the world to Prime Video, and to give more fans than ever the chance to experience these must-see events,” said Marie Donoghue, VP, U.S. sports content & partnerships, Amazon. “With live coverage of PBC action throughout the calendar year, Prime Video continues to bring viewers in the U.S. and around the world the best in sports.”
“Premier Boxing Champions is very proud to partner with Prime Video to showcase our world-class boxers and events. With Prime’s incredible reach and unprecedented marketing power, we’re very excited to reach new audiences for our sport as we continue to present the most exciting, competitive and biggest fights in Boxing,” said Bruce Binkow, CEO, Integrated Sports, exclusive agency for PBC.
Around the October news of Showtime Sports’ upcoming closure, ESPN’s Mike Coppinger reported that PBC was in talks with both Prime Video and DAZN for fights next year (they’re finishing out this year with Showtime, with one last fight there on Dec. 16, headlined by David Morrell Jr against Sena Agbeko). Now they’ve landed on Prime Video as their upcoming home. And that’s interesting, considering that DAZN has long been into boxing, but this is a new foray for Amazon. And it’s with some significant fights, including two further ones from Canelo Alvarez.
And this fits with some of the larger sports efforts at Prime Video, including a combat sports deal they signed with MMA promotion ONE Championship last year. In other U.S. rights, their NFL deal has them in their second season of Thursday Night Football exclusivity (with an added Black Friday game this year), they just added NASCAR rights, they also have rights for the WNBA, NWSL and more, and they’ve been linked to bidding for NBA rights. And they’ve been putting out lots of sports documentaries, and they even tried daily sports talk shows, although not for long. We’ll see how the boxing rights here fit in with all that, and how this works out for them.
