Showtime Will Officially Leave Boxing After 2023 – Hearn Reacts

In the latest boxing news, Showtime will no longer broadcast boxing after 2023. 

That is according to ESPN’s Mike Coppinger. The network has been broadcasting boxing for around 40 years, but it now follows in the footsteps of HBO of walking away from the sport.

As of now, the last card on the network will be David Benavidez’s fight with Demetrius Andrade. The rumours over Showtime’s end had been in the offing for sometime as Stephen Espinoza and Dana White fired verbal shots at each other. And now Paramount Global and Stephen Espinoza have confirmed the news. 

Showtime Pulls Out Of Boxing

“As we evolve our strategy to more efficiently allocate resources and align our content offering across the business, we’ve made the difficult decision not to move forward with boxing and other content produced by the Showtime sports team. Showtime will continue to air and support the remaining 2023 boxing slate and honor obligations through the end of the year,” Paramount Global 

“The company’s decision is not a reflection of the work we have done in recent years, nor of our long and proud history. … Unfortunately, in a rapidly evolving media marketplace, the company has had to make difficult choices allocating resources, resetting priorities and reshaping its content offering. While today’s news is certainly difficult and disappointing, it is entirely out of our control,” Stephen Espinoza

This naturally begs the question: where will PBC look to next for a network? Well, reports stress that PBC has been in talks with Amazon Prime and DAZN.

The former, however, has allegedly been keen on making a short-term deal, as opposed to having a long-term agreement. Meanwhile, DAZN has been a competitor of PBC for some time which is why an agreement may come out of the blue.

And yet, an agreement with DAZN would potentially offer PBC a good platform given that they do have an agreement with Golden Boy Promotions and Matchroom Boxing. 

Hearn Reacts To Showtime Leaving

Those comments did grab Eddie Hearn’s attention, who had infamously claim that Showtime would go out of business. And now that this has happened, the Matchroom Boxing promoter had a few choice words to say about it.

But rather than reveling in Showtime’s demise, the promoter admitted that boxing would suffer as a result. After all, Showtime had shown their pulling power with three live gates that exceeded $20 million this year. With that being said, this is what Hearn had to say. 

“It’s not great news for boxing. It’s just a sign of the future and the sign that the way that content is being distributed and delivered to fight fans, and that is by streaming. We saw that a couple of years ago, we made our own move to build those partnerships and those relationships, but boxing will be worse off without Showtime, as it was worse off without HBO.

“So there’s a lot of people championing Stephen Espinoza losing his job and boxing not being part of that, but I’ve — I know we never really got on that well — but I think he’s done a good job. And I think we’ve talked earlier when I came and I predicted this, what, two or three years ago and said it’s coming,” Hearn stated 

So either way, there is plenty to consider for PBC moving forward. Find all the latest boxing news and MMA breaking updates on boxingblitz.