Have you ever heard of the United States Basketball League? Its a sub-NBA league existing primarily in medium sized markets around the country and populated with players not ready for the prime time of the National Basketball Association. Have you ever heard of the Champions Tour, formerly the Senior Golf Tour? Its a sub-PGA tour existing on medium sized golf courses around the country populated with players past their golfing prime and no longer competitive on the Professional Golf Association tour.
Don’t look in your “local listings” for the next USBL basketball game, they aren’t on TV. However, the Champions Tour is regularly telecast and has been for the last fifteen years, providing viewers with “compelling” telecasts of fifty and sixty year olds, climbing in and out of golf carts and their “senior moments” on the golf course. Guess which enterprise has a brighter future? Here’s today’s Marketing “blinding flash of the obvious”: in order for a sport to succeed, it must have meaningful, frequent and timely TV exposure.
This past weekend in California, Women’s boxing had a couple of significant events on tap. On Friday, in Lemoore, four bouts were scheduled, featuring among other quality fighters, Sumya Anani, Fredia Gibbs, Laura Serrano, and Isra Girgrah. The following night in Fresno, Jenifer Alcorn was stepping into the ring with Mia St John. The ESPN network, as part of their “Friday Night Fights” on ESPN 2, planned to cover the Friday bouts, and HBO was covering the boxing card in Fresno, featuring a title defense by Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Late in the week, ESPN2 announced that it was moving the “Friday Night Fights” start time from 10PM EST to 12 Midnight, thus taking the bouts out of prime time in at least 70% of the country. This change, according to the network, was necessary in order to broadcast a Stanley Cup playoff game on ESPN2, beginning at 9PM.
What the network failed to divulge is that it had the option of switching this game “in progress” to ESPN at around 9:30 PM, following the completion of another hockey game, thus accommodating the original 10PM start time for boxing. This type of “in progress” switch from one ESPN outlet to another is quite common for baseball, basketball, and hockey, but the network chose not to avail themselves of the option and the boxing start time stayed at 12 midnight, competing against a number of “get rich quick with Florida land deals” infomercials which are a programming staple in that time period.
When it finally reached the air, the boxing program began with the Serrano/Girgrah bout which went the full eight rounds. This was followed by the Anani/Gibbs bout which was halted, after the first round, due to a Gibbs’ hand injury followed by the Michael Grant/Gilbert Martinez “main event” that ended in a seventh round Grant TKO.
Then, with plenty of airtime remaining in the usual two hour boxing segment, the network, inexplicably, opted to discontinue “live” boxing, leaving viewers without the opportunity to view at least one of the two remaining Women’s bouts, Nina Ahlin/Vaia Zaganas or Lisa Lewis/Layla McCarter. Thus, ESPN2 compounded an avoidable programming delay of two hours by foregoing the broadcast of additional “live” boxing; not much of a programming reward for viewers who had stuck with the network through the two hour delay.
The following night in Fresno, Home Box Office covered the Floyd Mayweather Jr/Victoriano Sosa title fight, which featured a preliminary bout between Jenifer Alcorn and Mia St John. HBO cable, which has yet to broadcast a Women’s boxing bout, had previously announced that Alcorn/St John would not make “air”, prompting one to ponder the programming wisdom of presenting a replay of the previous week’s Marco Barrera/Kevin Kelley mismatch in lieu of Alcorn/St John, a bout which had generated substantial interest in the Fresno area. HBO simply chose to continue its programming boycott of Women’s boxing, opting for the replay of a four round mismatch.
While it is easy to bemoan the continued lack of TV exposure the sport of Women’s boxing receives, others may point out that ESPN2 did, at least, telecast the Laura Serrano/Isra Girgrah bout. Ignoring for the moment the midnight start time, the obvious reply is that such programming beneficence might be properly filed under “No good deed goes unpunished”. The Serrano/Girgrah bout was, indeed, a marvelous fight; two of the skilled athletes in the sport, over eight rounds of give and take action. Girgrah is a wonderful fighter, as attested to by her 23-3-2 record coming into the bout. On Friday night, however, she was the second best fighter in the ring.
Serrano threw more punches, landed more punches and showed significantly more aggressiveness throughout a terrific eight rounds of boxing. At the end, two of the judges, who were allegedly sitting at ringside and even more allegedly paying attention to the action in the ring, awarded the fight to Girgrah. Not to overdo golf analogies, but Mark Twain once remarked that the game amounted to “a good walk spoiled”; two boxing judges in Lemoore California on Friday night, turned the efforts of two great athletes into “a wonderful bout spoiled”.
Thus, what should have been a banner weekend for Women’s boxing ended up, from a TV standpoint, somewhat less. HBO continued to thumb its programming nose at the sport (to provide an insight into the thinking of these boxing Luddites, HBO is on record as stating that the first Women’s bout on HBO will likely be Christy Martin/Lucia Rijker) while ESPN, who seems to cover the sport on an almost grudging basis, didn’t do a great Women’s boxing card any favors by almost inexcusable scheduling and a reluctance to “go the extra step” and telecast additional bouts when they clearly had the airtime.
The inescapable truth is that if the sport of Women’s boxing doesn’t begin to get more respect and better coverage on TV, it will soon be on the verge of becoming the United States Basketball League.
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