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HEY, ESPN, WAIT...THIS ISN'T GOOD NEWS AT ALL...

By Paul Magno | March 16, 2018
HEY, ESPN, WAIT...THIS ISN'T GOOD NEWS AT ALL...

Just a day after it was announced that Terence Crawford was pulling out of his April 14 WBO welterweight title bout against Jeff Horn on ESPN with a very conveniently-timed hand injury, we got this headline from ESPN’s Dan Rafael:

ESPN, Top Rank expand partnership by adding 12 more cards

Rafael opened the article with this press release-like sentence:

“There will be even more Top Rank boxing events coming to ESPN as part of its long-term agreement with the network.”

Awesome! Hurray for boxing! More boxing on basic cable is great news. Thank you Top Rank. Thank you ESPN!

Keep reading, though.

ESPN, the company, is adding more fights, but you’re not going to get them on ESPN and you’re not going get them for free, either.

Jimmy Pitaro, the president of ESPN and co-chairman of Disney Media Network made the following statement Wednesday during a staff meeting at the sport broadcasting giant’s company headquarters.

“We have closed an amendment to our partnership with Top Rank Boxing where we will now have exclusive access to stream 12 very, very high quality cards as a part of the ESPN+ app. That will include the upcoming [Terence] Crawford-[Jeff] Horn fight. This is going to be very, very impactful to the ESPN+ experience. We couldn't be more excited. It's really, really good news for us."

This is certainly good news for ESPN and their push to get a high-end streaming service off the ground. This is not good news, however, if you’re a fight fan looking for easier, less costly access to fights in an industry that is already stacked with paywalls. 

The ESPN+ streaming app will cost $4.99 a month and, aside from boxing, the goal is to broadcast a wide range of sporting events not carried on the main ESPN cable outlet. 

Crawford-Horn, apparently, will be the first major fight shown exclusively on ESPN’s new pay service and it will pave the way for eleven more exclusive ESPN+ boxing events. 

So, to lay out the Top Rank/ESPN business model here—boxing fans will be getting some fights on ESPN’s basic cable service, others on the ESPN+ pay app, and then will have to dish out pay-per-view money for the “big” fights on ESPN PPV. This “free” boxing deal will cost you three times over. 

Hurray?

Essentially, boxing fans are getting the same deal that they got when Top Rank dealt exclusively with HBO. Except, now, they will get their boxing content with delays and last-minute channel changes due to ESPN’s unpredictable live event schedule. 

As for the Crawford-Horn fight, specifically, this has to be seen as a real downer. Pegged to be a high-profile PPV event with Manny Pacquiao on the undercard, the card fell apart altogether after Pacquiao refused to be part of the event. A convenient Crawford hand injury allowed for the April 14 date to be scrubbed from the schedule—just in time to have the soon-to-be rescheduled bout added to the ESPN+ app plans.

If the goal was to get Crawford exposure with the Horn bout, then this is an especially large fail for everyone involved. Without Pacquiao tied to the event, without it even being on the main ESPN channel, Crawford gets ZERO push from this Horn fight. He would’ve been better off fighting for the 700,000 faithful HBO Boxing viewers who tune into every event these days rather than fight for a few thousand on a new streaming app. 

But, hey, maybe this can be salvaged. Maybe strategies will change and ESPN+ fights won’t be entirely exclusive to the pay app. But how often do major companies err on the side of SAVING consumers money—especially in boxing?

Boxing fans may eventually cave in and dish out the 4.99 for access to one or two fights a month. But this certainly isn’t a positive for fans and their finances.

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