PBC Debut Earns Top Boxing Audience in 17 Years

Boxing’s return to primetime network television was the most-watched fighting telecast in nearly two years, and the most-watched boxing telecast on broadcast in nearly two decades.

The debut of the Premier Boxing Champions series drew a 2.1 rating and 3.4 million viewers on NBC Saturday night, according to Nielsen fast-nationals, the highest rated and most-watched boxing telecast on any broadcast network since Oscar De La Hoya Fight Night on FOX in 1998 (4.3, 5.9M), and the top fighting telecast of any kind since an April 2013 edition of the UFC on FOX (2.2, 3.7M).

Of the 20 primetime fighting telecasts on broadcast in the past decade — the UFC on FOX (14), Elite XC on CBS (3), Strikeforce on CBS (2) and PBC on NBC (1) — Saturday’s PBC debut ranks ninth in ratings and viewership. Among series debuts, however, it ranks dead last. The UFC on FOX premiered with a 3.1 and 5.7 million in November 2011, Strikeforce bowed on CBS with a 2.5 and 4.0 million two years earlier, and the inaugural EliteXC telecast in May 2008 had a 3.0 and 4.9 million.

Compared to the most recent boxing telecast on NBC, an afternoon NBC Sports Fight Night telecast in September, ratings and viewership more-than-quadrupled from a 0.5 and 763,000. NBC averaged a 0.8 rating for boxing telecasts from 2012-14, all of which aired in the afternoon.

Saturday’s telecast had a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49, slightly below the most recent UFC telecast on FOX in January (1.2), but enough to help NBC win the night on broadcast in the demo.

Most-Watched Primetime Fighting Telecasts on Broadcast
Past decade

(Sat. numbers from NBC Sports Group Press Box)