For a series with seemingly dozens of national television partners, Premier Boxing Champions has no more scheduled broadcasts for the rest of the year.
Premier Boxing Champions currently has no scheduled bouts for the remainder of 2016, with the last card having taken place Tuesday on Fox Sports 1. On the PBC website, the schedule simply reads “New fight schedule coming soon.”
According to an ESPN.com report on the series’ status, NBC said last week that it would not carry the series for the rest of the year, canceling several scheduled dates including two primetime windows on the NBC broadcast network.
In a statement to ESPN.com, NBC Sports said that it is “working with the PBC” to move those canceled dates to the “first two to three months” of next year. The PBC said the lack of cards was a strategic move to avoid the packed fall sports schedule: “PBC is a TV boxing series, and as such, it’s mindful of the sports programming around it, and it wants to maximize potential viewership among sports fans.”
According to the ESPN report, the series has “badly depleted” its financial resources, which has resulted in — among other things — lower quality fights.
In less than two years time, the PBC has ushered in the return of boxing to primetime network television, with fights airing on a semi-regular basis across NBC, CBS and FOX. The series attracted a record-high audience of 4.8 million viewers for an August show on NBC, which had a direct lead-in from the Olympic Games.
(News from ESPN.com 9/22)
