When Showtime Sports exited the boxing broadcast business last year, that meant Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) needed a new partner for its packed stable of talented fighters. PBC announced its new deal before 2023 was over, a multi-year rights agreement with Amazon’s Prime Video.
So far in 2024, however, there have been three PBC shows on Prime Video: Tim Tszyu vs. Sebastian Fundora in March, Canelo Alvarez vs. Jaime Munguia in May, and Gervonta Davis vs. Frank Martin in June.
Last Saturday’s show headlined by Israil Madrimov vs. Terence Crawford features a handful of PBC fighters and will be on Prime Video, DAZN, ESPN+ and PPV.com, but is otherwise a show led by several promoters and bankrolled by Riyadh Season. September’s fight between Canelo Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga will be the fourth PBC show on Prime Video. There also is an anticipated November show headlined by Gervonta Davis.
The first non-PPV card was supposed to take place in August, headlined by former super middleweight titleholder Caleb Plant vs. Trevor McCumby but was postponed when McCumby was cut in training.
But that first non-PPV show will still come soon, with more to come afterward, according to Tim Smith, the vice president of communications at Haymon Sports, speaking to Kurt Emhoff on the Boxing Esq. Podcast. Al Haymon, a longtime boxing adviser, is the founder of Premier Boxing Champions.
“I know everybody wants to know, ‘When are the free fights?’ There is no such thing as free fights, by the way. You have to have a subscription to watch any boxing, whether it’s ESPN+, even ESPN on cable, that’s part of your cable package. We do have the non-pay-per-view fights. We have a schedule of fights that are going to be on Prime Video. They call those fights SVOD, streaming video on demand fights. We have some of those coming up in September, October and Ii believe we have maybe a couple in December.”
Stephen Espinoza, who ran Showtime Sports and now is serving as an adviser with the PBC/Amazon relationship, has spoken of how boxing would eventually ramp up on Prime Video after the streaming service “got their sea legs under them.”
According to Smith, with the first handful of pay-per-view shows done, the regular Prime Video broadcasts are about to become an ongoing part of the schedule.
“There’s been a feeling-out process to find out how to work those in,” Smith said. “I’m very optimistic for 2025 in terms of having a steady diet of those.”
Follow David Greisman on Twitter @FightingWords2. His book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
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