Anthony Bailey learned during his time as a production and technology executive for Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions that it takes consistency to build boxing audiences.
On a smaller scale, that is Bailey’s blueprint for Boxing TV, a free platform that offers boxing content 24 hours a day.
Bailey’s Triple-B TV has partnered with Main Events’ Kathy Duva to provide a library of fights that features such legends as George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Arturo Gatti, Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas. Payne Boxing also coordinates coverage of live boxing cards from the United States, the Caribbean and South America for Boxing TV.
Boxing TV, which can be accessed at streamstak.com/boxingtv, will offer its next live card Friday at 6 p.m. ET. The show will feature Dominican featherweight Frency Fortunato (14-1, 10 KOs) and Venezuela’s Keine Montenegro (13-2, 11 KOs) in the 10-round main event from Coco Locos Restaurant Sports Bar in Sosua, Dominican Republic.
“We’re at two live fights every month,” Bailey told BoxingScene.com, “and our goal is to continue to add to that, where we’re at four, five, six, seven live fights every month. What we have found is if you have a good, consistent live fight schedule, and you promote it, people will come as long as they’re good, quality fights. We don’t really care about records. We just wanna put good fight nights on for fans of boxing.”
Boxing TV launched last April and has gradually grown its audience. It has the second-largest viewership among Triple-B TV’s group of 17 channels available on streamstak.com, behind only its billiards channel, Billiard TV.
“I was head of production and technology [for PBC],” said Bailey, who spent 20 years at ESPN prior to his four years with PBC. “And what we found is when we did ‘Toe-To-Toe Tuesdays,’ our audience grew week over week because it was consistent. We had a show every other Tuesday. We had good, quality fights with up-and-comers that PBC had just signed. We saw a consistent rise in viewership and that’s what Boxing TV is looking at. We wanna get a consistent schedule because we know from the past that we’ll see a growth of viewers. And we’re seeing it today.”
Between its live events, Boxing TV tries to keep boxing fans engaged throughout the day by replaying an array of old fights. This Thursday and Friday, for example, it streamed bouts that featured Meldrick Taylor and Lennox Lewis, as well as the first Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev light heavyweight title fight.
After its live show Friday night, Boxing TV has three events scheduled for March. It’ll stream cards from Sosua on March 4 and March 18 and a show from Fayetteville, North Carolina on March 31.
“I think fans will come to it,” Bailey said. “Consistency means a lot, so if we have a consistent schedule, fans will find it and they will come. When the fans come, it opens up opportunities for sponsors, for advertisers, who want that fan. And that fan is typically pretty dedicated to people who support their likes. Our theory is that it is gonna grow, as it has been growing, faster when more boxing people find it. They’ll find it as a great alternative to the pay services.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.