Arum: We'll Do Four-Fight ESPN Cards Two, Three Times A Week Starting In Early June
By
Keith Idec
Published On Mon May 11, 2020, 01:10 PM EDT
Bob Arum’s promotional company is in the process of finalizing plans to start televising live boxing cards on ESPN early in June.
Arum divulged during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s “At The Fights” details of a plan that’ll require extensive, expensive testing for COVID-19 and would allow for two or three events per week from the same hotel in Las Vegas, without fans in attendance. Top Rank Inc., the company Arum co-founded in 1973, is based in Las Vegas.
“We have contacted most of our fighters,” Arum told co-hosts Gerry c00ney and Randy Gordon. “We plan to launch the first week in June in a safe, secure way. We’re gonna initially launch in Nevada. We’ve made arrangements or are making arrangements with a hotel. We can get everybody tested, put them in a bubble and get these fights on. And unfortunately, because a lot of it requires so much extra work and care and testing that we’re gonna limit our fight shows to four fights a card. But that’s the bad side.
“The good side is we hope, we’re arranging with ESPN to do two or three events every week. So, because you know, you take a big sports network like ESPN, ESPN+, they don’t have live sports now and putting boxing on, particularly top-level boxing, will attract big audiences.”
Without live content typically provided this time of year by the NBA, MLB, MLS, UFC and boxing, ESPN largely has resorted to airing replays of those sports. The network even started televising live Korean Baseball Organization games last week.
Arum didn’t mention which fights would be part of the June launch. He also didn’t identify the Las Vegas hotel with which Top Rank is negotiating to stage multiple cards per week next month.
Like UFC, Top Rank has a content distribution partnership with ESPN. Unlike UFC 249, which took place Saturday night in Jacksonville, Florida, none of the events Arum’s company is putting together would be pay-per-view shows.
Each of those Top Rank cards would either air live on ESPN or be streamed by ESPN+, the network’s $5-per-month subscription service.
Top Rank has had to postpone six shows in the United States and Canada since the coronavirus pandemic essentially shut down both countries in the middle of March.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.