Stephen Espinoza is sanguine that Saturday’s PBC on Prime pay-per-view match between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga will be a commercial success.
“It’s really taken off,” Espinoza, a former Showtime Sports president who is now a consultant for PBC and its ongoing Prime Video deal, told BoxingScene this week in Las Vegas. “I think there was some initial concern about the competitiveness, but I think some of the visuals helped, in the sense that you can see the size difference and you can see that Berlanga is not intimidated. He’s clearly got a lot of confidence. He’s adolescent, powerful, he’s inexperienced at this level, but he’s got a punch. So I think it’s taken off a lot more than it was six weeks ago when the fight was announced.”
The reference to perceived lack of competitiveness underscores a growing criticism of Alvarez: that despite having fought a range of threatening opponents throughout his career, he now deliberately avoids the toughest challenges. Most notably, David Benavidez moved up to lightweight heavyweight in search of massive fights, frustrated by the wait for Alvarez, who had been busy fighting the likes of junior middleweight Jermell Charlo, Briton John Ryder and fellow countryman Jaime Munguia. Does Espinoza, who has worked with Alvarez for many years, think that criticism is justified? Or has Alvarez earned the right to do whatever he wants at the end of his career?
“I think it’s one of those situations where both things can be true,” he said. “Yes, as boxing fans, you think Canelo-Benavidez is a tempting fight, but when you look at Canelo’s career, he’s been on the massive stage for at least 12 years and he’s never ducked anybody. And he’s really known for taking tougher fights than he probably should have. So yes, I understand the frustration. I feel it too. But we’re also talking about a guy who’s fought everyone and anybody in his path, so I’m giving him some grace. And I’m not ready to close this fight until one or both of them retire. Just because it didn’t happen exactly when we wanted it to happen doesn’t mean it won’t happen next May or September.”
Speaking of frustrating schedules: The PBC-Prime partnership hasn’t exactly been a door-breaker for potential opposition. There have been a handful of pay-per-view events in 2024, but none of the promised non-PPV dates have been made (though Caleb Plant vs. Trevor McCumby, on Saturday’s pay-per-view, was originally slated to be the partnership’s first free card for Prime subscribers, and now Tim Tszyu vs. Bakhram Murtzaliev will take over that honor on Oct. 19). Has Espinoza found the transition from the glossy operation of Showtime to the ups and downs of Prime frustrating?
“I think people underestimate the amount of work and effort that went into rebuilding this, and I understand why people are particularly interested,” he said. “They want to turn on the TV and watch the fight, and they’re not so interested in all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into getting there. But for the last 30 to 40 years, the boxing market in the United States has been defined by two premium cable networks that promoted the sport, broadcast it, produced it and did it at a very high level. And with Showtime gone, that infrastructure is gone. The marketing infrastructure, the social media infrastructure, the TV production, all of that is gone. And it’s been replaced by a system where the streamers typically have no interest in supporting most of the production, if any at all.
“It’s rebuilding the infrastructure that we’ve all relied on for 30 years, from the ground up. It’s pulling the rug out and saying, ‘OK, let’s start from scratch and build it all out.’ And that’s true for the platform in terms of the technology, the way they deliver pay-per-view, the way they advertise pay-per-view. It’s true for television production, it’s true for operations. It’s true for everything. So it’s no surprise to anyone involved that this has been a case of walking before you run. But now I think it’s time for the momentum to pick up, and I think we’ll see that between now and the end of the year.”
Espinoza is sanguine that in the last quarter of the year, there will be “at least one fight a month, more likely two” on Prime.
Following Tszyu-Murtzaliev, he says: “it is expected that Tank [Gervonta Davis] coming after that. It’s expected that there will be at least one more non-pay-per-view event in 2024 after that, and potentially another pay-per-view. So between October, November and December, we’re looking at four or maybe five events.”
As for the possibility of PBC finding an additional broadcast or streaming partner, Espinoza was equivocal, though he acknowledged that recent platforms are necessary to the sport and its athletes.
“I think people don’t realize that in the bigger picture, HBO and Showtime leaving probably took $200 million to $250 million away from the market in licensing and production fees,” he explained. “Plus 30 to 35 events a year. So there are a lot of fighters who aren’t as vigorous as they would like to be. There’s a lot of attention paid to what’s happening with the Saudis, but there are a lot of gaps in the rest of the market in terms of activity, in terms of keeping fighters going, especially at the developmental level and with the emerging fighters. For this sport to continue to grow, it’s definitely going to have to get recent media partners.”
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