UK pay-television broadcaster BSkyB will not renew its deal to show boxing bouts promoted by Manchester-based Hatton Promotions.
The deal, which expires in June, was for six events, according to the Daily Mail newspaper. Hatton Promotions is owned by former two-weight world champion Ricky Hatton and was formed in February 2009. It was the smallest of the three promoters with whom Sky has rights deals. The other two promoters are Frank Maloney Promotions and Matchroom Sport.
Sky is understood to be reconsidering its strategy on the sport ahead of its other renewals, which also expire in June. The broadcaster is increasingly acquiring rights for bouts organised by smaller promoters via Matchroom. In one recent example, promoter Coldwell Boxing partnered with Matchroom to gain coverage of the British light-heavyweight title clash between Tony Bellew and Danny McIntosh on April 27. Commercial broadcaster Channel 5, which has a rights deal with promoter Hennessy Sports, had rejected an approach by Coldwell offering the rights.
Matchroom vets the bouts for quality and sometimes adds matches involving boxers from its own stable to the fight card, before selling the rights on to Sky. The arrangement saves Sky having to deal with numerous smaller promoters presenting bouts of varying quality.
Matchroom has strengthened its hand ahead of its upcoming negotiation with Sky by signing some of Britain’s biggest boxers to its stable in the last twelve months. Matchroom has a separate deal with Sky for the rights for the promoter’s boxing series Prizefighter, which is also set to end in June 2013.
Sky’s boxing portfolio was weakened in September last year when Frank Warren, Britain’s biggest boxing promoter, decided not to renew his contract with Sky, instead committing his stable to new UK boxing channel Box Nation. Warren said that he had chosen this direction in part due to the slump in boxing media rights fees over the last few years, which he put down to the lack of competition in the broadcast market. Warren has a seat on the board of Boxing Channel Media, the holding company behind the Box Nation channel.