Ratings Indicate De La Hoya-Forbes Bout Not Good Value For HBO

HBO Draws 2.5 Million Viewers For Last Weekend's De La Hoya-Forbes Bout

The May 3 Oscar De La Hoya-Steve Forbes fight on HBO totaled 2.5 million viewers, which includes both the live event on Saturday night and the Sunday replay. For Saturday night's live event, HBO did a 4.7 coverage area rating and had 2.1 million viewers. The fight was not among the top 40 most-watched cable telecasts for the week ending May 4 (THE DAILY). MAXBOXING.com's Steve Kim wrote the rating on the surface "doesn't seem that bad," as it is around the same rating as the April 19 Joe Calzaghe-Bernard Hopkins match generated. The bout was "one of [HBO's] higher ratings in the past year or so." But HBO spent around $9M -- $7M for the show and $2M in marketing -- by opting to put it on the cable channel instead of PPV. Kim: "If you divide the money spent by HBO by the rating they procured, it may be among the worst values they have ever gotten dollar-for-dollar. ... What does this say about the public's appetite for De La Hoya-Mayweather II?" (MAXBOXING.com, 5/7).