A $100M antitrust suit that boxing promoter Top Rank filed against manager Al Haymon and the investors in his Premier Boxing Champions series last month was a headline play based on accusations that “ignore reality and in no way implicate the antitrust laws,” Haymon’s attorneys said in a motion to dismiss the suit filed Monday in federal court. In the motion, Haymon’s lawyers argue that the PBC, which has bought time to air fights on NBC, CBS, ESPN, Spike, Fox Sports and other networks this year, has been a “pro-competitive innovation” meant to revive interest in the sport rather than force out competition, as Top Rank claimed in its suit. Though it claimed that the PBC’s purchase of air-time and the expansion of Haymon’s stable to more than 200 fighters boxed competitors out of the market, Top Rank failed in its suit to site specific instances in which it was denied a broadcast opportunity, kept from promoting a fight, prevented from signing a fighter to a promotional contract or damaged financially, Haymon’s lawyers wrote. They also questioned Top Rank’s attempt to charge illegal practices under the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, an oft-cited but rarely tested federal law that requires a fiduciary firewall between promoters and managers, arguing that the law was written to protect boxers and that only boxers are entitled to sue based on it. PBC launched with its first telecast on NBC in March, backed by at least $448M from a $23B mutual fund managed by Waddell & Reed Financial. Since then, the series has put up the best ratings boxing has seen in decades. But it also has come under fire from established promoters, including Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions, who say Haymon’s strategy of buying network air-time threatens the viability of their companies, which rely on television rights fees paid largely by premium cable network HBO. Golden Boy filed a similar antitrust suit in the same U.S. District Court in L.A. in May.
IT TAKES MONEY TO MAKE MONEY: The most recent SEC filings by Waddell & Reed indicate that Top Rank is correct on at least one count: The assertion that the PBC is burning through millions in its attempt to build a product that it can then sell to the networks. In a quarterly report of portfolio holdings filed Friday, Waddell & Reed’s Ivy Asset Strategy Fund listed the market value of its investment in Haymon’s Media Group Holdings at $293M as of June 30, down $155M from its initial cost of $448M in '13. The PBC declined opportunities to comment on the fund’s filing. In interviews earlier this year, PBC execs said they expected to sustain deep losses while proving their concept.
