No Boxing coverage on bbc sports web page.

Anyone else notice that the BBC have stoped covering Boxing on there website?

It's still on the website; unfortunately, it just doesn't command a place on the main page anymore. Click on the 'Other Sports' subsection and you'll find what little coverage the BBC still has of the sport.

As Prince said, Sign o' the Times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/boxing/

It's buried away but it does get updated fairly regularly. I actually like Ben Dirs blogs and articles.

Group Cpt Lionel Mandrake wrote:It's buried away but it does get updated fairly regularly. I actually like Ben Dirs blogs and articles.

They would be ok if they were not riddled with complete inaccuracies.

Each to their own but Dirs is hopeless, for me.

Link me up with some of the inaccuracies? One thing I really like about the all the BBC sport blogs is they hyperlink up to the source material or article.

Group Cpt Lionel Mandrake wrote:Link me up with some of the inaccuracies? One thing I really like about the all the BBC sport blogs is they hyperlink up to the source material or article.

You're kidding, right? Look for them yourself, I haven't got the time or inclination.

As for hyperlinks, you're talking a different language to me now.

Ive always felt Ben Dirs is something of a boxing apologist and a fraud. Not neccessarily his fault because the BBC dont employ anyone to cover the sport in detail so Ive always got the impression Ben Dirs just fills in. Usually with article lamenting the current state of boxing and wistfully reminiscing about a time he neither followed or covered the sport.

I think Dirs is a good writer, just not much of an historian. As Tino alludes to, he does throw in the odd alarming mistake here and there. Thought his article on the passing of Frazier was very good, mind you. That aside, I can take or leave him.

88Chris05 wrote:I think Dirs is a good writer, just not much of an historian. As Tino alludes to, he does throw in the odd alarming mistake here and there. Thought his article on the passing of Frazier was very good, mind you. That aside, I can take or leave him.

To be honest, on reflection, calling him hopeless is unfair. Yourself and manos have summed up my feelings on Ben Dirs much more concisely than I did.

I don't find his writing all that special, but hopeless is a touch harsh.

Espn is easily the best site for boxing news anyway

at the top of the home page there is a bar with football, rugby etc on - if you look to the right it says 'more sports'. That brings up a list with boxing in that.

Also if boxing has been in the news recently, it'll be on a tab further down the page.

That's what happens when you get classy and humble fighters. They are boring people and like it or not, boxing is almost as much about personalities as it is about fighting skills.

Look at Ricky Burns. Classy, humble, an all roung great guy without exception. Who knows him outside of hardcore boxing fans and his family.

I read and comment on most of Ben Dirs boxing blogs. He can definitely write and in his better blogs his words juant along at a good pace with a nice turn of phrase.

Where he falls down for me is in how biased he is towards certain fighters. I accused him of being on the Haye payroll. Haymaker must throw a lot of free comps his way. His blogs are best when he doesn't start off with an agenda.

All in all they are worth a read in my view.

Thanks Guys

alma wrote:Lets face it the bbc is rubbish for sport. I always cringe when that hapless sports presenter on the breakfast show does his round up and then does a feature at the end on some obscure sport like underwater dwarf throwing

no one does the bigger tournaments as well as the bbc.
olympics, wimbledon, world cups etc.
it also has world snooker, 6 nations, grand national, f1 etc.

sky may have flashy graphics but thats about it, they talk absolute nonsense most of the time because they run out of things to say after 5 minutes. 24 hours of sky sports news can be condensed into a 15 min show.

I think the BBC are getting a hard time. Big stories in pretty much any sport make it onto their front sport page. De Gale's win is showing there right now, Haye & Chisora were all over it (for the wrong reasons), the Khan/ Peterson aftermath was heavily reported, they've got some good articles on the Olympic hopefuls etc

So they definitely cover the higher profile British fighters and Mayweather/ Pacman stories usually pop up too in the fight build up. Football will always dominate but given that the BBC show hardly any sport these days outside big tournaments, I think they do a good job. Yes, mainstream sports will always dominate but that happens on every generic sport site.

Sky Sports boxing site isn't really any better than the BBC's

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/boxing/

http://www1.skysports.com/boxing/

I think Sky Sports is well ahead in terms of boxing. They at least have a specialist boxing team there that covers the sport. No doubt people will say Nelson/Smith/Watt/McCrory/Robinson etc are useless or they hate them but at least they are familiar with the sport and better than Ben Dirs filling in once in a while on the BBC in between his cricket, snooker and rugby blogs.

OasisBFC wrote:

alma wrote:Lets face it the bbc is rubbish for sport. I always cringe when that hapless sports presenter on the breakfast show does his round up and then does a feature at the end on some obscure sport like underwater dwarf throwing

no one does the bigger tournaments as well as the bbc.
olympics, wimbledon, world cups etc.
it also has world snooker, 6 nations, grand national, f1 etc.

sky may have flashy graphics but thats about it, they talk absolute nonsense most of the time because they run out of things to say after 5 minutes. 24 hours of sky sports news can be condensed into a 15 min show.

Sky's biggest weakness is concentrating too much on style over substance. As you say lots of flashy graphics (which I think ruin the website in particular) and worse - lots of flashy but bloody clueless pretty girls. SSN in particular is ruined by Murdoch's obsession with only hiring stunning girls with limited presenting experience and slim to none sporting knowledge. If you can find someone like Georgie Thompson that is attractive and does seem to have a genuine interest in sport and understands it then that's fine, but the rest are for the most part show-ponies and quality suffers as a result.

Boxing is done well on SS, largely because it has a dedicated team of knowledgable, experienced and generally interesting people - not some token pretty girl bouncing around looking and sounding clueless.

Think the problem with a lot of these people is they don't know jack Poopie about boxing, even though it's their job.

I think Sky get a bad press on boxing, fair enough some of the commentary team may annoy on occasions and they certainly do not show enough overseas fights to satisfy the hardcore fan but they are the only channel who have shown anything approaching a commitment to the sport in recent years, BBC closed shop as soon as it was apparent Audley was not very good, ITV did likewise despite fat Mick delivering good figures and cards, dread to think where the sport would have been in the last 10 or 15 years without Sky.

rowley wrote:dread to think where the sport would have been in the last 10 or 15 years without Sky.

Yep. I have had this argument with people on here before, but there is quite often some misconception that terrestrial TV cared about the 'sport' to some degree greater than Sky which is just not true. The huge Benn - McClellan or Benn - Eubank nights are one thing, but where were the BBC or ITV for a brilliant domestic Flyweight title fight (insert any example here)? They were nowhere. I know we pay for the privilege, but Sky have spoiled fans over the last decade in a way that BBC/ITV would never have committed to. You could possible argue that BBC3 or ITV4 etc etc would have picked up some slack, but that would be pure guesswork.

We would all love for 'free' TV to show all the fights we have seen over the last 20 years but that was/is never going to happen, and Sky have filled a massive boxing sized hole over that period.

I think Sky have probably had a lot of the same frustrations as the fans this last year or two, i cancelled my Sky Sports subscription when they ditched the boxing and told them the reason why, lets hope they become the main player again in the near future. As folk have already said boxnation have wrapped up and sold us something we already had.

What is also worth remembering is a lot of the boxing BBC and ITV showed was on either Grandstand or World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon, so even if they did have a commitment to the sport, which tina is right in saying is overstated much of their output was on a delayed basis, when most fans with any commitment to the sport would already know the result

I agree, GG. I think they started to show some frustration way back when they stopped showing WBU/WBF 'title' fights. Since then, although they have put on some excellent shows, that frustration has festered away. They restarted Ringside to soothe some wounds but they are clearly not going to be paying promoters bags of money for rubbish output anymore.

There was an interesting comment from Eddie Hearn some time ago re the Khan Mcloskey fight and when it was downgraded from box office, he said he was taking to the head of sky sports who was in the US for the Masters golf and was renegotiating the contract for Premier league football and was spending 95% of his time on a fight and sport that does not generate a quarter of either the viewing figures either of those sports do.

Think this is TV's issue with the sport it is a lot of hassle and does not always deliver what it should, some of it is unavoidable such as withdrawls through injury but much of the hassle such as Manny and Floyd or Fury and Price not fighting is very much avoidable. There is more certainty attached to other sport, in football Arsenal will play Man U at least twice a year, there will be four golf majors and so on and so on, there is no similar guarantee someone like Mayweather will fight even once in the year and even less it will be against an opponent you want to see him in with.

very true.

anyone else remember the groves interview on sky. they asked him if he would ever fight khan. true story.

OasisBFC wrote:very true.

anyone else remember the groves interview on sky. they asked him if he would ever fight khan. true story.

That was rididculous.

I actually worry that boxing is now a fringe sport. It's other status is on the live sports streams sites, betting sites and the beeb is another example. Sucks, but sign of the time as someone said.

No question in my mind it is a fringe sport Sean, as you say look at websites, betting sites, similarly try and find a copy of Boxing Monthly or Ring in any newsagents other than a huge WH smith, easier said than done I promise you. The sport genuinely only has itself to blame though, have said it countless times but when you have a situation where even the most hardcore of obsessives cannot keep track with the world title situation you will turn people off the sport as sport is meant to be enjoyable, you should not need to devote all your time to it just to keep track and develop rain man like powers of memory just to name the world champions.

Newspaper coverage isn't much better.

Not even a boxing sub-section on The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/

Telegraph is better but very UK centric: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/boxing/

Daily Mail is poor: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/index.html

The Times is behind a paywall

The Sun is little more than a couple of paragraphs on each story: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/boxing/

I think theres no doubt it is a fringe sport now. The question is what percentage of it was self inflicted and what percentage was outside its control?

Im actually a bit skeptical of the impact of certain criteria have had on boxing because anyone who enjoys the historical aspect of boxing well probably agree that the sport has almost always been riddled with problems and vices associated with a sport that has never really been properly regulated or governed to a satisfactory degree. I think its a bit of a myth that everything was well and good with boxing once upon a time. Yet in past areas these problems never really negatively affected its popularity. It remained a mainstream sport probably up until the late 1980s.

Things like too many weights and too many belts I think are only minor problems. If the sport was mainstream these wouldnt really be a decisive factor. I think possibly the biggest problem has been a dwindling fanbase that has created a kind of vicious circle. The more the fanbase has shrunk, the less media time is given to it which in turns leads to less fans following it and so on. I think its in this regard that boxing has had one of its biggest failing in terms of developing its fanbase. In a sense it elected to become niche by pandering first to subscription and worst of all ppv (something I think has had a disastrous effect on boxing).

Because the sport is fragemented with no overall body governing it, it hasnt marketed itself well and its poor at trying to capture a new audience. If you take something like UFC, its recognised many of the failings in boxing and incorporated into its strategy. Its centrally controlled (more or less at present) and it spends huge amounts marketing and promoting itself aggressively, building up stars and trying to win new fans. Boxing doesnt really do this. Its left to individuals to make themselves stars without a decent launchpad that the likes of UFC offer their fighters.

One of the reasons Im against the idea of boxnation is because its aggravating this problem of not really putting boxing to the mainstream and relying on selling to the established hardcore follower. But how is it going to attract new fans into the sport? If you talk to people who dont follow boxing at all they still more than likely remember the likes of Benn and Eubank purely because they were exposed to them as opposed to going looking for them.

Agree with manos de piedra's excellent post.

Also, I noticed how more secluded boxing became once Sky became a factor. Benn and Eubank had the good fortune to be on ITV and became well known to the general public.
The boxers that followed and were on Sky struggled for recognition with the wider public and slowly the interest in the sport faded to its current state.

Personally Manos I see the dwindling fanbase as a consequence of the numerous belts and too many divisions. You are right to allude to the fact that the "golden age" was probably nothing of the sort with such things as the mob influence and the colour line however for me there is a world of difference between having one world champion and having to accept that on occasions that fighter was not the best in the world across 8 divisions than having anywhere between one and six world champions in each of 17 divisions because under the former system a fan could reasonably be expected to name every world champion, I defy anyone to do the same currently. Under such a system is inevitable some people will decide the effort is not justified or will drift away.

rowley wrote:Personally Manos I see the dwindling fanbase as a consequence of the numerous belts and too many divisions. You are right to allude to the fact that the "golden age" was probably nothing of the sort with such things as the mob influence and the colour line however for me there is a world of difference between having one world champion and having to accept that on occasions that fighter was not the best in the world across 8 divisions than having anywhere between one and six world champions in each of 17 divisions because under the former system a fan could reasonably be expected to name every world champion, I defy anyone to do the same currently. Under such a system is inevitable some people will decide the effort is not justified or will drift away.

I dont see the belt situation as being the root of the problem myself. I think exposure and fanbase are the biggest problems. The sport simply has to get more attention in the media if it wants to generate interest. Its not doing that enough. Theres a kind of a chicken and egg situation with media whereby the more the media pushes something, the bigger it becomes and the bigger it becomes the more the media pushes it.

The popularity the likes of Eubank and Benn had wasnt negatively impacted by the new WBO or 168 division and even recent events such as Sky really getting behind David Hayes heavyweight campaign and the effect that had in terms of getting the average joe to notice boxing leads me to believe that exposure is the greatest problem. In that regard ppv is an absolute killer. The 1980s was generally a multibelt era but with the likes of Tyson and the four kings all commanding strong mainstream attention it didnt really seem to be as much as an issue then as it is now.

Agree PPV is a killer for the sport, the problem is there is no real incentive for a mainstream channel to invest in the sport, if ITV were to get back into the sport and try to build a guy up the truth is eventually that fighter is going to get his head turned by Sky waving potential PPV buys under his nose, which they can do based on the fanbase he has built up on ITV and is human nature if Sky are offering him £5m a fight and ITV are offering 500k which he will choose, can hardly blame the terrestrial channels for thinking the effort is not justified when someone else is going to swoop in and nick the fighter as soon as they get to their mega fights.

Is a genuinely tricky situation because a promoter or manager has an obligation to their fighter to secure the best deal they can, reality is that tends not to be terrestrial, easy for fans to say responsibility to the sport should supersede responsibility the the fighter, we are not the ones getting punched in the head.

Still believe though that the press would be more inclined to get behind the sport was it actually easier to follow, if there was at least some attempt to reduce the number of belts it would reduce so many of the problems as there would not be so many alternatives to taking tough fights to achieving your ultimate objective of winning titles.

rowley wrote:Agree PPV is a killer for the sport, the problem is there is no real incentive for a mainstream channel to invest in the sport, if ITV were to get back into the sport and try to build a guy up the truth is eventually that fighter is going to get his head turned by Sky waving potential PPV buys under his nose, which they can do based on the fanbase he has built up on ITV and is human nature if Sky are offering him £5m a fight and ITV are offering 500k which he will choose, can hardly blame the terrestrial channels for thinking the effort is not justified when someone else is going to swoop in and nick the fighter as soon as they get to their mega fights.

Is a genuinely tricky situation because a promoter or manager has an obligation to their fighter to secure the best deal they can, reality is that tends not to be terrestrial, easy for fans to say responsibility to the sport should supersede responsibility the the fighter, we are not the ones getting punched in the head.

Still believe though that the press would be more inclined to get behind the sport was it actually easier to follow, if there was at least some attempt to reduce the number of belts it would reduce so many of the problems as there would not be so many alternatives to taking tough fights to achieving your ultimate objective of winning titles.

Yeah its a hard problem to solve and without a real overall governing body or support structure in place to push the fight they are massively at the mercy of tv channells which I think have damaged the sport themselves by introducing ppv and ironically advocaating the multi belt system which has devloped into a problem. This is why I think theres a balance between the blame apportioned to boxing and what was ultimately outside its control. TV had a massive impact on the nature of sports but boxing, without and regulatory or governing body basically was at the mercy of television. Television then proved to be incapable of really controlling or governing the sport any better and it fell into disrepair. To some extent though, the nature of boxing made it more vulnerable than other sports insofar as theres no real central authority in charge.

A quick scan of some US papers reveals a similar dearth of boxing coverage. In fact they have even less coverage than the UK media

http://www.latimes.com/sports/

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/index.html

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/

rowley wrote:Personally Manos I see the dwindling fanbase as a consequence of the numerous belts and too many divisions. You are right to allude to the fact that the "golden age" was probably nothing of the sort with such things as the mob influence and the colour line however for me there is a world of difference between having one world champion and having to accept that on occasions that fighter was not the best in the world across 8 divisions than having anywhere between one and six world champions in each of 17 divisions because under the former system a fan could reasonably be expected to name every world champion, I defy anyone to do the same currently. Under such a system is inevitable some people will decide the effort is not justified or will drift away.

This is a good post.

If the dwindling fanbase is the problem in boxing then what's the cause of the fan base dwindling? I know for me it's just like you say, the amount of titles and divisions. The divisons don't personally bother me too much but definitely the amount of titles haven't helped. Add to that the silly catchweight fights that have taken place recently and it's just turning into a joke. I used to take great pride in the fact that I could name every heavyweight champ in order from John L. Sullivan to Larry Holmes, now I'd have to scratch my head to tell you who the Klitchkos beat to win all their titles.

I think the fanbase is dwindling due to lack of mainstream exposure and poor marketing. This wasnt brought about the multibelt system in my view, tv companies actually advocaated more titles as it gave them greater scope to market fights as title fights. When I followed boxing 80s, the belt issue was nowhere as big a deal as it is now. Interest was still much higher because it was more mainstream. I think the multi belt system is a contributing factor, but I wouldnt consider it the primary or most important reason. Lack of an overall functioning governing body and regulation is probably the biggest concern. PPV I think has been steadily decreasing the fanbase also. Too many diffirent parties with self interests all pulling in seperate directions with not enough regard for its fanbase.