Thank god for Justin TV (Sky Box Office)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Sky Box Office
Date:	11/09/09 (218 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The occasional show is worth the money

Disadvantages: The price, Reliance on customers and explotation of boxing fans

Being a huge boxing fan has left out of pocket on many occasions and not to help matters is the PPV (pay Per View) service offered by Sky on Sky Box Office. In the USA boxing has been a PPV sport for quite a while for some of the huge mega fights over there on both HBO and Showtime's PPV services, in fact fighters can be signed to one of the networks who then control the fighters future fights almost as much, if not more so than their own manager. Though in the UK boxing had generally been on ITV and BBC until quite recently then Sky picked it up with the rise of fighters like Naseem Hamed and Chris Eubank in the 1990's. Later on Sky realised customers that we're already being ripped through and through in the wallet would be happy to pay to see the occasional big fight, the world names, or the really big ones. This was most notable in the Triple Header even that showed 3 of the top Britains in 3 different events one after the other, ever since, we have sadly started to copy the USA's model of putting more and more fights on to PPV.

Of course to most this won't effect you, so before I get back onto a rant about how Sky abuse us boxing fans, lets have a look at what else they offer. Sky Box Office also do a movie service, which is again a PPV service to watch newer movies, usually post release on DVD but first play on TV. Usually these we're the big blockbuster hits from earlier that year or late the previous year. For example at the moment The Wrestler, Bronson, Watchmen, S. Darko and Slumdog Millionaire are showing. Though it must also be said some movies that must have slipped under the radar for myself are there too, such as Parasomnia, Labor Pains and Good (apparently it's something to do with Nazi's). Now this may appeal to some of those who have the money and have seen all of their DVD collection but can't be bothered to go to the cinema, but to us mere mortals who are happy to buy a handful of second hand DVD's the service is effectively pointless.

This really leaves sport as the only reason to even look at the SBO services, which aren't limited to just boxing but to WWE (formerly the WWF for those not keeping up-to-date with wrestling). The WWE major events like Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble and the other similar events are sold at around £15 an event (yes some people do pay £15 to see greased up muscle-men hugging each other ;-)). This is a high cost to be honest though less so when you realise if you're paying for sky sports you do get several hours of WWE every week if your a fan of it, as well as the fact TNA (the major US rival) is also on one of the Bravo Channels, wrestling fans are to be honest, quite well catered for.

So back to boxing, we are lucky to get 1 card a week on Sky sport, usually 1 every 2 or 3 weeks though, on a Friday night focussing on a British rivalry, in fact the one being shown tonight see Tyson Fury v John Mcdermott for the English heavyweight title. The fight taking place at the Leisure Centre in Brentwood (I nearly got tickets for this but work wouldn't allow me time off, sadly I've contracted Pig Flu so I'm off but with no tickets...). This promises to actually be quite a good one with Tyson winning his first belt as a professional and stake his claim as one of Britain's best heavyweights. However when it comes to the PPV boxing they are usually over-hyped none events that play on the public's ignorance towards boxing and their happiness to pay for a name fighter as opposed to a high quality fight. When Setanta was still around what they did was pick up the high quality fights from the USA such as the enthralling Antonio Margarito V Miguel Cotto fight from last year and showed it as part of the now ill fated channels schedule. Instead of copying the same model Sky take a fighter like Amir Khan and put him on PPV with out having him actually being worth the price of the product. A silver medal at the Olympics is all very good but good old Auldley Harrison was a gold medallist and so you can't really say an Olympic medal is worth PPV events outright.

In fact Khans PPV debut was one of the best things in a long time due to the fact he was shown up in less than a minute by the previous un-known Bredis Prescott from Colombia. Those who paid £15.00 for a main event that last less than 60 seconds will agree that neither fighter was worth the money prior to the fight and neither has been worth it since. Khan has since fought Marco Antonia Barrera on SBO in a terribly officiated match that saw Khan win on a TKO due to a cut that was suffered much earlier in the fight and should have been stopped as a No Contest. More recently it played host to Khan's "world title fight" against Andrei Kotelnik from the Ukraine, that was backed up with some of the Olympians on the under card. O the same night and on free to air TV was a much better card for quality of fights, which included future superstars Nathan Cleverly and Tyson Fury, as well as a quality fight with Tom Glover V Jon Thaxton.

The full card for the Khan fight featured a classic fight shown on the PPV broadcast (Matthew Small V Anthony Hall) but missed out on showing Enza Maccarenelli (who lost to Denis Lebedev ) and future world champion (as far as I can tell anyway) Kell Brook destroy Michael Lomax (as far as I can remember this wasn't shown). Instead concentrating the time slot on Billy Joe Saunders, Franki Gavin and James DeGale (who each won against over matched opponents in either the first or second round). The main event saw Amir spend almost the entire fight running as opposed to engaging and was a relative bore-a-thon a rather embarrassing way to win a world title if truth be told.

Though before people think I am totally against the concept of Sky Box Office for sport they do sometimes have the really big fights that deserve the PPV status. The fight earlier this year between Manny Pacquiao and Ricky "The Hitman" Hatton for example deserved the £15 price tag for the simple fact it was a genuinely huge fight, it featured the worlds best fighter (I thought he beat Juan Manuel Marquez both times and Floyd was "retired" until the day before the fight) and the long term #1 at the 140 Light Welterweight division. It featured the "linear" titles and the Ring title (as well as the IBO trinket) and had been given a decent under card with a title defence by hard hitting Mexican Humberto Soto, American prospect Daniel Jacobs, Cuban defector Erislandy Lara and Russian middleweight sensation Matt Korobov. This was worth the £15 on hype alone, the fact that the main event of the evening was startlingly short wasn't a problem as the ending was destructive and conclusive, the card was strong enough and overall it was a goo live show.

Thankfully with the rise of the internet and the access to streams that weren't available at the start of the century, we may start to see PPV events becoming more balanced and fewer shows of low quality will be afforded the PPV status. I myself happily admit I'd rather watch a grainy and poor quality stream of a card I don't feel is worth the £15 fee than pay it, I'll pay for the ones worth the fee with no complaints, but I'm not going to feed Sky's greed. They need to sort out the problem or we are going to see a big rise in what is effectively live TV pirating, no long will it just be a problems for film and music company's but also for TV networks. This time they have no one to blame except for themselves.

Sure the service is brilliant when they work it properly, but sadly a reliance on putting so much of MY sport on the service is a downright insult. If I pay for Sky sports I expect to be able to watch boxing on it, if not I'm not going to pay for Sky Sports simple really, I'm not happy to pay twice for the same thing. Sky don't expect that of Football fans, of Tennis Fans, or Cricket Fans, or in fact any other "sport" (WWF/WWE is "Sports Entertainment"). Why is boxing singled out?

SBO? You mean OBS- Order Boxing on Sky

Summary: Buck up your act Sky, PPV should be used for PPV quality events