A lack of broadcast coverage has left female fighters underexposed and underpaid. But the Olympics and talented athletes have changed the status quo

'I was told this was impossible': the long fight to get women's boxing on TV

'I was told this was impossible': the long fight to get women's boxing on TV

When Heather Hardy and Shelly Vincent met in the ring in New York City’s Madison Square Garden last month for the WBO featherweight title, there weren’t any measured jabs to start off the fight. They came out swinging. After all, they had no time to lose. Hardy and Vincent had 10 two-minute rounds to prove that women’s boxing deserved to be on center stage, that it deserved to be televised.

The rematch between the featherweights was the first fight of a prime-time triple-header on HBO, kicking off the night before the main event between Daniel Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Hardy-Vincent was the second women’s fight the network had aired in its 45 years of covering the sport. It is also more than likely the final one. In 2019, HBO will stop covering live boxing altogether [editor’s note: shortly after the publication of this article it was announced that Cecilia Brækhus will defend her welterweight title on HBO’s final ever card].

The enormity of the fight and the stage wasn’t lost on either Hardy or Vincent.

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While male boxers can earn multimillion dollar payouts, female boxers at the top of their game can still have a hard time making a living. Their fights are rarely televised – Showtime, a monolith in boxing, had a 12-year gap between airing women’s fights until it started again last year. Meanwhile, promoters don’t make much money on their fighters, male or female, until their fights are televised. In the end, it means promoters have no incentive to take on female fighters, the payouts remain meager, exposure is limited, and the sponsorships don’t come.

“We were really carrying women’s boxing with us. We had hyped this up like it was going to be a back-and-forth nonstop action fight,” Hardy says. “We had to deliver.”

So how does female boxing find itself here – rarely on television and making so little money?

Traditionally networks didn’t see an appetite for women’s fights, or a huge pool of talent. That was for good reasons: many boxing gyms in America banned women until the late 1990s, while women weren’t allowed in national amateur tournaments or admitted to compete in the Golden Gloves until the mid 1990s.

But women’s boxing has grown in the years since, and with the inclusion of women’s boxing at the 2012 Olympics, competition has flourished. Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg in the UFC have also shown the popularity of women’s combat sports and suggested that there is a market.

While recognizing MMA’s popularity, the president of Top Rank, Todd duBoef, who signed his first female fighter in Mikaela Mayer, says there’s still room for a lot of growth. “Women’s boxing is way more in its infancy than women’s MMA,” duBoef says.

There is talent however, and promoters are taking note. Lou DiBella has made a name for himself signing women fighters, including Vincent, Hardy, and Amanda Serrano. Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn signed Olympians Katie Taylor and Natasha Jonas. And Salita Promotions signed two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields.

“The reason you’re seeing women getting signed by promoters now is because the talent pool is deeper than it’s ever been,” Mayer tells the Guardian in an email.

Mayer points to the inclusion of women’s boxing in the Olympics as key to growing that talent. “This is the first time in history that women have been able to approach promoters and say ‘Hi, I am a five-time national champion, World medalist, an Olympian, an Olympic gold medalist.’ Our skills and talent simply cannot be denied anymore.”

Hardy won the WBO belt in her televised fight against Vincent, bringing her record to 22-0. For previous bouts, she had taken home $7,000 on average. Both she and Vincent walked away with $15,000 – a career-high purse – although far less than the men on the ticket. The following Monday, she was back to work as a trainer at Gleason’s Gym.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Olympic success of boxers such as Katie Taylor has helped female fighters. Photograph: Emily Harney/INPHO/REX/Shutterstock

Hardy, who turned pro in 2012, says television is key to increasing pay and bringing women’s boxing the respect that it deserves.

“With television, we’re both able to secure more money in sponsorships. So when all is said and done with the bonuses and the incentive from the sponsorship packages that I was able to secure, I made a career-high purse … as well I should,” Hardy says. “I boxed for my first world title in Madison Square Garden on HBO.”

But getting broadcasters interested is the hard part. “If you ask the networks, a lot of times what you’ll hear is that there’s not a lot of US promoters who are featuring women boxers,” Stephen Espinoza, the president of Showtime Sports, says. “And if you ask the promoters, they’ll tell you it’s hard to make that a worthwhile endeavor without the support and the money of TV.”

Espinoza points to a few factors that led to Showtime broadcasting women’s fights again: Serrano’s achievements (at that point, she had titles in four divisions) and Taylor and Shields turning pro after the 2016 Olympics. “We recognized that here two or three real good opportunities that we should immediately capitalize on,” he says. “And shame on us for not prioritizing it earlier.”

Shields has been the woman to watch and made history as the first female boxer to headline a fight card on premium cable in 2017. Her fight against Hanna Gabriel in June 2018 drew a peak audience of 410,000 in the US, surpassing Showtime’s live airing of the Anthony Joshua-Joseph Parker heavyweight title.

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And the intensifying rivalry between Shields and German fighter Christina Hammer led to a much anticipated match-up for the WBC world title. Though the contest was postponed due to Hammer’s undisclosed medical condition, Showtime still plans to air the fight early in 2019.

In the meantime, streaming service DAZN will take on coverage as Shields defends her title against Hannah Rankin.

DAZN, which some have called the Netflix of sports, is looking to disrupt the boxing market. Though it only entered the market in the US in September, DAZN has already streamed two women’s boxing fights among its first three shows.

Likewise, ESPN, is trying to capitalize on the market and engage more casual viewers and has included women’s fights in the mix. Through its exclusive deal with promoter Top Rank, the network has shown Mayer’s fights, mainly on their streaming service, ESPN+.

“I think Mikaela Mayer and the other women in the category are going to all benefit from the repositioning off of premium channels to mainstream sports channels terrifically,” TopRank’s duBoef says.

Either way, for women’s boxing to grow, it can’t be a one-network move. “There have to be promoters ... as well as other networks. That’s the only way this is going to elevate to the level it deserves,” Espinoza said.

Asked whether she’s satisfied with her fight against Vincent being aired, Hardy is emphatic. “I’m thrilled because in my career I was told this shit was impossible,” Hardy says. “But that’s not to say I’m satisfied with the state of women’s boxing.”

Hardy fought hard for her bout to be televised, reaching out through her promoter, taking the issue to social media, and speaking with the press. In the end, it was a letter that she wrote to Peter Nelson, the vice president of HBO sports, that made the difference.

“Social change doesn’t happen unless the decision makers start to decide to make the changes,” she says. “It was Peter Nelson who got me on HBO, not me. If it had not been for Lou [DiBella], Peter Nelson wouldn’t have known who I was.”

