Devin Haney Rematch Win Over Kambosos Was Solid For ESPN

Saturday night’s repeat unanimous decision win by undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney over Australian George Kambosos scored a solid TV number for ESPN. That’s according to numbers released Tuesday

Showbuzz daily had the actual audience numbers for Haney-Kambosos II, as it scored close to 950,000 viewers for the live broadcast on ESPN’s main network. The rematch benefited from having the LSU vs. Florida College football game as a lead in which had over 2.4 million viewers on average,

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However, the rematch did fall well short of its June television rating, when Haney defeated Kambosos the first time by decision with an average audience of 1.3 million. Haney dominated the bout, which was actually Sunday afternoon in Melbourne, Australia, winning easily on scores of 119-109 and 118-110 x 2 to retain the WBC/WBA/IBF/WBO 135 lb. titles.

As, another comparison is October of 2021’s Shakur Stevenson’s unified junior lightweight title win over Jamel Herring which had a 1.3 million average audience also on ESPN. That night had the benefit of a much more massive lead-in of the Tennessee vs. Alabama college football game which averaged almost 4.7 million viewers for the night. Or, it was more than double the audience lead-in for Haney-Kambosos II.

One other factor was the prominent Fox Sports/Premier Boxing Champions PPV card featuring heavyweights Deontay Wilder vs. Robert Helenius at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The Haney-Kambosos rematch was taking place while the co-feature fight of Caleb Plant kayoing Anthony Dirrell was happening simultaneously in New York. The Wilder-Helenius fight main event began (and ended quickly) just minutes after the decision was read for Haney in the Australian ring.

Saturday night’s top cable audience was TBS showing the conclusion of the 18 inning MLB playoff baseball win by the Houston Astros over the Seattle Mariners 1 – 0. That averaged just over 4 million people, as it started Saturday afternoon, but bled deep into prime time. The subsequent New York Yankees Cleveland Guardians game 3 on TBS, won dramatically by the Indians in the bottom of the ninth inning, averaged 3.3 million viewers.

The Top Rank Boxing total audience was not in the top 20 on average for cable Saturday night.

It should also be noted that Nielsen cable ratings through 2021 have been consistently undercounted by not calculating out of home audience in the overall number, as they do now in ’22. That means the ’21 numbers were slightly larger relatively than what you see above.