Top Rank experienced the highs of having boxing fights on ESPN with Manny Pacquiao vs. Jeff Horn and now experienced massive lows with the ratings from Vasyl Lomachenko's most recent fight.
Lomachenko's recent title defense win over Miguel Marriaga drew about 728,000 viewers on ESPN and ESPN2, which is a little more than 100,000 viewers less than Lomachenko's last fight, which was on HBO.
A big reason why the fight drew such a low rating is because the fight, which was originally scheduled for Saturday, August 5 at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN, started more than 30 minutes late due to the Pro football Hall of Fame Ceremony that ran way over and forced the beginning of the card to be switched over to ESPN2.
Top Rank’s doubleheader eventually switched over to ESPN, which is watched by more viewers than ESPN2, but the Lomachenko vs. Marriaga fight did not start until nearly 12:20 a.m. ET on Sunday.
Lomachenko's last fight prior to the move to ESPN saw the WBO junior lightweight champion defeat Jason Sosa. That fight against Sosa had a peak audience of 886,000 and an average viewership of 832,000 on April 8.
Top Rank's boxing card from Australia, which saw Manny Pacquiao lose to Jeff Horn on ESPN, had a peak of 4.4 million viewers, averaging 3.1 million viewers across the ESPN networks. ESPN's next major boxing card will be the historic junior welterweight unification fight between Terence Crawford and Julius Indongo, where all four major world titles (WBA, WBO, WBC and IBF) will be on the line, on August 19.
