Report: ESPN ending Top Rank Boxing deal
World Junior Lightweight Champion Emanuel Navarrete and challenger Oscar Valdez (right) during an ESPN Top Rank Boxing news conference at Sheraton Phoenix Downtown on Dec. 5, 2024. ESPN doesn't intend to renew its deal with promoter Top Rank Boxing when it expires in August, Front Office Sports reported Tuesday.
Top Rank and ESPN signed their initial deal in 2017. The following year, the two sides agreed on a seven-year contract in which ESPN would broadcast 54 events annually on either that platform or ESPN+, per the report.
Should Top Rank find a new partner before August, ESPN will agree to terminate the existing deal early, Front Office Sports said.
ESPN declined to comment to the outlet.
"We are in dialogue with ESPN and many other parties regarding our media rights," Evan Korn, Top Rank's director of communications, told Front Office Sports in a statement. "While we never comment on the specifics of those discussions, we place tremendous value in our existing relationship with ESPN and the industry-defining experience we have together delivered to combat sports fans globally for the past eight years."
Front Office Sports reported Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery weren't interested when they had early discussions with Top Rank.
This is not the first boxing-media partnership to end. At the end of 2023, Showtime left the ring after 37 years.
--Field Level Media
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