Today, Paramount announced that after 37 years of showing live boxing, Showtime will exit live sports at the end of 2023.
“As we evolve our strategy to more efficiently allocate resources and align our content offering across the business, we’ve made the difficult decision not to move forward with boxing and other content produced by the SHOWTIME sports team,” Paramount said in a statement today. “SHOWTIME will continue to air and support the remaining 2023 boxing slate and honor obligations through the end of the year. We want to express our deepest gratitude to our employees who have contributed to this award-winning sports programming over multiple decades.”
Showtime joins HBO in leaving boxing behind. Back in 2018, HBO aired its last Boxing event after showing boxing for 45 years.
This all comes as Paramount has merged Showtime into Paramount+. With all of this new content, Paramount+ raised the price of its service by $1 to $2 a month account for the new Showtime content. The ad-supported plan will go up to $5.99 a month, and the ad-free version went up to $11.99 a month. The new ad-free plan has now cone up from $99.99 a year to $119.99 a year with Showtime.
Parmount+ is the go-to place to stream content from your favorite Paramount family of networks like CBS, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Showtime, and more. This comes as Paramount and others have been looking for ways to make their streaming services more popular by merging content into a single service.
There is no word yet on where these Boxing events will move to.