A private media session recently took place with Mark Lazarus, Sean McManus, John Skipper, and Eric Shanks, the Heads of Sports from CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC, discuss the future of broadcast sports in a session moderated by Richard Deitsch, Senior Editor, Sports Illustrated.

During the session, the executives were asked about Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions series  - which now appear on CBS/Showtime, NBC/NBC Sports, Spike TV and ESPN/ABC via time-buy agreements.

RICHARD SANDOMIR - New York Times

For those of you who do and those of you who don’t associate with Al Haymon on the PBC, how do you think that strategy is going to play out in terms of building interest for boxing?

SEAN MCMANUS - CBS

I’ll start. I think he has a plan and he’s spent tens of millions of dollars on his plan, and I think Al looks at what’s happened with UFC and the explosive growth in that product and says to himself, “Why can’t I create that kind of excitement around the boxing world? Why can’t I take unknown boxers, put them on NBC and CBS and Spike and as many networks as I possibly can, and why can’t I create the kind of stars that boxing used to see in the 70s and 80s.

I think his play is to front all the money to invest in the television production and the marketing of these boxers and hopefully be able in a fairly short period of time there’ll be enough interest around these boxers that they will generate enough television ratings that the people now getting paid by Al Haymon to run these fights will actually start to pay themselves. So I think it’s a very specific plan whether it’s going to work, I don’t think anybody knows, including Al Haymon, but he has a real, concrete business plan on how to accomplish his goals and I admire him for that.

MARK LAZARUS - NBC

The roadblock he’s got to come over is building some names and getting them to fight regularly to continue to heighten their exposure and fan appeal. For us, being involved with it, as well as Sean is, I admire his courage and business planning. In success, it’s going to be good for the sport and good for sports in general.

SEAN MCMANUS - CBS

The other obstacle I think he’s got to overcome is that the advertising support for boxing has been pretty weak throughout the years and I think he’s got to sell his case to the advertising community that the demographics are good and that the sale makes sense because the way it’s now being structured to a large extent on advertiser supported networks he’s counting on that as being the major part of his revenue and I think that’s one of the obstacles he has to overcome.

JOHN SKIPPER - ESPN

Last time I checked my XY-axis quadrant, it’s not in the right quadrant.