Paramount shutting down Showtime Sports, including live boxing and MMA events

For the first time in generations, American premium cable will be completely devoid of live sports.

On Tuesday, Paramount Global announced that it is shutting down Showtime Sports by the end of 2023. This ends the pay TV channel's 38-year run as a destination for live boxing events, as well as a more recent run as the broadcaster of Bellator MMA cards.

In a press release, the company explained its decision, noting its own streamlining in recent years:

"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. Showtime will continue to air and support the remaining 2023 boxing slate and honor obligations through the end of the year."

Paramount Global is the product of the 2019 re-merger between CBS and Viacom under one company and branding. The parent company, which operates CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and many more cable channels, shifted plenty of resources towards Paramount+, the streaming service that was originally launched in 2014 as CBS All Access. In June of 2023, Showtime's own streaming platform was fully absorbed into Paramount+.

All of this is part of a continued reshuffling of the media deck. Sports Business Journal noted that CBS Sports, which already carries the bulk of Paramount's sports coverage, may take on events and documentaries that would have previously been on Showtime. The end of Showtime Sports is somewhat similar to what Comcast did with the NBC Sports Network in 2021, shutting down the national sports channel in favor of moving live events onto other channels in the NBCUniversal umbrella. (That move provided extra momentum for the NHL to move its rights packages to ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery prior to the 2021-22 season.)

Showtime Sports will formally cease to exist some four years after HBO Sports ended its own historic run of boxing broadcasts, and months after announcing the end of the sports newsmagazine show "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."