I want ppv cards to be worth money.I'd say 90% of the time i come away happy with them. Some of the 'saturday night fight' level cards are really not great. Why? Because the money isn't there for them.
Because Matchroom have a contract with Sky and it's only for something like £200,000 per Saturday Fight Night.
There is a limit to the number of PPVs they will put on in a year (Lets say 6) If the other Saturday night fight cards are a mix of domestic dust ups, world title eliminators and 1-2 world title fights then I don't see the issue, if there SFN cards become utterly appalling then we have an issue... I honestly don't mind getting the international shows and the Saturday night fight cards included in Skysports then paying for a few PPVs a year (Excuse to get a few mates round, beers, takeaway and make a night of it to be honest) It is only £20 and like people have said what else can you do on a Saturday night for £20!!
I think most people understand that But if that's what boxing pays and the fighters don't like it then don't get in to it Harsh? Maybe a tad but it's a fact It won't happen though as we are experiencing a boom where people are being made to pay for any competitive fight It's all good right now but I dread to think what happens when the bubble bursts Thankfully it seems some way off
Feels like it's got worse in the last year, I don't see how that figure suddenly becomes a hurdle out of nowhere. And the answer to that is to make most actually good fights PPV, ultimately making the fans pay more? Doesn't seem right to me. Especially not with ITV and BT in the market as well now. They should be fighting for viewers, not adding a tariff individually.
Budget may well be £200k but can still add ticket sales to that, so enough to put on some decent fights. Not that I’m bemoaning Whyte Chisora being ppv. If it makes more money that way then it makes sense. Did pretty well. It may be an all British fight but it was a big one and the winner likely faces AJ.
It's in Sky's interests to lower the rights for a typical Saturday fight night. They can then justify PPV. BT put on Frampton and Fury on the same card and that was not PPV.
In fairness that was Frampton and Fury (neither of which are particularly big sellers) in fights against very poor opposition. Comparable really to the Brook/Khan/Canelo fights which have been on standard Sky this year.
If it was purely a case of getting people to watch all fighters would be desperate to be on terrestrial free to air television and more expensive platforms like Sky and BT wouldn't exist.
Poorly worded on my part, I mean more that it doesn't feel like anyone is fighting to get the consumer on their side, rather that everyone is adding additional expense to the consumer all the time. It's getting more and more expensive to be a boxing fan and it isn't clear to me that the product we're paying for is any better. Which is where my frustration comes from.
I suppose I think the product is getting better. You still get bad cards of course, but as a boxing fan in the UK in the last five years or so we've had Klitschko, Golovkin and Usyk over here, all of whom were top level pound for pound elite fighters, boxing feels like a bigger sport in general (admittedly largely thanks to Joshua), and the man in the street seems more keen to watch and (crucially) invest money into the sport. I always end up comparing what Hearn is doing in what you could call the 2010's with what Warren did late 90's and throughout the 2000's and I think it's better now. More competitive fights and a willingness to invest. I've said it before but if Hearn treat his fighters the way Warren handled Calzaghe and Hatton for years and years there would be absolute uproar and rightly so. And as much as people hate paying PPV prices I don't think anyone looks back at Julius Francis, Michael Jennings, Audley Harrison, Dmitry Salita and Danny Williams headlining box office PPV fights and thinks 'that's when you only got quality PPV fights.' I remember those days, compare it to now, and I honestly think now is better.
It was ace having GGG over here but he was fighting someone 2 weight classes below, which seems to have effectively played a part in killing that guy's career, so I'm very split on that. AJ-Wlad, fine with that being PPV. Genuine top tier fight with meaning. That is really what the model ought to be for. My thinking is that the standard Sky cards have suffered in the last year or so and that PPV is more and more prevalent; it isn't just about Sky. I mean, you've even got Eubank Jr-Degale on PPV now for some reason. A horse waiting to be put down and a never ran. That's announced a couple of weeks after we had two PPV cards clashing head to head, two cards which had a grand total of two world title fights between them. PPV has felt ubiquitous this year and I don't see it changing with the consensus attitude toward the model.
