It looks like Eddie is about to postpone his 3 May fights rather than fighting behind closed doors. With there being no sport on TV at the moment I feel like he has missed a trick here. If he was to go ahead and do a double biller of usyk v chisora and Whyte v povetkin and charge a discounted ppv charge of £10 he would sell absolutely shitloads. And by only charging £10 he could be giving the impression of looking out for the little guy and giving them a break in these messed up times ( when actually he would be coming it in). I am surprised Eddie hasn't realised that there is a lot of live boxing/sports starved punters out there and if he put on a decent card it would get lapped up
I don’t think it would be possible I’ve seen something about using medical professionals needed for these events to go ahead and them not being available.
Problem is that people are making cut-backs. Eddie used to bang on about a PPV only being £20, but £20 is a lot of money when you're out of work.
No way Sky would allow this to happen in the current climate because there needs to be significant amounts of medical personnel at any sanctioned UK fight. Hearn hinted at he wanted to do this a few weeks ago but very quickly did a 180. At the end of the day Sky would need to agree to such an event and the PR backlash could be immense. Sky value their image almost as much as their profits.
Only way to do it is test everybody involved. Fighters, their teams, venue staff, production crew, journos /press, the refs, judges,doctors etc. I've thought this myself tho. Any live sport would be lapped up right now, even if that Nigel Benn fight was on it would do massive numbers ATM!
The value of £20-25 will have shot up massively these past couple of weeks. They’re going to have to bring the prices down and the frequency of PPV’s IMO or they deffo should.
It's not just the medical staff required at the event either. You need to inform a hospital that a fight is taking place, neurosurgeon/s on standby etc. That's just never going to happen in the current climate. I don't think people realise just now much pressure the NHS is going to be under by this time next week, it's already started now and is only going to get worse for the next two weeks before it will likely start to stabilise (still with huge numbers of people in hospital).
Eh Day giving 200 free tickets for his Matchroom shows next year to NHS staff - will cost between £10k and £20k per card. Thought he might do something more substantial such as donating all 2021 PPV money to NHS staff.
Still too many people in one place even excluding the issues around training and medical staff needed. Have you seen how many people got infected after that Olympic qualifying event controversially went ahead? It’s a good idea in theory but not in practice. It’d be irresponsible all round.