Fighthype has some interviews with Bob Arum posted in the last 24 hours where he admits PPV is dying. He admits this is what is causing the delay in Spence and Crawford agreeing to their fight, as it will likely lead to a loss in money. He said that there is too much piracy nowadays. He says that a model in the future may be that PPV prices come down, to around $25 like they are in the UK. He says this is a risk though and it may not work either. As it currently stands, $80 for a PPV is around 4-5 months of streaming subscriptions (Netflix, HBO, etc) so not a good value proposition and he admits this may be turning down people from buying Pay per views. What is interesting is without PPV, you will only see fighters cherry-pick and fight bums as it will not be economical; and promoters will not want to take a loss, on fighting name fighters. Thoughts?
But then why do we have that situation now? If you look at it from the other side, no PPV money (or reserving it for rare, truly remarkable showdowns) means less reward for building up a 30-0 record before fighting anyone with a pulse and it decreases the difference between someone who is 30-0 vs 30-1. If you just live off TV ratings and ticket sales then you have to put on a good show, it can't just have one good performer because people will change the channel since they didn't sink $80 in.
i dont listen to arum one day a mans good the next hes bad one day hes lying the next hes telling the truth one minute khans better than brook next minute oh wait lol **** off bob
The original model isn't dying. The variation they created of it is dying. Back in the day there were only a couple of fights that were PPV, and usually with other great fights supporting it. Nowadays the main supporting fights on such a card are all PPV on their own, and the whole issue of overpaying boxers has taken its toll. PPV should have died out long ago with the subscription channels out there.
I've always said that if they lowered the PPV price to $49.95 for big fights, they'd sell a whole lot more and make it up in volume. Golovkin-Clenelo is worth $49.95, but not $89.95. Tier 1 — $49.95 Clenelo Vs. Golovkin Fury Vs. Joshua Vs. Usyk Crawford Vs. Spence Tier 2 — $39.95 Tank Vs. Ryan Lomachenko Vs. Anyone Spence Vs. Anyone Tier 3 — $29.95 Inoue Vs. Anyone Tank Vs. Anyone Ryan Vs. Anyone Chocolatito Vs. Estrada Crawford Vs. Anyone The rest should be free.
Stop PPV locking garbage fight and actually bother to make a good undercard? I would pay the price for an 3-5 hours of good commentary/studio and fights, but that's not what you typically pay for. Not at all.
Greed really. I remember when music was expensive and napster became popular. Oh no, the recording industry and artists will never make money. Then we got services like iTunes, Spotify that made music affordable to the masses for $10 a month. Why the hell can't they do the same in boxing? They will never stamp out illegal streams, but a whole heck of a lot money can still be made if they bring prices down to a reasonable level and get back paying fans.
I think what Bob is saying is that PPV is dying because people are able to steal it so easily. You have to remember, when Bob Arum began, the fights you paid to watch on a screen were closed circuit fights. Each individual had to buy a ticket. You had to go to a theater or a convention center to watch the fight on a big screen. There was no home viewing. Bob Arum always hated PPV because he knew people were paying one price and would invite friends over ... and those friends weren't paying the full amount. (Bob was like Netlix being angry with sharing passwords before Netflix existed.) The reaction of promoters to this, in the States at least, was to keep raising the price for those actually buying the PPVs to cover the losses of those who weren't buying but were watching illegally. The prices went up so much that the Mayweather-Pac fight in the US was $100 per pay-per-view. Despite the fact that it was wildly successful, with Floyd and Manny picking up roughly $350 million together in purse money, I'm sure Bob just saw it as a loss because of how much they could've made if everyone watching had actually paid full price. In fact, I remember when Oscar De La Hoya was nearing the peak of celebrity, for the first Chavez fight, Arum WOULDN'T put the fight on PPV. He only aired it on Closed Circuit ... so in order to see it people had to physically buy a ticket and enter a building or establishment to watch it. At the time, he said he "wished" they could go back to closed circuit for all big fights because he didn't like people inviting friends over to watch fights and he didn't get a cut from those people. But fans didn't like the idea of having to go to a movie theatre to watch a fight when they'd gotten used to having friends over and watching at home. If, like Netflix, he could figure out a way for each person watching to pay the same price, he'd do that. We even saw movie people (producers/directors/etc.) during Covid go ballistic on streaming services like HBO MAX, Disney+ and Netflix for airing first-run movies directly on their streaming service because they (producers/directors) were supposed to get a cut of first weekend ticket sales and there were no ticket sales. The big corporations can't figure it out. Neither can Arum. It's almost become cyclical. When closed circuit seemed to top out, Don King found leaders of third-world countries to finance fights, and the purses kept getting bigger. When cable came about, and you could pipe fights directly into homes everywhere, they went to that. When streaming began, that seemed much easier than laying a lot of cable lines. So they went to that. Now that everyone can find a stream, Eddie Hearn is back to finding one Saudi Oil prince to pay for basically the whole thing. Until then, they might just have to wait for the next new tech. Or, for really big fights, they may just go "BACKWARDS" and make everyone watch big fights in theaters again. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-05-24-sp-7781-story.html
Totally agree, the main event is always preceded by a bunch of 4 rounders with guys from Guatemala and Kentucky with club fights that ESPN wouldn't show.
