I'm not saying it won't be 50K+, which is impressive, but I wouldn't be congratulating Primetime on it, it was Khan and Mccloskey who did the work to get those figures.
They did and it was wrong! Business wise though it was a masterpiece as the PPV numbers were excellent. But look, Sky took a ton of heat and didnt like the bad PR it created. Lets not be silly though. Any other network would have done the same if they had the option.
But they handled it badly. Everyone knew that match was going to **** the bed but they did nothing to mitigate against it. I'm not saying don't make the match (although I think Haye made a huge mistake going ahead with it) but they should have spent more on the undercard. A lot more. Its such an obvious rule of matchmaking - if you have a big match that you knows bad then you make sure the undercard is great so people feel they got their money's worth. That's even truer when the ppv would be the largest audience boxing was going to get that year. In retropspect the best plan would have been to pair it up with Khan/Maidana and have Warren provided the undercard. Khan, DeGale and Cleverly would all have been benefited from the exposure, and the performances of DeGale (vs Smith) and Khan would have been genuinely starmarking in front of such a large audience.
Isnt that why they told Khan promotions that there not making the same mistake again and they had to provide a strong undercard or no PPV.
I don't think Joe Casual gives a **** about the undercard. Most people I asked didn't have a clue about Groves-Anderson.
You're right but it comes down to how you sell it. People don't just believe things - they are taught these lessons by the behaviour of boxing promoters. You push the undercard and the fights as being meaningful then people care. Look at how the UFC operates for proof. And the point I was making was not that a better undercard would have sold one more buy (it wouldn't) but that a really good undercard reassures people they got their money's worth even if the main event was bad. Arum was making this point to yahoo just the other week. Say you did a three-site ppv - Warren's show in Liverpool, Haye-Harrison in the 02 and then Maidana-Khan. Can you imagine how much attention that have gotten for boxing in this country? You would have had all the benefits of Haye-Harrison with an actual product worth selling to put in the shop window it was creating.
The difference is the UFC are always looking to push that next star. Boxing promoters are totally different. 1 mil people can buy a Mayweather v Mosley PPV yet the promoter doesnt think that kind of exposure would be good to push some other fighters. When u think of it, its crazy!!
The problem is simple really. All boxers want to be paid like Mike Tyson but they aren't actually worth Mike Tyson's salary. So promoters have been forced to cut costs in an attempt to meet the cost of paying fighters way more than they should. Brock Lesnar earns around $3million per fight and he's the star of the show. Marquez wants more than that to be Pacquiao's opponent. And when you're paying your headliners so much you're sucking the money out of the game at the lower levels, including PPV undercards.
The real question is then how do we get boxers to take less or make boxing shows more profitable to pay these fighters?
I think that's very true - the majority of people who buy PPVs aren't serious boxing fans - there are about three boxers (probably less now to be honest) who even a casual sports fan will have heard of - Khan for sure, Haye probably, and then who?
^^^ Agreed. I think part of the problem is paying younger fighters too much early, or rather, too much for pretty meaningless fights. Berto got $1m+ for 2 minutes work in his previous fight before Ortiz, and was obviously well paid in his previous fights. In order to get Bradley and Alexander to face each other they had to guarantee each of them a $1m+ payday in their next fight. I'm not begrudging anyone their $$$$, after all they earn it, but there's a huge disparity in what some fighters get and what they deserve, both ways. Marquez ought to be picking up $10m+ if he fights Pacquiao again, likewise Froch ought to be on millions per fight. Berto and Alexander should be on a few hundred grand until they prove themselves to be elite fighters.
I dont think you could change that. UFC is MMA. Fighters dont really have a choice but to go along with what the UFC wants. Boxing just doesnt have that kind of structure and never will. I dont think it should either.