boxing is just competing against a ridiculous amount of entertainment options today. thats why it doesnt get talked about in sports shows, or why it struggles to land regular gigs on a network. i can go and watch any type of combat sport you can think of any time i want. i didnt have that option even 20 years ago. there werent near as many independent broadcasters airing every thing you can think of, as there is today. just like any sport, its gonna have its hardcore fans that will pay for all big ppv's, but everyone else has other interests they can turn to if 80 bucks sounds ridiculous for a fight between a name and everyone else except his biggest rival.
The UFC had one of their strongest ever years for PPV last year, Canelo PPVs still do well. I'm not saying I like the model, but its not dead, its just not working out for him.
Bob has it wrong, if there was a fighter that people actually liked they would pay $60 no problem for a PPV, it’s the lack of stars in boxing. I have written many times on this site that most boxers today are lame-o’s, have no charisma or are just not marketable for sponsorships.
I don't know Arum maybe people remember when the judges in your main events turned in some interesting score cards
The problem for dinosaurs like Bob is it hasn't seemed to dawn on him yet that the Pandora's Box that is the Internet cannot be "un-opened". Bob is just like the record labels of old who took an eternity to realise that "the good old days" where they called all the shots on artists and made wads of cash (with the artists hardly seeing much of it due to bad publishing deals too!) were gone and they had to "adapt or die".
The internet has utterly destroyed several industries. Newspapers and the music industry are two of those. Boxing is actually doing quite well by comparison
Some people brought up an interesting point that UFC pay-per-view buys are up quite a lot. If this is the case I don't understand why piracy is not a problem for them? It appears then that people will only pyrate when the product is not worth the price. You can say that about a lot of boxing pay-per-views. But nevertheless boxing is declining in USA big time. It is barely on TV and there's too many competing platforms. In addition the best don't fight the best and fight once or twice a year. That doesn't attract fans.
Right, but "adapting" means if people aren't buying the PPVs then the fighters can't make what they used to earn. When I watched boxing in the late 70s and early 80s on network TV, it was great as a fan. But no fighter below heavyweight until Leonard-Benitez EVER MADE a million dollars for a fight. EVER. In the whole history of boxing. You'd get title fights on network TV. The champions below heavyweight would make $100,000. The challengers would often make around $25,000. And that was when boxing was POPULAR and on network TV all the time ... and there were basically only three channels that were competing against each other. Now, network ratings are 10 percent (or less) of what they were back then and there is tons of media competing with it. So they (boxers) would be lucky to get a $100,000 a fight if the money was primarily taken from 30-second commerical ad spots. That's the point Arum is making. The purses rose because of PPV. The PPV prices rose because people were stealing PPV. Now you can't stop people from finding an illegal stream, so the purses have to come down A LOT. Good luck trying to get Errol Spence and Bud Crawford fighting for the unified welterweight title on network television for $150,000 a piece. Because, if the money isn't there, the people who are going to have to ADAPT are the boxers.
I'm sure piracy is a big problem for the UFC, too. But the fighters don't make a lot compared to top boxers on PPV. The UFC puts on entire PPVs where the total purses of everyone on the card come out to less than $250,000. Guys like Spence and Crawford want to split about 100 times that amount. And fans, who are going to steal the stream, get pissed that Arum won't hurry up and pay them what they want. https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2022...y-joanna-jedrzejczyk-takes-hit-non-title-bout
Ehh fuel and home prices (away from the coasts) are quite a bit lower than other regions of the high developed world. But this is not the main topic.
