Arum admits PPV is dead. What does this mean for boxing?

PPV was dreat when you had actual GREAT fights happen! eg- hagler vs hearns would have been a PPV. (too young at the moment when that went down so i do not know and i was just out of boot camp) i would have paid for that. then you had good fights that were on hbo and showtime and there were even a very few free on normal television.
now, almost every fight on tv is PPV no matter the quality of the fight. and yes, it HAS effected the popularity of the sport.

 

Hes part of the reason why its dead. He put almost every Crawford and Fury fight that were regular ESPN type fights on PPV and failed miserably at it. Hopefully now hes learned something.

 

we need to seize the means of production for these PPV's and broadcast the fights for free

 

Like others have already said, the price is just too high, and the content isn't good enough.

I think another reason boxing is dying (at least in the U.S.) is because the casual fan no longer has any knowledge of what's going on, because the fights are spread out across services very few people have. People don't even know where to go to watch boxing anymore. HBO dropped boxing, showtime still has fights but barely anybody subscribes to showtime, ESPN occasionally has a decent fight but those are few and far between, I think they have an ESPN+ subscription that may show fights? (yet another + subscription few people will waste their money on), and no casual fan has ever heard of DAZN or Triller. To make matters worse, without access to these outlets, the casual fan may never even see an ad for a fight to even know it's happening. The only outreach boxing has to the casual fan is probably Max Kellerman's Max on Boxing on ESPN, and maybe the rare few minutes that ESPN spends discussing an upcoming big fight.

Boxing needs a home, ideally a single primary outlet that the masses are aware of (netflix, amazon prime, HBO?) and that will offer the best fights at low costs, and then once that is settled, boxing needs more exposure: ads, billboards, etc. As of now, the sport is an absolute mess to try and actively follow.

 

If true then I bet DAZN are happy

 

I agree with all of this.

Also, I think the rise in popularity of Jake Paul last year shows there is still a hunger for boxing in the U.S., even among casual fans. They just want colorful people they can follow who fight regularly and knock people out. It's not brain surgery. You don't have to be a future champion. (But even he's begun fighting less often.)

I don't know if it was Mayweather or who started this regular "I'll fight in May and September" deal ... and take off the rest of the year. But it's maddening. If you can fight in May and again three or four months later in September, then you can fight every three to four months all year every year. Not just twice a year.

Not to do the "I remember when" crap, but I do remember when Ali fought Coopman on National TV in February, fought contender Jimmy Young two months later on national TV, fought Richard Dunn like THREE WEEKS later on National TV, had a big Wrestling PPV with Inoki that summer (which was promoted everywhere), and then fought the #1 contender Ken Norton in September.

Four boxing matches - and one 15-round wrestling match - in eight months. And everyone tuned in. And that was Ali coming off another four title defenses during the calendar year before that.

They weren't all great. But, hell, if one fight stunk, there was another already coming up weeks later.

One BIG reason why I think Canelo has gotten so popular over the last three years is he fights much more regularly than everyone else seems to.

They just announced the Charlo-Tszyu fight, for 2023. We're only in July. The last Charlo fight was a lot of fun. But, he won't be back until NEXT YEAR? WTF?

Charlo fought one week after Canelo-Bivol. Canelo is fighting again in September. Charlo IS NOT.

It's a momentum killer.

THE WORST thing about boxing these days is that the morning after a big fight, you know that for many of these fighters, they may not be back in the ring for another freaking YEAR.

It's not "what's next?" Instead, it's "do we have to talk about this last fight for a whole goddamn year before we see them again?"

Fury knocked out Whyte. It was a decent defense. When's he fighting again? I don't know. Maybe next year sometime? Do I want to talk about Fury-Whyte for the next 12 months? Not really.

The lulls kill.

 

PPV is dead at least the 80$ ppv's. Who would pay that kind of money for a single event. Here in Europe PPV was never a working TV streaming model.
Who would pay more than 15$ for a single boxing event? There are piracy HD Streams for nearly every Event.

 

There was plenty of illegal viewing 20 years ago. People were getting cards for their boxes programmed all the time.

 

Right. I remember. That's also mentioned in the link I provided. That's why Arum went back to closed circuit for the Oscar-Chavez 1. The black boxes drove him nuts.

We're basically back to that now. But you don't need a box. You just need to find the right link.

He hates that more than anything.

 

It's far too much cost for people in the US especially when the top fights aren't being made and the cards aren't even stacked. Compare to the UFC which is similar but the cards are generally brimmed with top fights so at least offer value compared to nearly any recent boxing cards that I can think of. The point younger people might not realise is the better era's the boxers were far better known because it was shown on normal TV. So from the 90's onwards the sport has been suffering because the exposure is far less with the general public. These days it get's compounded because most of the top guys don't even fight each other and fracturing of more belts and divisions.

 

There is the conundrum.

If you pay boxers less, they have to fight more often, and the risks for them go up.

But, if you pay them less, you can also put the fights on commercial television because you aren't paying the participants as much. And you can grow the fanbase.

If you pay fighters less, though, fans and fighters complain the fighters aren't being paid enough (like they do in the MMA). And people bash the "suits" for keeping all the money. And, when someone dies, everyone goes bat**** over how corrupt the "system" is where fighters don't make enough.

When you pay them more, guys like Gary Russell Jr. fight once a year, collect a million bucks, and have no interest in fighting until he comes around same time next year.

Paying them more and fighting less benefits the fighters.

Paying them less and charging the fans less benefits the fans and the promoters ... but then you become part of the "evil" that doesn't care about a fighters' well-being.

Somebody has to get screwed.

* If the fighters and promoters make a lot, the fans get screwed because we're paying big fees to watch.
* If the fans can watch great fights on the cheap, the promoter is making a lot ... and the fighters aren't.
* If you don't charge fans much, and the fighters make a lot ... the promoters are losing their shirts. And they're the ones who stage the fights.

Who is it going to be?

 

Piracy doesn't effect the bottom line much. There's lots of people who pirate a mediocre fight if it's available. If that stream was eliminated, very few of them would go buy it on ppv. They would just read about it the next day. Not every view on a stream represents a lost sale.

 

The DAZN and ESPN model is the way to go. A low subscription for fights. Omly problem is these two station need to learn what are PPV fights cause ESPN has had some that shouldnt have been. That is what is killing things. Putting crap card and making it PPV.

 

I think you bring up an important point. It isn't just PPV it's the fact that the product is split over many providers and very few will fork out for all of them where the UFC it's all inhouse. That's without factoring few few high quality fights are made because of various promoting and networks being involved protecting their own cash cows. I thinks it's too diluted at this point and explains why the model made popular in the 90's is now failing to an extent.

 

I think you couldn't be more wrong.

If you are pirating mediocre PPV fights you're pirating most of the expensive ones, too.

People don't just steal bad PPVs and gladly pay $90 or $100 bucks for the name ones ... unless you're having a crowd over, and then you're back to 10 or 20 people watching a stream one person bought.

With closed circuit, everyone who watches pays.

I wouldn't be surprised if Spence-Craword went that route. I think Bob may be setting the table for that.