I just read this Ali-Frazier had more buys than Mayweather- De LA Hoya

There is a difference between viewers and buys. Viewers just view the fight and something like every PPV sold usually has 5 viewers. Buys counts the number of ppvs sold, this is the real number that matters as it is how everyone gets paid. You can have millions of viewers but if only 1 $50 ppv sold then it was a failure.

Also, Ali-Frazier was on during a time of what 3 channels on TV? It wasn't like today with 300 channels and specialty programing.

 

Came across this post from boxrec, I don't have the book that's sourced but if the information is legit then it proves that the fight could not have been shown to 300 million on CCTV.

So less then 1 million for CCTV (and cable) in 1964 for the U.S., and while that number was sure to be much bigger for Ali-Frazier I in 1971 for the US and subsequently the whole world, there is no chance that it reached anywhere close to 300 million closed circuit.

What those statistics do show is that a TV audience of 300 million was possible and probably correct.

 

Here are more statistics posted in the same thread:

http://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=115403&start=25

 

So we're talking about $3 billion? Maybe $50 billion by today's standards? That's a decent day's work I guess. Makes sense.