Turki Alalshikh Says No More Riyadh Season, Ring Card Events On PPV

This guy is amazing and hope he sticks around for a long time

 

Watch the subscription price triple...

 

And then a year later bring back PPVs without lowering the price

 

It is interesting watching Netflix do non PPV and DAZN now claiming to go back to not being PPV

I know the money is not an issue for the Saudi's but are the Saudi's going to be involved in boxing for more than a decade? Some of this feels like a can being kicked down the road. Service over pays fighters, promises to end PPV then has to bring back PPV to afford the high fighter pay. Turki can afford to take losses since he's not in it to make money but generate tourism and improve his country's image. But once he is gone or SA decides to move on to another project where does that leave boxing long term

Or does some other sap try to do what PBC and DAZN tried and rinse and repeat

 

If The Ring is an example of what he'll do with Saudi ownership, I'm all for it.

 

Eventually even the Saudis will want to see some profits. Could be a decade from now, or even two, but I doubt they will let their boxing venture run a perpetual deficit - especially with so many of their cards being outside of Saudi Arabia.

 

I think what ultimately matters is if the Saudi king is happy with what tourism / image enhancing the involvement with boxing is doing for his country. If he's happy with it, Turki keeps on keeping on.

Only issue down the road then would be Turki having a health issue, although he's not very old, and one would assume members of the royal family get the finest healthcare available in the world, so I'd expect he's around and healthy enough to pursue this for a long time. I don't see Turki ever losing interest -- he's clearly a big fan. I'd put money on the whole boxing thing being his idea.

 

What's the goal though? If it's just to improve the image of their country, they're already succeeding. Boxing fans around the world who never gave a thought about Saudi Arabia before other than perhaps "oh yeah those rich oil dudes" now have positive thoughts. I'm someone who understands multiple things can be true -- there's plenty I don't like about Saudi (especially the laws around women), but about sports? Every time they get involved in sports, they're nothing but pure benevolent class. So, yeah, it's worked on me too.

edit: holy ****, the digital version of The Ring is free? Opinion of Saudi even higher right now. Lol.

 

When I grew up watching boxing there was one maybe two belts each weight class, boxers thought 3/4 times years there was no duck and diving next in line got his shot.

nowadays there are too many belts so the prestige is dwindled but a championship fight isn’t what ya want it’s a **** filler fight or a pay day fight.

 

I wonder what this means for Top Rank, given that its ESPN deal will expire very soon and as far as I know TR has not signed with anyone yet.

 

Thats the whole point. The Saudis want control of the sport. Then they can be sustainable. Thats how monopolys roll.

The Saudis want to control institutions before they are forced to stop burning oil so they can transition to a cultural hub. Turki isn't doing this as a passion project he wants to control boxing. Boxings not the only thing they want to control. Its part of a multi layered strategy but they don't plan on leaving.

This is why they are doing over the top like offering subscriptions for free and printing expensive magazines only a few people will buy. Its called seduction.

 

READ THE FINE PRINT

This is sales talk and is being made to sound like something it really isn't. You will not get all the fights for your standard subscription. There will instead be levels of subscriptions and if you want all the fights you will pay the premium (most expensive) subscription.

This is just a different way of DAZN getting the extra money.

 

Turki isn't spending his own money. The money being used is in the sports budget to improve the image of the country and make it a travel destination.

And since nobody is buying the PPVs, and there aren't too many eyes on those PPV events to "win" over, he had to make a change.

Essentially, he needed to take the fights off PPV, or they'd find another "Turki" to manage the sports area.

Good for fans. But this is basically him being told that he's doing a bad job. The guy doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas ... once you get beyond unifications.

 

We have 3 major players in boxing at the moment; DAZN, Amazon, Netflix.
Unfortunately only DAZN has dedicated themselves to the sport. Amazon and Netflix are merely testing the waters. And well, ESPN has walked away due to Top Rank´s incompetency.

I think TR overestimated themselves, and they tried to put on a HBO type schedule, but without the other promoters. It only worked for a few years.

 

I will renew my DAZN subscription now