Why is so much garbage being put onto pay per view?

Your point about Arum not taking up free cards with these fights is misguided. The networks wouldn't buy these cards anyway.
Promoters are short sighted and do no favors for the sport. The sport would be better off long term if some of these cards were available on networks like Versus. For the right price, networks like Versus would buy these fights. But promoters are making more $ by going on pay per view. However, if the promoters and fighters were willing to take less in the short term and fight on one of these networks, long term exposure would benefit the sport.

 

Either you can choose to pay for the mismatch or not watch it at all. Mismatches need to get made a lot of the time, and it's a GOOD thing that the networks aren't agreeing to air mismatches. That leaves them more money to air the good matches without a PPV.

 

Bull****. In the last couple years, the networks have paid big money for fights such as Pavlik-Lockett, Cotto-Gomez, Klitschko-Austin, Taylor-Ouma, Tarver-Muriqi, etc, and some better fights like Hopkins-Wright and Mosley-Judah have gone to PPV because there wasn't enough money left in the networks' budgets to air those fights. You should be happy that they have been refusing to air these bull**** fights in favor of better fights.

 

Also, I personally don't consider HBO or Showtime cards, "free". Especially Showtime. I would not have Showtime without the boxing and it costs me $16 month. It's like a real cheap pay per view every month, but that's every single month whether there is a worthwhile fight or not. HBO, at least, has a lot more programming that I watch. But I might not have it either without boxing.

 

Well Showtime usually has a showbox and a showtime championship boxing card. So that's about 4 fights a month for 16 bucks.

Compare that to say..a PPV which is 50 bucks for 4 fights a month.

You'd figure with UFC breaking all sorts of PPV records by offering cheaper PPVs, Boxing would take a page outta their book. Pavlik/Cotto was ridiculously expensive for a POS card.

 

I do agree a lot of those cards have been pretty unacceptable for these networks. The networks were really dropping the ball, letting the promoters basically **** them and us.

 

oh yea, i'm not complaining about Showtime, but they do take months off from having championship boxing, like in January. So my subscription got me **** for that month.

HBO has one PPV planned for this year so far. Even Cotto-Clottey would be on regular PPV. This is a big change from fights like Rahman-Maskaev being on PPV. This is all thanks to the **** economy.

 

Bob Arum has said he is no longer releasing #'s on PPV buys.

That being said, Dan Rafael reported in his chat a few weeks ago that Arum told him it did over 100,000 buys and made a slight profit and that he needed 75,000 to break even.

I don't really have a problem with crap PPV's. It is nice to have the option to watch something if you'd like. And if you don't want to watch it, don't order it. And this is a good problem to have. It means that HBO and Showtime are putting less crap on the air so marginal shows have to go elsewhere.

 

Not only that but HBO has been losing profit on PPVs since about 2007. I believe they took a back to back killing on Hopkins/Pavlik and RJJ/Calzaghe.

So we can thank the economy and those four for killing HBO PPV.

 

It also punishes poorer people for being fans of a boxer and not being able to see him on TV.

Sucks if yer a Pavlik fan or Cotto fan who has children and doesn't have 50 bucks to spend to watch your favorite fighter take on someone you've never even heard of.

It's essentially a fan base killer.

 

exactly. To me, I don't buy the "well if it's not on pay per view you wouldn't see it at all" excuse. Other networks would be willing to get into boxing if it suited their bottom line. But fighters and promoters consistently price themselves out of reality. Kelly Pavlik, why does he deserve huge guaranteed $$$?? Great fighter, but thus far has proven he can't draw flies on pay per view. Look at the market changes in baseball, one year deals for established players. 3 years ago, any left handed Joe could get a real nice multi year contract. Boxing has real opportunity now, but the sport is so fragmented that they will miss it.

 

Surely the only way they can be losing money on PPVs is if they're paying the fighters more money than the show is actually worth? If they're doing that on a regular basis then they're just not very good at the business they're in...

 

What's worse, airing a fight on PPV and having the opportunity to see it, or not airing the fight at all? If it's on PPV, you can at least chip in with friends to get it and watch it. If it's not aired on TV at all, then how does that help? Pavlik-Rubio needed to happen either way because it was a mandatory, how does it help his fanbase if the only people who get to see it are those in the arena?

Like it or not, the big promoters are NEVER going to put their stars on FNF or something like that, because that reduces their asking price for the HBO and Showtime fights too much.

 

I hate to be a promoter defender, but, I really don't think that Pavlik is making big bucks here. Arum said he needed 75,000 buys to break even. The PPV cost $45. The cable company keeps half of that. Let's say Arum's share is the remainder and that works out to $1.7M. Of which he had to pay all the fighters and Pavlik only co-headlined with Cotto so they probably made about the same. So, throw in net gate receipts and maybe they made $1M each?

Arum is a businessman. He has to sign his fighters to contracts. He has to pay them minimum amounts as specified in the contract. He has to keep them busy. Or he loses them. More than likely to GBP who can't raise a prospect on their own so they have to steal all of his.

HBO has finally wised up and isn't paying for crap matchups anymore and has limited dates regardless. He could go on ESPN where they pay $20K/show and take a guaranteed loss on his fighter. A guaranteed large loss. Or he can put it on PPV and try and maximize his revenue in meeting his fighter's contract. And if he structures it so he only needs 75,000 buys, he can make a small profit and he satisfies the demands of his fighters contracts? Of course that is what he is going to do.

Are you all telling me that if it was your money you would lock yourself into a $1M loss by taking a $20K ESPN purse? Just so that some fan could see his favorite fighter for free?

 

There was a great big article on how HBO overpays for fighters/rights to fighters.

Lest we forget the HBO exclusive contracts.