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Let me say right here up top that I still don't believe it.
But
the opening salvo has been fired in what surely is going to be a long
debate, as HBO is today reporting that last Saturday night's Mayweather
vs. Marquez fight
did one million pay-per-view buys.
This
news opens up a whole host of other questions, of course. Are the
numbers accurate, first of all? How does a fight that had such trouble
putting fannies in the seats do such staggering business on TV? And
then, if these are the only numbers we're going to get, if the record
is going to show that Mayweather is indeed a million-buy man as an
A-side, what does that do for the mega-fight that's on everybody's
mind, Mayweather vs. Pacquiao? Pacquiao did 850K in PPV buys in May,
but his opponent was Ricky Hatton, a B-side who brings a lot of
business to the table. Presuming that the Pacquiao/Cotto fight in
November equals or exceeds the Mayweather/Marquez numbers, which I
fully expect it will do, and presuming that Pacquiao wins that fight
(not nearly as certain a presumption), we are looking at a genuine King
Kong vs. Godzilla negotiation between the two would-be pound-for-pound
and pay-per-view kings of boxing. One wonders if such a negotiation,
with Bob Arum on one side and Mayweather on the other, ever can lead to
the two principals actually meeting up in the ring.
The
question of a Pacquiao fight aside, let's just suspend disbelief for a
moment and accept that the numbers are accurate, or even that they're
probably blown up a little bit, that the fight actually did, say,
somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-900K, which is still an amazing
take. Other than the obvious issue of the cash-cow ascension of
Mayweather, what this primarily indicates to me is that there are still
a lot of boxing fans out there who love a big event, and if you only
give them a few legit pay-per-views a year, those events will do great
business.
There was only one big pay-per-view fight this year
prior to Mayweather/Marquez, and that was Pacquiao/Hatton in May, a
fight that also did numbers that exceeeded everyone's expectations. The
lesson here is something that boxing fans have been saying for years –
less is more when it comes to pay-per-view boxing matches. When there
are nine or ten pay-per-views a year, as there have been in the last
few years, they generate bad press and less-than-stellar numbers,
watering down the public's appetite for truly BIG fights.
This
year, there are going to be only three major pay-per-views in boxing,
with Pacquiao/Cotto still to come. It looks like every one of them is
going to do unbelievable business and generate tremendously positive
buzz for the sport in the U.S. It's a great development for fight fans.
Let's just hope that come 2010, the powers-that-be don't get dizzy with
the success and start flooding the airwaves with pay-per-view fights
again. Stick to the lean-and-mean model, please, because it clearly
pays off in the end.
That said... I still don't believe it.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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