I am a drilling engineer with a large independent natural gas producer.  Right now, I'm working/living on a drilling rig in northwest New Mexico supervising the drilling of two wells.  While I'm down here, I live in a trailer house that my company rents from an outside supplier.  I would like nothing more than to throw down sixty of my hard earned dollars to watch the fights tonight, but instead I am being asked to fork over $1,000 for the privilege of watching tonights pay-per-view.

Why is that you ask?

Well, you see the company that we rent the trailer from provides a DirecTV receiver for every house that they rent out.  Since they charge for the use of the receiver it is registered under a commercial account.  Makes sense right?

Well it gets dumb from there.

I called DirecTV customer service yesterday to try to buy the ppv and pay for it with my credit card.  Once customer service pulled up the account they noticed it was a commercial account and told me to call their commercial account department.  No big deal, I figured I would call up commercial accounts and get it taken care of.  Well commercial accounts pulled up the account and declared it a national account.  That meant they couldn't help me and gave me yet another number to call.  I was starting to get frustrated.  National accounts started out very helpful, then informed me that since it was a national commercial account I would need to contact Joe Hand Promotions who handles commercial PPV sales for Zuffa and there was nothing DirecTV could do about it on their end.

Who is Joe Hand Promotions?  Joe Hand Promotions describes themselves as "the premier distributor of closed circuit pay-per-view boxing and special events in the country.  Founded by Joe Hand, Sr. and his family in 1970, the company’s size and reputation has grown due in large part to the chairman's background, passion and keen foresight about the television distribution industry."  They partner with promoters (Zuffa, Golden Boy, WWE, etc) to sell pay-per-views to commercial establishments like bars and restaurants through DirecTV.

When I contacted Joe Hand Promotions I was told that since this was a corporate account it did not matter that I was just a guy sitting on his couch with his dog who wants to watch some fights and not a bar.  The most "reasonably priced" package they could offer me was $1,000 to order the ppv for a single receiver and that their agreement with Zuffa only allowed them to sell commercial packages.

This is ludicrous, why can't DirecTV, Zuffa, and Joe Hand Promotions recognize that not all commercial accounts are the same?

So basically in closing, I say to my fellow BloodyElbowers enjoy the fights tonight.  I'll be watching boxing on ESPN2 since my internet connection is too slow to support streaming (it takes 30 minutes to watch a 5 minute clip on youtube).  I guess I'm looking forward to following the thread on here to keep up with the event.

I hope Zuffa continues to do well while refusing to accept my sixty bucks!

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