Arum worries Pacquiao-Marquez 5 bout could end up with fewer PPV sales it takes place outside U.S

By Boxing News - 02/11/2013 - Comments

pacBy Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao doesn’t like the idea of having a huge portion of the money he makes for his fights to be taken by the United States government in the form of taxes. With Pacquiao making millions of dollars from American boxing fans on pay per view, he reportedly loses 39.6 percent of that from taxes. To avoid that, Pacquiao wants his next fight, which possibly could be against Juan Manuel Marquez, to take place in one of the Asian countries.

Arum told Yahoo News “Manny can go back to Las Vegas and make $25 million, but how much of it will he end up with – $15 million? If he goes to Macau, perhaps his purse will be $20 million, but he gets to keep it all, so he will be better off.”

Arum says it won’t necessarily mean more money, though, given that the fights outside of the U.S make less money on PPV for some reason. If that’s the case then Pacquiao won’t be better off by taking the fight outside the U.S to one of the Asian countries because not only will the gate be a lot lower than it would if the fight were staged in the U.S, but then there would be less PPV money.

I don’t know that I buy what Arum is saying about the PPV money being 50% less. Why would it be any less if the fight is going to be marketed the same way by having tons of commercials on HBO and other channels to advertise the fight, as well as Pacquiao and Marquez traveling from city to city in the U.S to promote the fight. I think it would do just as well as before.

If Arum, Pacquiao and Marquez are able to skirt the U.S taxes by taking their fights outside of the U.S, while still selling them to Americans, this could lead to other fighters doing the same in the future. This in turn would be a crushing blow to U.S gambling cities, Las Vegas, Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It paints a bleak future for these gambling cities if boxing promoters are able to get around taxes by taking fights to Mexico or Asia, yet still getting money from the U.S fans through PPV.

Arum says they’ve gotten the most out of the American market, and he feels that can branch out to the Asian markets to see how they’ll do there. However, the big money will still from the U.S, so there’s no change there.

Pacquiao might not have too much time left in his career to escape U.S taxes because he’s getting beaten, then who in the U.S is going to want to pay to see him fight? Arum is going to have to downsize the quality of his opposition to keep him winning or he can putting him in against quality fighters and watch the numbers drop off slowly with each loss. If Pacquiao keeps getting knocked out, then the gravy train could end suddenly for him and Arum.



Comments are closed.