Arum doesn’t see that as something would cause boxing fans to have to pick and choose which fight they want to watch of the two because he believes that boxing fans use DVRs in high numbers that allows them to watch two different things.
Speaking with Radio Raheem, Arum said “Everybody has a DVR. Everybody can tape one fight and watch another. There are no conflicts if both of the networks go on the same night. Fans will watch both fights, as demonstrated on September 15th, the Chavez-Martinez pay-per-view was off the chart, and Canelo [Alvarez] and his fight did really good numbers on Showtime. People are very sophisticated now. They don’t have to watch both fights live. It just shows that you [Radio Raheem] are not up, and don’t understand the ratings. If you DVR a fight, that counts as a view, so your idea of what ratings are or aren’t is preposterous. Indeed, it [running boxing shows against each other] it enhances the ratings and PPVs for both. That’s what happened on September 15th. Be real; don’t drink the crap from people who can’t compete, like the people who cry all the time like Oscar [De La Hoya] and Golden Boy. We’re not crying; they can do anything they like. We don’t care if they put a fight against us.”
What Arum says doesn’t make any sense at all. I’m sure there are some people that use a DVR to record stuff while watching other things on another channel, but I’d be willing to bet that a lot more people don’t do this kind of thing and just watch whatever channel their watching without recording. I could be wrong, but I think it’s a small minority that DVR things.
Having two fights on different networks – HBO and Showtime – on the same night makes it an expensive proposition if those fights are PPV fights. I know it don’t bother Arum because he’s got a huge net worth of many millions of dollars, but that’s not the case for the average fans.
If you’ve got two PPV fights competing against each other on the same night, I don’t think it’s going to enhance the ratings at all. What it does is cause both fights to suffer because the typical fans can’t purchase both because their pockets aren’t that deep.
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