(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: The price has finally been revealed for the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao mega-fight on May 2nd, and it’s exactly what boxing fans have been expecting it to be with the fight going for $89.95 for regular standard definition and $99.95 for high definition. This is a bump up in price from the normal; $64.99 for standard and $74.95 for high definition.
With the price being bumped up approximately $25 for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, the question is whether the price will be going up permanently for PPV fights? With the money being so good for HBO, Showtime, the fighters and the cable distributers, it’s always possible that they could keep the prices at this inflated rate.
Of course, if that happens it could hurt the sport of boxing in a huge way, because boxing fans might not likely the idea of seeing their cable bill skyrocket up each time they purchase a PPV fight.
“The #Mayweather-Pacquiao PPV will cost $89.95 ($99.95 in HD) and will not available in movie theaters. #boxing,” Rafael said on his twitter.
While some boxing fans may not make a fuss about them having to pay a huge amount of money for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight due to it being such a great fight on paper, there’s still going to be a lot of boxing fans who are going to be turned off by this money grab and decide on not purchasing the fight at all.
The normal thing to do when you have a glut of a product, be it oil or whatever, is to lower the price on the product, not to raise it. In this case you’ve got potentially 3 million+ boxing fans who could end up purchasing the fight on PPV. So instead of the lowering the price or keeping it the same as it’s been in the past, HBO, Showtime and the cable distributors are raising the price.
Their argument is likely that it’s such a great fight that it has more value to it than other fights in the past. It is a great fight, but it’s still tough to ask boxing fans to pay more to see it when there are already going to be a massive amount of people paying to see it.
It should be like oil production. When you have a lot of oil hitting the market, the price goes down instead of going up. In the case of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, they’re raising the price instead of lowering it. I think it’s a self-defeating thing though, because I believe less people will wind up purchasing the fight because of the extra money they’re charging fans.
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is a good one, but it’s not the fight that it was five years ago, and these two not even be the best fighters in the welterweight division. The undercard isn’t very good in my view with featherweight Vasyl Lomachenko fighting Gamalier Rodriguez, super welterweight Christopher Pearson fighting Said El Harrak and super middleweight Jesse Hart facing Mike Jimenez.
There’s a ton of money that’s going to be made on this card, and you would expect that they could take some of it and put it into putting together a good undercard instead of doing it on the cheap with the current undercard.
That doesn’t make sense for this expensive card not to have a great undercard given the price that boxing fans are being asked to pay to see it. The fighters already saved money by not having a press tour. They could at least take the money saved on the lack of a world tour by putting together a great undercard so that boxing fans can see some good fights.
If the main event between Mayweather and Pacquiao turns out to be a one-sided affair, then there won’t be anything else for the boxing fans to focus on for them having paid a lot of money for the card.
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