De La Hoya expecting huge PPV numbers for Cotto-Canelo

By Boxing News - 11/19/2015 - Comments

1-cotto-vs-alvarez (10)By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is setting himself up for as huge disappointment on Saturday night with his belief that the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto fight will bring in a minimum of 1.5 million PPV buys on HBO. If the Cotto-Canelo fight bring in the type of PPV numbers that De La Hoya thinks it will be, the fight will wind up as the second highest PPV fight in history of the sport.

De La Hoya believes the fight can being in as much as 2.4 million buys on PPV. He also thinks that 1.5 to 2 million boxing fans will automatically purchase the fight on PPV, and then from there he predicts that the fight could get even more to pump up the sales to 2.4 million.

De La Hoya could be crying crocodile tears if the Cotto-Canelo fight fails to bring in the huge PPV numbers that he thinks it will be. I’m not sure how much De La Hoya is banking on this fight bringing in huge PPV numbers for Golden Boy Promotions.

The problem is that if the fight doesn’t come anywhere close to what De La Hoya is expecting, he could wind up sad and disappointed.

“We know boxing has a built in viewership of anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million homes,” De La Hoya said to the reviewjournal.com. “Mayweather and Pacquiao did 4.4 million. If we get the 1.5 million to 2 million we expect to get and we can get one-tenth of the rest from 4.4 million, we’ll be thrilled.”

The problem is the Cotto-Canelo fight is going for $59.00 for standard PPV on HBO and $69.99 for high definition PPV. That’s a lot of money for fans who were badly burnt by the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight last May on HBO/Showtime PPV.

A lot of boxing fans felt they were ripped off from that experience, and don’t want to be potentially ripped off a second time with another disappointing card. What has to be interpreted as a bad sign from this Saturday’s Cotto-Canelo fight is that the tickets haven’t sold out for the fight yet despite there being only a couple of days for the fight.

If the fight was as huge as De La Hoya thinks it is, the fans would have scooped up the tickets a long, long time ago. With there still being tickets to be purchased for the fight, it suggests that we might see PPV sales in less than 1 million range, possibly as low as 600,000. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that happens.

De La Hoya has been saying all week that there might be a rematch between Canelo and Cotto due to the PPV sales being high for the fight. If the fight only brings in 600K in terms of PPV buys, then De La Hoya will have a hard time justifying a second and even a third fight between Canelo and Cotto. In that case, then De La Hoya might as well bite the bullet and let Canelo fight Gennady Golovkin and get it over with rather than going back to the dried up well for the second time hoping to get more buys.



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