By Chris Williams: Bob Arum, the promoter for Manny Pacquiao, thinks that Showtime is taking losses for the fights they televise on pay-per-view for superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr.
How Arum knows that Showtime is taking money losses is unclear, because Showtime Vice President of Sports Stephen Espinoza hasn’t been talking about Showtime losing money on Mayweather’s fights, which have been hovering in the 1 million range in the four fights he’s had on his six-fight contract. You can say that Mayweather’s fights have averaged over 1 million buys due to his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez bringing in 2.2 million buys.
“As long as Floyd has a contract with two freebies coming from Showtime he is content with that,” Arum said via thaboxingvoice.com. “If I were Showtime and I was taking losses as big as I am on Mayweather fights, I wouldn’t be happy, but who knows maybe they have a bunch of masochists running the company.”
Given that Mayweather is bringing in more pay-per-view buys than any other fighter in boxing including Arum’s fighter Pacquiao, you can understand why Showtime is happy to have Mayweather fighting on their network. He’d likely done a great job of increasing the subscriber base for Showtime with his highly successful pay-per-view events since he signed his six-fight contract with them.
Mayweather wants to fight Pacquiao on May 2nd, but Arum is now talking about wanting that date for Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who is in negotiations with Miguel Cotto for that fight date. It’s not as if Mayweather isn’t interested in fighting Pacquiao, but what can he do if Arum wants May 2nd for Cotto-Canelo. After all these years of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight not taking place, it’s hard to believe that the fight might not happen due to a smaller fighter between Cotto and Canelo getting in the way of it.
Mayweather will do well whether he’s fighting Pacquiao or not. If Mayweather chooses to fight someone else, he’ll likely pick out an opponent that will bring in around 1 million pay-per-view buys, and that will; likely keep Showtime more than happy. As long as Mayweather is showing that he is trying to make the Pacquiao fight happen, what can Showtime say?
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