By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz doesn’t feel that a worldwide tour is needed in order to sell the May 2nd Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr fight. Koncz says it’s expensive to book private planes and fly all over the world to try and sell the fight.
Koncz thinks the worldwide tour should be skipped entirely in order to save money for the fighters.
Koncz also feels that a cross-country tour really isn’t needed either. Instead, he thinks that they should hit one or two cities, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. It’s unclear if Koncz feels that it would cost too much money fly around the United States, but with Pacquiao possibly getting $80 million and Mayweather $120 million, you have to wonder why Koncz wants to sell the fight on the cheap.
I could understand Koncz not wanting to travel if Pacquiao were fighting Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley or Chris Algieri again, but that’s not the case. Pacquiao is fighting Mayweather, and seems to me the more cities and more countries the two stars hit, the higher the interest in the fight.
If Koncz is going to be the one calling the shots and limiting exposure of the two fighters, then he could be hurting the marketing of the fight. In this case, Pacquiao needs a marketing expert to advise him with these things, not a personal assistant.
“I don’t want to go on a worldwide tour. We don’t think it’s necessary,” Koncz said to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “Look, we could have stopped in seven cities and not gotten the kind of publicity we got from Manny and Floyd talking at halftime of the basketball game. I think we could do one city, perhaps two, New York and Los Angeles, and this thing will go viral. It will sell itself. We don’t need to go spending money on private jets to go to a lot of cities. Those tours are expensive. The money could go to the fighters instead.”
Like I said, this isn’t the time to get cheap in marketing this fight. If Mayweather and Pacquiao want to reach as many people as possible, they need to go on a worldwide tour and hit all the major cities in the United Stated.
If Koncz wants to get in the way of that from happening, then Pacquiao needs to think about leaving him at home and going on the tour with Mayweather himself. Pacquiao can bring Buboy Fernandez with him as his gofer and have him handle the odd jobs that need to get done.
Can you imagine the amount of attention the Mayweather-Pacquiao tour would receive each time they hit a different city or a different country. It would be huge. They would take over with the local media discussing the fight 24/7 while the two fighters were in that city. It would create a lot more interest in the fight. But if Pacquiao listens to Koncz and decides to save money and not take the worldwide tour and not tour the United States, then they’ll only be shortchanging themselves.
Koncz also thinks that HBO’s 24/7 and Showtime’s All Access aren’t needed to help sell the fight. Koncz just wants a single one hour special on the fight instead of multiple episodes. I don’t agree with that either and I think it’s a stupid idea. The episodes by HBO and Showtime are wildly popular, and they would definitely help sell the fight.
The more episodes that are out there on HBO and Showtime the more publicity the fight will receive. By limiting it to just one special, it would mean less people would see it than if there were multiple episodes on HBO and Showtime.
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