By Chris Williams: The negotiations between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao still reportedly have “substantial issues” that need to be taken care of before the fight will be ready to be signed off, according to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports.
There are still issues regarding Showtime and HBO despite what Pacquiao’s team is saying about the two cable giants having already taken care of their negotiations.
HBO wants to be able to show the replay of the Mayweather-Pacquiao pay-per-view event from their proposed fight on May 2nd, a source told Iole. Pacquiao has a contract with HBO, whereas Mayweather is under contract with Showtime.
If HBO is the one that gets to show the replay of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight rather than Showtime, then they’ll be able to reach a lot of boxing fans with the replay. If Showtime can’t televise the fight then it would be a big disappointment for their subscribers.
This is a potentially difficult area because if both cable giants aren’t able to replay the fight then it’s going to be a situation where they’re not going to let their many subscribers see the fight on non-PPV.
In addition to the still outstanding problems between Showtime and HBO in regards to the showing of the replay, there are also promotional problems. It’s unclear what these problems are, but it could have something to do with Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz’s plan of not conducting a world tour to promote the fight.
Koncz says he wants Pacquiao to save money on travel costs. Koncz wants to limit the promotional tour to just one or two cities in the United States, because he wants Pacquiao and Mayweather to save more of their money from the huge purses they’ll be receiving for their mega-fight.
Mayweather is used to conducting huge tours to promote his fights. He’s always done this, and his fights do very, very well on PPV. With Pacquiao’s adviser wanting to do the marketing the fight on the cheap, they could handicap the promotion of the fight by not going along with what Mayweather might want in order to make the fight a success.
You have to remember that Mayweather is a businessman, and he knows what it takes in order to make his fights a success.
If his opponent’s adviser has decided that he feels it’s not necessary to promote the fight to a hilt, then you could understand how this might be a problem. Mayweather can’t go by himself on a promotional tour if Pacquiao and Konz are going to stay at home and not travel with him.
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