What is considered a pay per view failure or success?

By Boxing News - 10/28/2015 - Comments

1-GolovkinLemieux_Hoganphotos1By Robert “Big Moe” Elmore: Boxing experts, analysts, fans especially, and the industry as a whole have standard that they hold a popular fighter to. Pay per view (ppv) is the day and age we live in now so. It’s not going anywhere any time soon so stop crying about.

We have our own measurements about what a failure and success, but are they realistic? For example, the first Floyd Mayweather/Marcos Maidana did 900,000 buys and sold 15.4 at the gate. It had a pretty good undercard as well.

The rematch did slightly better with 925,000 buys. By the industry standards and many hate filled fans, the event was a flop because it didn’t crack the million mark. Both events were far from a flop when one considers TV and delayed rights, foreign money, sales from merchandise, food etc. The rematch was the highest PPV for 2014 and did more than Canelo Alvarez/Erislandy Lara (365,000 buys) and Miguel Cotto/Sergio Martinez (375,000 buys) combined. One of the main reason people say the event failed is because Mexican star Canelo Alvarez was no longer on the undercard.

The recent Gennady Golovkin (Trip)/David Lemieux had mixed reviews. Regardless of how the tickets for event were moved, Madison Square Garden was sold out. It did 2 million at the gate, 8 million at the gate, plus foreign rights, international fees, and everyone on the card salaries were covered. But many deemed this a flop and here’s why. Tom Loeffler, Trips promoter, came out and said “anything over 200,000 was a success. The industry predicted the fight would do between 200k-300k, but it did 150,000 buys.

Loeffler and HBO marketed the Kazakh star as the next big thing to fill Mayweather’s shoes. But who isn’t? Anyway. Because the event didn’t meet industry standards, then it was a flop. Then we have those who give all the credit to one fighter when a PPV does below expectations. Enter Manny Pacquiao. Pac’s fight with Brandon Rios did 450,000 buys, his rematch fight with Tim Bradley did between 750 and 800,000 buys, and his fight with Chris Algieri was the pits doing an abysmal 300,000 buys.

Now many of Pac’s fans gave Pac all the credit for those buys especially the Rios and Algieri fights. They said it was a true testament of his drawing power. Really? So a fight that did 925,000 buys is a failure, but 300,000 is somehow a success? It takes a good A and B side, a good co feature, and a good undercard to have a good event. And becoming a super star doesn’t happen overnight.

One has to target a specific crowd and everyone else will fall into place. Oscar De La Hoya target was women. He got them to become boxing fans and that caused their boyfriend/husbands to pay attention. From there they spread the word and he became a star. Floyd’s target was blacks. Trip is trying to get some of everybody because he’s not from America and he’s adapting to the culture by improving his English. True.

PPV does not measure a man’s popularity overall. But the idea is to get a large sum of those fans to buy the fight.

Each man’s path will be different and they have to start somewhere. A marquee name can be very helpful when trying to become a mega star. Mayweather and Pacquiao both have De La Hoya to thank for their crossing over. Trip’s camp knows they need that big name on the resume to gain more public appeal. Mayweather, Cotto, Canelo, or Andre Ward can be one of those guys. If an event turns a profit, then it was a success. But again, people will continue to have their lists of what is success and failure.



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