By Tim Royner: Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn says the Anthony Joshua vs. Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller fight has broken the record for pre-sale tickets for a boxing match after just 2 hours for their June 1 fight at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Hearn is hoping that this is a sign that the Joshua-Miller fight will bring in a massive amount of subscribers on DAZN, and Joshua will become an instant star in the U.S. There’s a lot of hope with Hearn for his fighter Joshua, but we’ll have to see. Tickets sales might mean anything if the American boxing public turns up their nose at the idea of subscribing to DAZN to see the Joshua vs. Miller fight.
News from @TheGarden – @anthonyfjoshua v @BIGBABYMILLER breaks the record in just two hours becoming the highest grossing pre-sale boxing event in MSG history! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Qo3uKRPLxZ
— Eddie Hearn (@EddieHearn) February 15, 2019
What this could mean is a lot of ticket sellers have scooped up the Joshua vs. Miller tickets so that they can sell the tickets themselves. Hearn is putting a spin on it, as if the tickets were purchased by individuals, and we don’t know if that’s the reality. If ticket re-sellers, then it doesn’t reflect on how well the fight will be received by American boxing fans. The secondary ticket market is going to kick in for this fight, as for all fights. Hearn needs to understand how tickets and bought and old in America. It still might not sell out, and we don’t know whether the fight will bring in good ratings on DAZN. Joshua’s last fight against Alexander Povetkin failed to do well on DAZN, and that was against a former heavyweight world champion with a lot of talent. Big Baby Miller is a fighter with only a tiny handful of wins over fringe level fighters and mostly old guys like Tomasz Adamek [42-years-old], Johann Duhaupas [38], Mariusz Wach [39], Gerald Washington [36] and Fred Kassi [39].
Hearn talking about ticket pre-sale ticket sales sounds like wishful thinking at this point. We’ll have to see if the Joshua-Miller fight is a success or not. It would obviously be great for Hearn if the fight is a success, because it would show that the American boxing fans are interested in seeing his fighter Joshua. It’s too bad Joshua vs. Miller isn’t being solid on pay-per-view, because then Hearn could really see if the U.S fans are interested in seeing Joshua fight. It was Hearns’s hope all along to turn Joshua into a PPV star not only in the UK, where his fights are sold on Sky Box Office, and also in the U.S. Now that Joshua is on DAZN, that means his fights won’t be on PPV in America unless Hearn comes up with some kind of plan to have boxing fans pay extra for whenever AJ fights. It’s doubtful that would go over well with the DAZN subscribers, who pay $10 per month to see boxing.