Canelo Alvarez vs. Daniel Jacobs watched by 1.2M viewers on DAZN

By Boxing News - 05/08/2019 - Comments

Image: Canelo Alvarez vs. Daniel Jacobs watched by 1.2M viewers on DAZN

By Aragon Garcia: Last Saturday night’s fight between middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez and Daniel Jacobs was a huge success with over 1.2 million viewers watching the fight across the globe on the streaming service DAZN. The Canelo vs. Jacobs fight was gauged as a success by DAZN.

The fight was seen in eight territories, and brought in new subscriptions that surpassed the $48 million paid out to Canelo and Jacobs for their headliner fight, according to Dan Rafael.

With the rapid amount of boxing fans that are subscribing to DAZN to watch the compelling fights they stream, the company expected to do well as time goes by and increasingly more fans subscribe.

The fight was seen by a mix of fans with subscription plans that were $20 monthly and $100 yearly. In the U.S alone, there were 600K streams.

WBA/WBC middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez (52-1-2, 35 KOs) put on a great display of boxing and punching in beating IBF champion Jacobs (35-2, 29 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 115-113, 115-113 and 116-112 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo built up a big lead in the first half of the fight, and then maintained it in the second half of the fight as Jacobs came roaring back. Jacobs wasn’t able to fight hard enough in the last two rounds in the 11th and 12th to pull out the victory or get a draw.

Canelo made $35 million, and Jacobs close to $15 million. Jacobs was fined roughly $1 million for weighing in at 173.6 pounds for the secondary weigh-in at 8:00 a.m. on the morning of the fight. The 10 pound rehydration clause in the contract limited both fighters’ rehydrated weight to 170 pounds for the fight date weight check at 8:00 a.m on May 4.

This was Canelo’s second fight of his 11-fight contract with DAZN. His first fight of his five-year, $365 million contract came against WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding on DAZN. The superstar IBF/WBA/WBC 160-pound champion Canelo now holds three of the four middleweight title belts in the division. The one title that has eluded him thus far is the WBO belt, which is held by Demetrius Andrade. A fight between Canelo and Andrade will likely take place in 2020. Andrade is busy with a title defense on June 29 against Maciej Sulecki, so he won’t be able to fight Canelo in September.

DAZN is reportedly interested in seeing Canelo fight Gennady Golovkin in a trilogy fight in September. Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs) still needs to win his next fight against Steve Rolls (19-0, 10 KOs) on June 8 on DAZN at Madison Square Garden in New York. This will be the 37-year-old GGG’s first fight of his six-fight, three-year, nine-figure contract with DAZN.

Canelo vs. Jacobs was seen on DAZN in the following countries:

– Austria

– Canada

– Germany

– Japan

– Italy

– Spain

– United States

– Switzerland

DAZN’s subscriber base is expected to grow exponentially with the upcoming Anthony Joshua vs. Andy Ruiz Jr. fight on June 1, Gennady Golovkin’s fight against Steve Rolls on June 8th and the Machida vs. Sonnen Bellator 222 MMA fight on June 14.

Golovkin could play a keep part in helping to increase the amount of subscribers to DAZN if a trilogy fight with Canelo is made for September. Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions were playing it low key in talking about the GGG third fight, but they’re likely to pull the trigger on the fight once they sit down with the DAZN brass and realize that this fight is what the boxing public wants to see right now. Golden Boy has been talking about wanting to match Canelo against WBA Super World super middleweight champion Callum Smith or potentially WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. Smith is a good fighter, but he’s not the huge star in the U.S that Golovkin is. Kovalev is already fighting Anthony Yarde next, and he won’t be available to face Canel in September.