By Chris Williams: In a long-overdue move, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says he’s planning on dropping the price of pay-per-view events from $80 to $40 to make it more affordable to the average boxing fan. Arum believes with the pandemic that is taking place, pricing pay-per-view at $80 per home isn’t realistic.
Arum’s idea is to drop the price for pay-per-view to $40 per home and then to give the fighters more of an upside instead of the enormous guaranteed purses that he’d been giving them.
Many years ago, pay-per-view did go for around $40, but the prices have steadily gone up over the years. It’s to the point now where the growth of boxing is limited because of the high costs for pay-per-view in the U.S.
There are, of course, additional prices that have hurt the sport. The tendency for promoters to set-up terrible mismatches from top to bottom on cards hasn’t helped. Fans are tired of seeing noncompetitive fights involving pampered prima donnas.
Moreover, the inability of promoters to set-up cross-promotional fights has turned boxing into what essentially is a form of club fighting. You got the Top Rank, PBC, Matchroom, and Golden Boy Promotion clubs.
Charging $40 pay-per-view will increase buys
“You look at the U.K., which has maybe 25% of the population of the United States, maybe less,” said Arum to S.I. Boxing with Chris Mannix. “I think they have 50 to 60 million people in the U.K. We have 350 million people in the United States. In the U.K.
“They do in a big fight over a million pay-per-views, particularly if it’s primetime in the U.K. And one of the reasons for their success is they charge appropriate prices for the pay-per-view.
“In other words, the pay-per-view goes for 20 to 25 pounds, which the government takes 20%. So people can pretty well afford that. In the United States, where we charge $80 or more dollars for a pay-per-view, people can’t afford that unless they’re going to have big crowds in the house chipping in.
“And because of the high price, they look for ways to watch the fight without paying, like streams and things. The danger there other than breaking the law, which they probably won’t get caught. These streams get shot down, and they miss seeing the fight.
“So if we go back to charging $40, I think you will see a tremendous increase in the number of homes that will buy it,” said Arum.
Dropping the pay-per-view prices is something that Arum and the other promoters in the U.S. should have done ages ago. It may have seemed to them that they would make less money by reducing the cost from $80 to $40, but they would make more money because more people would purchase the fights.
No one wants to pour $80 into purchasing a fight event on pay-per-view, and then getting stuck watching a bunch of dreadful mismatches. One example of that was the Terence Crawford vs. Amir Khan fight in April 2019.
The fight was shown on ESPN pay-per-view, even though many boxing fans saw it as a horrible mismatch. Sure enough, it wasn’t competitive in the least with Crawford completely dominating the over-the-hill Khan.
$80 per home isn’t realistic for pay-per-view
“What we saw is because so many people in America have had their cord cut, DirectTV and Dish have really shrunk, and their customers were big buyers,” said Arum.”So that universe has really shrunk, and the cable universe has shrunk because people have cut the cord.
“And now I was happy to see that ESPN+ did 250,000 buys on their platform and FOX did 50 or 60,000 on their platforms. So I think as you get more people into the digital platforms, you’ll see an increase in buys, but it has to be realistic numbers.
“Forget about $80 per home. That is not realistic, particularly now when we open up. When we do a big event, people will be reluctant to eight or nine people. More people will be watching a fight just with their families. So nothing is certain.
“The future is doubtful, but we have to look ahead and figure out how we’re going to proceed in the future. Both the fighters and the promoters,” said Arum when asked who would assume the risk of seeing the PPV costs reduced from $80 to $40. “In other words, the fighters would take less of a guarantee and more of an upside.
“For example, that’s how we did it with Marvin [Hagler], that’s how we did it with [Oscar] De La Hoya, and that’s how we did it in the past. They take reasonable guarantees and a big upside. So if a fighter says, ‘I want to make $20 million.’ Okay, we’ll figure out what is a safe amount to guarantee him, whether it’s $5 or 7 million, give him a big share of the upside,” said Arum.
At this point, even $40 might be asking too much unless the promoters improve the quality of their cards. You can’t sell fights to fans if most, if not all, of the fights, are one-sided affairs where the A-side guy is mopping the deck with some poor sap.
It might be a better idea for Arum to drop the price of his cards to $20. That way, when he matches Crawford against the likes of Amir Khan or Egidijus Kavaliauskas, fans won’t mind purchasing the mismatches.
Promoters have lost money
“If he’s right that his fight will perform in a particular way, he’ll make his money or even more,” said Arum. “Like Marvin, who fought largely on percentage with his fight with [Sugar] Ray [Leonard], ended up making almost twice as much.
“Again, that’s what we’re going to have to convince fighters. With the current situation where fighters get huge guarantees on the pay-per-view, and promoters have lost money, which has been the case prior.
“For example, Al Haymon with PBC, lost tons of money on Spence and Porter. He lost tons of money with the Pacquiao fights he put on? Why? They were successful promotions, but the guarantees were too high,” said Arum.
It’s been a mistake for the promoters to give fighters massive guarantee, as they’ve gambled that the pay-per-view numbers would cover what they’ve given to them. That doesn’t work when fans being charged so much money to see lackluster fights in which they can predict the winner.
It’s one thing when it’s a 50-50 fight, but that’s rarely the case anymore. Most of the time, fans know who’s going to win the battle, and they’re less inclined to want to pay $80 to see it.
Arum targeting June for boxing return
“We want to get back and running in June,” said Arum. “We’re going act responsibly. And we’re not cowboys like the UFC and Dana White. We’re not going to say we’re going to do the fight, and people are going to get sickened.
“And we’re not going to do that. We’re going to do it responsible with medical authority, and we’re going to do it with responsible boxing commissions. We’re working closely with the Nevada Commissions and the California commissions.
“These Commissions have governors that are doing an excellent job with the coronavirus. We are setting forth how to do these fights without audiences safely and sanely,” said Arum.
If boxing does return in June, it’s likely to be without fans, and not with the big-name fighters. The famous fighters don’t want to lose out on the gate money that they usually get for their fights, so we’re probably not going to see any of them.
Nobody is indispensable – Arum
“Some fighters have different views,” said Arum in responding to a comment about Terence Crawford wanting to be paid more money if he fights without an audience.
“If those views make it impossible to use them, the next man up. NOBODY, in this situation, is indispensable. In other words, we have 90 fighters that fight for us. A lot of fighters fight under Lou DiBella and Kathy Duva’s promotion.
“A lot of fighters I envision will be fighting for a place on these cards. If a fighter says, ‘No, I don’t want to fight without an audience. You have to pay me more, or I don’t fight.’ Okay, I respect that—next man up.
“Nobody indispensable in this environment. Of course, we have a minimum in a fighter’s contract, but we’ve been paying two or three times a minimum in many cases.
“You go back to the minimum and workout the purse. Nobody can force anyone to fight, and no one can force a promoter to use them. We’re going to have to use fighters, who have managers, that realize the situation everybody is in,” said Arum.
Crawford’s recent comment about wanting to be paid extra money to fight without fans could result in him being left out for any of Top Rank’s cards in 2020. If Crawford doesn’t fight at all in 2020, he’ll lose out on a lot of money. He may need to see the big picture and bite the bullet.
Crawford may not like losing out on the gate revenue that he would typically get a piece of, but he’ll lose a lot more money if he doesn’t fight at all this year.
Fury vs. Wilder III won’t happen until November
“Take a Fury-Wilder; there’s a contract for a third fight,” said Arum. “In the second fight, the gate accounted for almost $17 million of the revenue,” Arum said. “So if you do a fight without spectators, how do you account for the $17 million? Obviously, you can’t. It’s not matching.
“I talked to Tyson on Sunday, and he’s a very smart guy and is aware of the situation. I said to Tyson, ‘The earliest we’re going to do anything with you and Wilder is November or December to get spectators.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s fine. Whatever is possible.’ He’s a smart guy.
“A lot of fighters are smart guys, and realize that if they have to wait an extra month, it’s not the end of the world. I talked yesterday to Eddie Hearn and his people…and we discussed that.
“We had to do the [Anthony Joshua vs. Kubrat Pulev] fight in June, and we postponed it to July. We’ll probably have to postpone the fight again because I don’t see how we can do the fight or how it’s feasible without an audience; whether the audience is in the U.K. or the audience is some other place outside the U.K.,” said Arum.
Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder 3 might get postponed until 2021 if crowds aren’t allowed to attend live events in the U.S or elsewhere. It’s a little optimistic on Arum’s part for him to be tentatively scheduling the Fury-Wilder III fight for November.
The travel ban will limit fights that can occur
“There’s another major problem in boxing that has, once you solve all the testing, there’s a travel ban,” said Arum. “So you can’t talk about bringing fighters from the U.K. because they’re not allowed here.
“You can’t even talk about bringing in Canadians like [Oscar] Rivas, [Eleider] Alvarez and [Artur] Beterbiev, who are in Canada and we would like to bring in for these shows because there’s a travel ban on the border and Canada. And our Mexican fighters.
“We have [Miguel] Berchelt and [Emanuel] Navarrette. I saw Oscar Valdez said, ‘I can’t wait to fight Berchelt,’ and I can’t wait to see that fight. But can we get Berchelt into the United States? He has a visa.
“There’s no problem, but there’s a problem at the border. The border is, in effect, closed because of the coronavirus. All of that has to be worked out. Boxing does not rule the world. Boxing is not the driving force in the dynamics today in dealing with the coronavirus, and we have to be aware of the situation.
“I talked to Egis Klimas today about his fighters, who are in the United States, and who have gone home to Kazakstan or Ukraine. Lomachenko, as much as we want to use him, we can’t use him because he’s in Ukraine. He went home when this happened to be with his family,” said Arum.
For now, it’s going to be U.S based fighters competing in cards in the States. Until the U.S government ends the travel ban, the fights will need to take place in Northern America for U.S fighters.
Arum should keep his focus on the locations that ARE possible, and that means in the U.S.
Many options to do boxing events
“Eddie Hearn showed in the second Anthony Joshua vs. Andy Ruiz Jr. fight how lucrative it could be to do a fight in Saudi Arabia,” said Arum. “A couple of questions then. Saudi Arabia is pretty much on lockdown now. Also, the price of oil is not that robust, and who knows if the Saudis with major money on fights.
“There are a lot of places that would love to do big boxing events. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Who would believe that we would be in the situation we are in now because of this coronavirus.
“You can say how lucky we were to get the Fury-Wilder fight in under the ban [last February]. I was aware of this coronavirus before anyone else in boxing because we had an event on this Island in China that was going to take place in February.
“One of the fighters [Viktor] Postol and [trainer] Freddie Roach was already over there, and [Jose] Ramirez was getting ready to leave that night when we decided to pull the whole thing down because it looked like the coronavirus was spreading outside of Wuhan [China].
“We stopped Ramirez from going, and we brought Freddie and Postol back to the United States. So we were aware, but we didn’t know it would spread the way it did. We’re not scientists, but we were aware of this virus before anyone in boxing. It will [come back], and people will remember this period and how we conducted,” said Arum.
“I’m looking forward to more cross-promotions. I think once we do that and we start churning out Crawford and Spence and a lot of fights that the public wants to see, I think boxing will be revived and back almost to the way it was in the 1980s with the four kings,’ said Arum.
There are options for staging boxing events in different countries, but the travel ban in place, it’s not likely that Arum will be able to take advantage of that.