Tag Archives: value

Posted on 12/12/2018

By: William Holmes

$74.99

That was the price for the latest boxing PPV offering between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. It was an instant classic and an amazing fight. The PPV started around 9pm and within four hours it was all over.

If you wanted to watch the heavyweight title fight you would have had to pay about $20 an hour to watch it.

Was it worth the price? For the main event fighters, especially for those that get a cut of the pay per view buys, absolutely.

But was the $75 price tag worth it for the fans? Comparatively speaking, no.

It wasn’t that long ago when PPV’s used to cost $39.99, but the price has nearly doubled since then and the monetary value for fans only decreases as the price increases.

If you want to buy a PPV chances are you’ll look for some friends, or maybe even some people you can barely call an acquaintance, that are willing to fork over some of their hard earned cash to chip in and watch boxing. If you’re willing to pay for the entire fight yourself you can probably fill your home with people, but finding fight fans willing to chip in $20 isn’t always an easy thing to do.

Some fight fans may resort to illegally streaming the fight and dealing with the annoying pop-ups and exposure to malware, while risking possible prosecution. Some fight fans will even resort to watching the fight on social media, as someone streams their television screen from their phone while exposing the interior and furniture of their abode.

Never mind the dog barking in the background, you’re saving money…illegally.

The price point for PPV’s has gotten so high that you basically have to either fork over $75 yourself to watch it, scramble to find willing and able friends to chip in for the fight, or risk illegally streaming the fight with low quality streams and virus infected ads.

DAZN’s biggest star and attraction, Canelo Alvarez, is no stranger to Pay-Per-View. He’s fought on PPV a total of nine times. The PPV that sold the lowest number of PPVs was his fight against Liam Smith, which sold 300,000 PPVs. His highest was against Mayweather, which sold 2,200,000 PPVs.

In total he has sold 8,075,000 buys for approximately $605,000,000 in revenue. He has averaged 897,222 PPV buys per event.

In comparison, Mike Coppinger of Ring Magazine estimated the PPV buys for Wilder-Fury to be a bit north of 320,000.

Canelo, who is by far the bigger draw when compared to Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder, can be watched on Saturday for only $9.99 (and free for new subscribers). That price is at least seven times less than the price of the Wilder PPV, and includes several boxing and MMA events on top of the Canelo Alvarez fight for the month that you sign up. That price is at least seven times less than the price of the Wilder PPV, and includes several boxing and MMA events on top of the Canelo Alvarez fight for the month that you sign up.

The best part of this deal? Canelo’s next eleven fights will be shown on DAZN, and there’s many fights out there that can be made featuring Canelo that would normally have been put on PPV in the past.

$74.99 would get you about seven months with DAZN. That will likely include 2 Canelo fights that would have normally been shown on PPV, two fights featuring heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, Bellator MMA events, and a large number Matchroom Boxing and Golden Boy Boxing events.

With the PPV model, $74.99 will get you about four hours of fights.

Seven months vs. four hours.

The value, for fight fans, is clearly with DAZN.

Posted on 04/07/2017

Is HBO Even Worth It Any More?
By: Sean Crose

Is HBO even worth it anymore? That’s a question many a boxing fan seems to be – or at least should be – asking these days. In this era, where the pay cable network runs fewer and fewer fights outside of Pay Per View, it’s hard not to get the feeling that fans are more loyal to HBO than HBO is to fans. Sure, there’s a decent card this weekend, but the next one isn’t until May, unless you count a smaller card later this month that won’t even appear on the networks’ broadcast flagship.

That, friends, is not a whole lot of boxing. The situation seems even worse for we boxing nuts when we take into consideration the fact that HBO isn’t exactly redefining quality. Sure, this weekend’s Vasyl Lomachenko led card is solid, as is May’s Bud Crawford throwdown. This is the network, however, which once gave fans the like of Tyson-Holmes and Chavez-Taylor I. The times, they aren’t a changin’…the times gone done and changed. The only question now is whether or not those who subscribe to HBO for the boxing want to hang on or not.

One reason fans may want to keep their subscriptions is because word is out that HBO is suffering from budget woes due to a possible corporate merger. In other words, this is all just temporary. Fans, though, have been hearing that song for a long time. The tight lipped approach to the issue taken by HBO brass hasn’t helped much either. There’s no promise of brighter days, at least as far as I can tell. All fans have is what HBO has been deeming to give them. And frankly, what’s been given hasn’t been much.

I could be wrong on this, but I suspect HBO might be done airing boxing broadcasts on a consistent basis. And by done, I mean permanently done. While I understand it’s not in the network’s best interest to let paying customers know it won’t be focusing on boxing anymore, I also know that it may be time for fans to take the hint. Provided Game of Thrones isn’t their thing, fans may want to start looking at the horizon and deciding if clearer days are ahead or if the sky pretty much looks the same well into the distance.

No one ever said HBO has to please boxing fans. But no one ever said boxing fans are required to pay a monthly subscription for HBO, either.