Comments Thread For: Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev PPV Show Barely Cracked 160K Buys

[The Hammer]

Roc Nation will keep losing money with Andre Ward, and then eventually dump him. The other promoters don't want a selfish greedy prima donna, so none of the better promoters will want him.

The Son of Goat didn't win any fans being in survival mode during most of his robbery over Kovalev.

[angkag]

In order to sell or market you need an audience. They can be Ward/Drago all they like but if nobody is listening it doesn't matter.
"Someone" needs to reconnect casual sports fans to boxing. How that is best done is another matter. It sucks for the promoters but who cares about them?
I don't care too much as long as I get to see good fights and there are enough of those around if you look hard enough. 2 more great fights coming up - Gassiev-Levdeb and Charlo-Williams. Then we have Frampton-LSC rematch in January. It's enough.

Serious point in there - and a good one. Boxing needs to reconnect with the casual fan - thats the only way to turn people from casual fans to lifelong ones. I didn't grow up with the PPV dynamic, the fights were on tv, so I got to see them all and become a diehard. If I had grown up with the PPV dynamic, I wouldn't have had the money to buy them, and not sure how deeply I would have got into boxing without seeing the greats hit the screen week in week out (as it seemed back then).

These days I feel its hard sometimes staying a boxing fan, and it shouldn't feel hard, so boxing seems to be slowly killing itself. Supposed top guys only fighting once a year. protecting zeros so not fighting other top guys, mismatches (always had those, but for example Ali would have a fight and be back in the ring 7 weeks later sometimes, still more fights against top guys than we get these days).

The catch-weight bs (thanks for starting that Sugar Ray..it didn't help), the damage Mayweather did, back-to-back PPV disappointments, the Danny Garcia's cherry picking their way to paydays, Ward's lack of humility in taking such a contentious win, Saunders holding a belt hostage, Jacobs making GGG go inactive as GGG has no choice it being a mandatory etc, its tough being a diehard fan, if you are a casual, its easy to turn away from.

[SteveM]

You are missing my point and using words I didn't. When did I say either was boring?

Floyd was far more charismatic then either but he wasn't selling, same with Manny. Then, with the ODH fight, Floyd learned how to sell himself and a fight to the mainstream and Manny captured the fans attention. Where is the ODH for either Ward or Kov?

It's easy to suggest the promotion spend more and give them a platform like 24/7. I don't see how the 2 of them could make people watch for 2-3 episodes.

Being how Ward is articulate he could and should be doing interviews on general chat shows. He could easily defend boxing as a noble sport, plus history and all the nuances.
Come to think about it, the easiest way to promote this fight would have been to have JayZ promote the crap out of it - didn't see that happening. Lost opportunity.

[fightfanjoe]

The build up for this fight was poor. Ward fighting Brand and Kovalev fighting Chilemba on a Monday night - nobody watched those fights, nobody cared about those fights, they weren't exciting...
This fight was made a year in advance! They should've had a pair of split-site double headers...
I see the same thing happening with the proposed Golovkin/Jacobs fight...
Crawford/Postol was another bomb. Too little buildup for the ppv fight.
It's just lazy promoting, where they expect the fans to bail them out.

You're spot on.
Its a fantasy that "the best fighting the best" will somehow result in good numbers and save boxing. Good promoting will save boxing. Casuals don't know who Ward or Kovalev is; and if these guys can't self-promote (ala Ali, Mayweather, Naz, etc.), and the promoter half-asses it, then what else is to be expected. We lose sight of the fact that boxing is a niche sport.

[MrRolltide91]

"Casuals" aren't really excited about UFC. They're excited about Conor and to a lesser extent Ronda. Stars sell fights, whether it's Karate point fighting or UFC or boxing, people buy PPVs of stars. Casuals don't understand MMA at all, they don't have a clue nor give a fock about armbars or mount guard or wall strategies, or whatever. They just hear about this Irish dude talking smack and is in the media all the time, and so they are now into UFC more than boxing or whatever.

Truth is, these boxing fights aren't selling because these are fights between people with zero media profile. When was the last time Ward was on ESPN or who has ever heard of Kovalev? UFC is very good with building up hype..

True how many fighters besides conor is doing over 1 mill ppvs in UFC ?

[SteveM]

Serious point in there - and a good one. Boxing needs to reconnect with the casual fan - thats the only way to turn people from casual fans to lifelong ones. I didn't grow up with the PPV dynamic, the fights were on tv, so I got to see them all and become a diehard. If I had grown up with the PPV dynamic, I wouldn't have had the money to buy them, and not sure how deeply I would have got into boxing without seeing the greats hit the screen week in week out (as it seemed back then).

These days I feel its hard sometimes staying a boxing fan, and it shouldn't feel hard, so boxing seems to be slowly killing itself. Supposed top guys only fighting once a year. protecting zeros so not fighting other top guys, mismatches (always had those, but for example Ali would have a fight and be back in the ring 7 weeks later sometimes, still more fights against top guys than we get these days).

The catch-weight bs (thanks for starting that Sugar Ray..it didn't help), the damage Mayweather did, back-to-back PPV disappointments, the Danny Garcia's cherry picking their way to paydays, Ward's lack of humility in taking such a contentious win, Saunders holding a belt hostage, Jacobs making GGG go inactive as GGG has no choice it being a mandatory etc, its tough being a diehard fan, if you are a casual, its easy to turn away from.

Boxing in the USA is killing itself. In other places it oscillates between hot (Russia) and scorching (UK).
You have a very charismatic guy in Wilder. But he is not being promoted at all!! ... never mind correctly .. just not being promoted at all. When out injured he should be on chat shows, he should be at ring side, he should be all over the friggin place - but nada.
Well, during hard times, you bunker down and hope to survive. Hard core fans need to keep the candle alight.

[Sid-Knee]

Does that mean Ward will be abused by those who pissed all over GGG and his PPV ratings??

Anyone?

[-Hyperion-]

if anything other than an idictment of the inadequacy of duva and RN to promote what should be a megafight, this is a major indicment of the boxingfanbase.


200k people post on this website. why 160k buys?

which of you didn't suppor this fight? 40K of you at the very least, and that's if only people who post on bscene are allowed to buy the PPV .



do duva and RN really need to market to you, the guys posting on a boxing forum at 3:00pm on a monday? or are you slipping a bit in your fan duties if you're not buying boxing's ultimate fight?


keep in mind that there was no better fight to be made in boxing. and it flopped. think about that for a minute, particularly in the context of the message that sends to promotors and networks.


how much do you really care about boxing if you didn't order this fight? i'm definitely not made of money. i went to the fight. when i got home i ordered the fight so i could score it before the HBO replay came out. that's how much i appreciated what these guys were willing to do, and what the promotors were trying to do. i'm not sure you can call yourself a fan of boxing if you could afford to pay for this one, and diudn't. nothing wrong with keepingyour priorities where they should be. i have no family, and i'm only responsible for me. if you need to spend money elsewhere, then spend it by all means on the important stuff. but if you call yourself a real fan, and you could buy this fight, but you didn't, then i question your love of the game, and your understanding of what the promotors were trying to do here. they trhew you a bone, and you shunned them. and don
't get mad when they sell you guerrero and victor oriz, or 9000 year old shane mosley and chris algieri.

you have gone off the rails...your love for Ward has made you hang into this fight as some sort of saving grace......some of what you said would be kind of true....if it had happened under different circumstances.

1st boxingscene is an international website...200k users, and i doubt even 100k are american. Your math is way off base starting there.

Before 2007, boxings PPV audience for true hardcore fights was about 300k...the casuals are the ones who exploded the numbers once Pacquiao and Mayweather went mainstream. The core boxing audience didn't grow and probably has diminished.

There are no hardcore fans who bought Mayweather-Guerrero who didnt buy Ward-Kovalev. Your anger is completely misdirected and thus useless, since the casual can pick whatever entertainment they want to throw money at.

You acting like the promoters threw the audience a bone is so wrong i can't even deal with it. This was the way the promoters could keep their clients happy. This fight is only a PPV because the market is in shambles and HBO has wised up to it. HBO is not gonna bail out promoters from their awful contracts if they can't justify it. Ward lucked out with Roc Nation and got money that just isn't there to be made from having him. Roc Nation realised they had effed up and were happy that HBO made a bet and agreed to subsidize some of that waste trying to set up this fight hoping the PPV would pay off for everyone. Duva has an affordable star in Sergey but one who deosn't generate much money so HBO keeps her suckling on their tit but Kovalev has to fight the best for what they're willing to pay. The Ward-Kovalev bet didn't pay off but the boxing industry would be just as ****ed if it had.

Boxing has simply leeched off its core fanbase too much and they even wasted whatever appeal it had for casuals with the stinkfest of the century....only the nationalistic bases(who have a healthy market in their motherland) are buying fights now...and HBO knows it, which is why it's bending over backwards for Canelo. they will bet on the odd guys like Loma, Crawford, GGG in hopes they can be an opponent for a PPV fight against a Pacquiao or a Canelo. Haymon has failed with his idiotic farce of a scam that masqueraded as a revolution.

Boxing won't get fixed until all the players realise how deep the hole is.

[NEETzsche]

The main thing boxing is lacking right now is consistency. It doesn't have a trustworthy brand. The best/most interesting fighters should be taking two good fights per year. Taking two quality fights every year will get more people excited about you even if you lose half of them than just endlessly racking up Ws over mediocre opponents or going AWOL every other year

[WesternChamp]

If that's true, it's proof positive why boxing sucks. The fans would rather pay for garbage fights than an excellent one. Hope you all enjoyed watching two great fighters in the ring together, because it probably won't happen again for a while.

but it wasnt an excellent fight though. shiiet was boring. aside from the 2nd round, nothing really happen.