By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Tom Loeffler expects the Gennady Golovkin-Daniel Jacobs show to draw more pay-per-view buys than Golovkin’s last pay-per-view appearance.

That’s about as far as Golovkin’s promoter would project in terms of how he expects Golovkin-Jacobs to perform on pay-per-view.

“HBO is very optimistic on the pay-per-view sales,” said Loeffler, managing director for K2 Promotions, which represents Golovkin. “We hate giving any type of speculation on what it would do. But I feel confident to say it’ll exceed his pay-per-view with Lemieux. With Gennady and Danny Jacobs being a higher-profile matchup, as well as ‘Chocolatito’ has a higher profile right now, Cuadras is on the show, Andy Lee is on the show. So it just has a bigger feeling to the promotion.”

Loeffler previously confirmed Golovkin’s eighth-round stoppage of David Lemieux drew just over 150,000 pay-per-view buys. That October 2015 fight at Madison Square Garden marked Golovkin’s debut as a pay-per-view headliner.

Several industry insiders have suggested to BoxingScene.com that somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 buys is a realistic expectation for the Golovkin-Jacobs show.

The four-fight telecast will cost consumers slightly less than most major boxing pay-per-view events ($64.95 in HD; $54.95 in SD). But most of the broadcast, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, will air at the same time as NCAA men’s basketball tournament games Saturday night, which could adversely affect the buy rate.

However Golovkin-Jacobs performs on pay-per-view, if the heavily favored Golovkin wins the buy rate likely will impact negotiations for a long-awaited showdown with Canelo Alvarez.

According to Oscar De La Hoya, whose company promotes Alvarez, he has offered Loeffler a guarantee for Golovkin, reportedly $10 million, plus a portion of the pay-per-view revenue that is believed to less than Alvarez’s cut because Alvarez is the more proven pay-per-view commodity.

If Golovkin-Jacobs performs modestly on pay-per-view and Alvarez’s May 6 fight against Mexican rival Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. does as well on pay-per-view as anticipated, it could complicate negotiations even more.

In addition to the middleweight title bout between Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) and Brooklyn’s Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs), the four-fight broadcast will include arguably boxing’s best pound-for-pound fighter, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez (46-0, 38 KOs), in a mandatory defense of his WBC world super flyweight title against Thailand’s Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (41-4-1, 38 KOs).

The first two per-per-view fights Saturday night will be 10-rounders.

Former WBC super flyweight champion Carlos Cuadras (35-1-1, 27 KOs) will face fellow Mexican David Carmona (20-3-5, 8 KOs). And Cleveland’s Ryan Martin (17-0, 10 KOs) will battle Bryant Cruz (17-1, 8 KOs), of Port Chester, New York, in a lightweight bout.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.