On Saturday night, rival promoters Bob Arum of Top Rank and Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport will come together to stage a lightweight world title clash at the O2 Arena in London.
Vasiliy Lomachenko, who is promoted by Arum, will face Hearn's fighter, Luke Campbell. At stake will be the WBC, WBO, WBA lightweight belts.
The contest will be carried by ESPN+ in the United States and Sky Sports in the UK.
In the United States, Hearn has an exclusive content agreement with streaming service DAZN.
The majority of DAZN's boxing events are supplied by Hearn.
Arum's company has an exclusive content agreement with ESPN. Top Rank supplies all of the network's boxing events, which are carried on their terrestrial channels and on their streaming service, ESPN+. There are also pay-per-view events which are staged via ESPN Pay-Per-View.
The marketing of DAZN's service has centered on the application's goal to eliminate the need for pay-per-view events in boxing.
DAZN's goal is an obvious conflict to Arum and ESPN, who fully support the pay-per-view model for select events.
It's been about a year since DAZN launched their partnership with Hearn - and Arum does not feel threatened by the streaming service.
In the opinion of Arum, the DAZN app has been a disaster.
He believes the only fighter on DAZN's service who draws any subscription numbers, is Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez - who has no affiliation with Hearn.
Canelo, who is promoted by Golden Boy Promotions, signed a multi-year contract with DAZN in 2018.
“Competition is always good for boxing, but look at the numbers. It’s been a disaster. They’re getting no traction with any fight, expect for one involving a fighter Eddie has nothing to do with and that’s Canelo," Arum told thesportsman.com.
“Canelo’s got more numbers on his own than any of Eddie’s fights combined.”
Hearn strongly disagrees, telling thesportsman.com that Arum should pay attention to his own "disaster."
“I think Bob’s a disaster at the moment. They’ve just announced last week that he’s Los Angeles event last week sold 1,400 tickets. They gave away 2,800 comps, now that’s a disaster for the sport of boxing," Hearn said.
“Bob’s very good at clouding the picture without noticing that he’s producing so much dross.
“He’s got [Tyson] Fury fighting Otto Wallin on Mexican Independence Day. It’s a complete flop, it’s a disaster.”
