LAS VEGAS – Turki Alalshikh’s move to declare “there will be no more [pay-per-view] pricing” for his future Riyadh Season/Ring boxing events effective November 22 has been met by conflicting tones within the industry.
On one end, the announcement offers a potential game-changing effect given the end of Top Rank’s union with ESPN at month’s end and following the shuttering of boxing on Showtime in 2023.
Yet, another segment sees Alalshikh’s move as a promotional effort that has uncertain staying power.
A minority owner in the streaming platform DAZN, Saudi Arabia boxing financier Alalshikh detailed his new plan in a video, expressing concern that the recurring expense of pay-per-view fight cards is restricting fan interest and dampening attention on the sport.
DAZN charges $224.99 in the US for an annual subscription, and for Saturday’s card from Louis Armstrong Stadium in New York, another $60 was required to stream the pay-per-view card headlined by super middleweight Hamzah Sheeraz and lightweight belt holder Shakur Stevenson.
Alalshikh’s November 22 card in Saudi Arabia is set to feature light heavyweight champion David Benavidez versus Anthony Yarde, welterweight titlist Brian Norman Jnr versus Devin Haney and a unified junior bantamweight title fight pitting Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez against Fernando Martinez.
Giving fight fans less-costly access to these young, promising champions who have shown a willingness to fight top-caliber opponents is seen as a promising opportunity to boost those fighters’ profiles and fuel interest in the sport.
Yet placing their bouts in Saudi Arabia and perhaps airing the fights at a time when college football has the American sports fan transfixed has a self-defeating element.
“The model DAZN is under now is the same ESPN has been doing. … You have to be a subscriber to the service and you have to buy [the fight] on top of that,” said one industry expert.
That obviously has suppressed the number of boxing-fan subscribers to the streaming service, as many who sign up for DAZN for one fight can cancel when the fight is over.
“DAZN has billions of dollars invested in soccer and auto racing, but their [boxing] business model is undermined by upsells. If you only have 200,000 subs, let’s say, how can you do a breakthrough pay-per-view?
“Let’s say [the September 13] Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford fight was on DAZN. You’d get a bump in the short term, but you’d churn it out almost immediately and not do anything to create value for the [boxing] customer paying $30 or $50 a month.”
In contrast, when it struck its deal with Amazon’s Prime Video, Premier Boxing Champions asked that pay-per-view buyers not be obligated to join the membership of Prime, which is in excess of 150 million members.
On Saturday night, Al Haymon’s PBC is staging a $79.99 pay-per-view card from Las Vegas headlined by record eight-division champion Manny Pacquiao seeking to reclaim a welterweight title at age 46 versus WBC champion Mario Barrios Jnr.
The card also features a WBC junior middleweight rematch between titleholder Sebastian Fundora and former titlist Tim Tszyu, a rematch of a Fight of the Year contender between Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz and Angel Fierro, and former two-division champion Brandon Figueroa meeting three-time featherweight title challenger Joet Gonzalez.
One company executive said that, in the current climate, he pushes a philosophy “to put more value on the card, don’t allow [fight fans] a reason to say no when you can’t go out at night for less than $80 anyway.”
Should the Pacquiao card fare well on top of the recent non-PPV headlined by Caleb Plant that performed strongly on Prime Video, the hope is Amazon will ultimately bank on the sport and lift its exposure in the vibrant US market.
Meanwhile, industry experts speculate Alalshikh’s strategy is to halt the hop-on, hop-off behavior of boxing fans with DAZN by making this level of pay-per-views free.
“I’m sure the business decision was made by the Saudis, because they are investing in DAZN. The future may be that the Saudis own DAZN. If you’re going to own boxing and DAZN, then all of the fights are going to be on DAZN, and you want it known to the fans that if you don’t subscribe to DAZN, you aren’t going to see these fights,” one industry expert, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t employed by DAZN, surmised.
Benavidez and Norman aren’t DAZN fighters, however, effectively operating on loan from PBC and Top Rank, respectively, for their November 22 fights.
But as Top Rank navigates through the limbo of no broadcast deal and Alalshikh made new father Benavidez an offer he and PBC couldn’t refuse, the Saudis are taking liberties to spend freely on the sport in ways that defy typical business sense, experts say.
Alalshikh’s recent U.S. boxing shows have been big live-gate losers – in Los Angeles in August, at New York’s Times Square in May and likely Saturday’s card, too (although the state of New York has yet to release its final ticket report from its event).
At some point, whoever is presiding over the profit-loss ledger of Saudi Arabia boxing investment is going to fully view a dramatic figure, while boxing experts fret over the chilling effect of taking major fights to the Middle East and away from the US, UK and Japan.
“They’re throwing their money away and not growing the fan base. What the Saudis are spending on sports is a hashmark compared to the wealth available to them,” an American sports broadcast business expert said. “They are an incredibly wealthy country, and the money is concentrated in the Royal Family.
“Look at LIV Golf. I’m sure it loses a shit-ton, with no television ratings. I don’t think they have a license-fee deal. They have hundreds of millions of dollars in player and tournament costs. Nobody’s buying tickets. For sure, you couldn’t do what they’re doing if they were a real business.”
And there’s also the matter of recalling recent history, when DAZN started in late 2018 with a lucrative marketing deal proclaiming “pay-per-view is dead” upon signing Alvarez, only to ultimately cut short that 11-fight deal and then charge separately for fights.
“They couldn’t afford to be losing all that money, and even now, if you think for a second that if a fight like Canelo-Crawford wasn’t on Netflix but was instead on DAZN … if you think that’s going to be free … no way,” the expert said.
“This is Turki spouting off from the seat of his pants, with his little reporter-publicist also putting out that the Conor Benn-Chris Eubank fight would not be a ‘Ring’ fight. Is that a way to put it on pay-per-view? We don’t know what they’ll do, but I wouldn’t take this as a forever mandate.”
With Canelo-Crawford on Netflix, that streaming money will help cover Alvarez’s purse, but the other fighters will be paid from the live gate, with any shortfall to fall upon the Saudis, who have entered into business with Ari Emanuel and TKO Group Holdings.
“Ari Emanuel may be thinking something’s going to happen in boxing, and if it all falls to pieces, that’d be great for [him] to build the sport the way he wants to build it – because you can’t retrofit it based on where it is now,” an industry expert said on the condition of anonymity because of existing business dealings.
“But the way it’s working over there [in the Middle East] now, it’s not a legitimate, sustainable business.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
