For the last few months, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya has been pushing the slogan of "pay-per-view is dead."
Last year, De La Hoya's company signed a five year deal with streaming service DAZN.
Golden Boy had previously been aligned with HBO, who in 2018 made a network decision to drop boxing from their programming plans for the future.
De La Hoya has been pushing fans to turn away from the pay-per-model - and instead sign up for DAZN's service, which runs at $10 per month.
But in order to make the biggest fights possible, pay-per-view is a necessary component for promoters and networks alike.
In the coming months, all three of DAZN's competitors have pay-per-view events on the schedule.
On January 19th, Manny Pacquiao will defend the WBA "regular" welterweight title against Adrien Broner in the main event of a Showtime Pay-Per-View card. On March 16th, Mikey Garcia will challenge IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence in the main event of a Fox Sports Pay-Per-View card. And as BoxingScene.com reported earlier today, Terence Crawford will defend his WBO welterweight title against Amir Khan in the main event of an ESPN Pay-Per-View card on April 20.
But Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum, who is firmly aligned with ESPN, very much disagrees with De La Hoya's notion that pay-per-view is dead.
Arum believes the pay-per-view model will never die, but he wants to find a way to negotiate down the high percentages being taken by the cable and satellite providers - which in turn would allow the promoters and networks to cut down the price of pay-per-view.
"The pay-per-view model will never die. It's always going to be there, it's good. But maybe we can find ways to cut the price that that cable and satellite providers take, so we can cut the price down," Arum said to BoxingScene.com.
