Cotto vs Pacquiao PPV sales might be HUGE !!!

Huge pay-per-view paycheck awaits Pacquiao Demand touted to overtake M’weather-Marquez By Francis Ochoa Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 16:36:00 11/17/2009 Filed Under: Boxing, Pacquiao Close this HOLLYWOOD - Manny Pacquiao is expecting yet another cash windfall after successfully making history following his 12th round technical knockout of Miguel Cotto that looked more like a one-sided demolition job Saturday at the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena here. Pacquiao earned close to $13 million from his lion’s share of the purse, and is expected to make much more from his fat slice of the pay-per-view pie. “The signs are good be really won’t know until we get the preliminary results on pay-per-view sales on Wednesday,” Top Rank chief Bob Arum who promoted the fight dubbed “Firepower,” said Saturday night. Initial reports, however, have shown that the PPV hits for Pacquiao-Cotto could exceed the 1 million buys reeled in by the fight that saw Floyd Mayweather Jr. utterly outclass Juan Manuel Marquez last September. “From every sign that we see, we know our goal of garnering more than one million pay-per-view buys is well within sight,” Mark Taffet, a vice president for HBO Sports, which beamed the fight on PPV, said earlier. Mayweather-Marquez PPVs were sold at $49.95 each while the Pacquiao-Cotto PPVs were sold for $54.95 each. And despite the higher price, there was the demand for uninterrupted showing of the Pacquiao-Cotto bout. “We've never had this experience with so many people ordering a fight,” a local New Jersey cable operator was quoted by Fighthype.com as saying hours before the highly anticipated clash. “This must be a big, big fight.” Several cable operators were forced to turn away customers because they could not keep up with demand, the report added. And these customers even filed complaints. “We're sorry,” the New Jersey provided told customers. “We are just so overwhelmed with people trying to order this fight. So many people are trying to order it from their remote controls that it locked up the computer. It was processing so many orders, the computer was overwhelmed.” Experts are saying that the Pacquiao-Cotto bout could generate at least 1.5 million buys leading to a gross of $82, 425,000 less taxes. Pacquiao is again expected to get a huge share of that pie through his own promotional outfit, MP Promotions. Aside from the profit it generates for the pound-for-pound champion, the PPV hits will play a crucial part in negotiations for next year’s superfight: Pacquiao vs Mayweather. Richard Schaefer, whose Golden Boy Promotions partnered with Mayweather’s outfit for the Marquez bout, said Pacquiao-Cotto will have to exceed the PPV hits of Maywather-Marquez to prove that the Filipino can get at least half of the share of the purse. Mayweather’s camp is asking for a 65-35 share in profits, something that Team Pacquiao is not amenable to, especially since the new welterweight champion is on a meteoric rise to stardom and commands a huge PPV-buying fan base. Aside from the 16,200 fans that bought tickets to the Garden Arena for the fight, close to 18,000 also purchased closed-circuit TV seats to watch Pacquiao as he demolished Cotto after a slow start. Cotto earned over $6 million for the fight, his biggest payday by far, and is expected to also get his own share of the PPV income.