YouTube Puts a Dent in PPV Revenue

[Damn_Zany_Gun]

Youtube and other means of watching fights for free (like sopcast and others) are NOT the downfall of boxing...

PPV's are the downfall of boxing.

why not broadcast these fights on broadcast tv or cable tv?

need revenue?

thats what sponsors are for...

Fans of the NFL dont pay $50 to watch a playoff game or the superbowl...what do they do? charge 2 and a half million + dollars to advertise during the superbowl...

it earns all kinds of crazy money.

want even BETTER revenues?

allow more fans to go to the big fights...hold them in football arenas that hold 50-70K and up...

theres you revenue...bleeding the fans for $50 once a month (sometimes twice a month) isnt going to do anything but hurt boxing in the end...

how?
casual fans stop watching...
new fans dont get brought in (since its on PPV its not accessible to them...face it...if it was on your local channels and you were an average fan of a sport you'd tune in because its accessible and free...but you wouldnt pay $50 to tune in when you arent a huge fan...or a new fan at that who knows little about the sport)
for us here on the net we stop buying the ppv's and watch them for free via live web stream...

you cant blame the fans for not paying...how much money do they try and hustle from us fans every year in ppv's? hundreds and hundreds of dollars easily...

its not fair...

not everyone can spend $50 to $100 extra every month in addition to their regular tv bills...

not everyone (especially casual fans) are captivated enough to spend that much money for guys they dont know...why dont they know them? because they are hidden on PPV fights and rarley get free tv fights (like free HBO) and when they do they have unexciting "tune-up" fights...oh yeah...thats going to entice the casual fan...

its ridiculous...

i think ppv needs to go away...it doesnt really belong in sports...

lets be honest...how many of us would pay $50 to see the superbowl...the world series...the nba finals...or just big regular season games?

very few...

You are 100% right.

Great response.

[Majority_Draw]

I would like to pretend that it is "injustice" or other legitimate reasons that I do not buy a PPV, but I can't. I just don't want to pay anything.

Edit: And you can barely find these fights on youtube either. They will be there for a will but they'll get deleted quite quickly. Yes, even the fights from let's say last March. It really sucks that they don't even let old fights on youtube. I mean most of us boxing fans have no means to watching classic fights since they aren't anywhere but youtube or on these ******* sites.

[SkillspayBills]

**** those money hungry bastards trying to go 50 bucks out of their fans. Is the SUPERBOWL 50 bucks to watch? HELL NO.

[SkillspayBills]

I did a rough estimate, 14k from youtube, 5k from sopcasr and aboout 1k from *******s, thats 20k possible buys meaning thats an estimate loss of about 10 million dollars

Bad estimation because 3/4 to 4/5 of the people that watched it on youtube and sopcast wouldn't pay for the fight anyways. Also alot of the people that watched it on youtube already payed for the fight and just wanted to watch it again. I say **** the people that ***** and moan because I watch fights for free when ALL the other major sports allow us to watch their biggest games on regular TV.

[duffgun]

I have never brought a PPV in the UK, anyway hardly any fights are on PPV over here, I jst download the American one's from ******* sites.

[PRboxingfan]

Sopcast's stream was in awesome quality that night too.

I have to agree with this statement. Sopcast, and other streaming media that show the fights live, are a bigger threat to the PPV scheme than YouTube is.

First of all, I hate that the author is basically taking the position that the big record companies and movie studios took when digital media and VHS hit the markets. They all complained about it, tried to ban it, and, eventually, learned to use it to make an even bigger profit than what they were making before the technology showed up. When will people learn that you don't fight the technology? You use it to your advantage.

If I were a PPV mogul, I would be working hard to try to make some money off the Internet. You could sell live feeds that go up in price as the quality increases (i.e. $5 for the 480x320, or $8 for the 640x480, or $10 for the HD 800x600 stream), or they could do fight downloads a few hours after the fight (which would be great for those wanting to burn them to DVDs, for instance), or even sell highlight packages of the fights, separated into rounds and with commentary from the announcers.

I dunno, there are so many ways to make money off of the Internet that opposing the technology is just moronic, IMHO.

[Random1]

I know some people are looking to get it free, but I'm not. If they'd make them a download for $5 I'd be a a happy boy. Showtime has tried this at least a little. You can get the two Coralles-Castillo fights and Lacy-Calzaghe for $1.99 each. I don't want to pirate, but with basic cable I'm stuck with ESPN2... fortunately they occasionally have a nice fight on from the 90's etc. and I can record it.

[Malicious]

by TK Stewart - Hours after Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez engaged in another great night of boxing on HBO PPV, the money wasn't yet tallied as to how many pay-per view buys were ordered up by boxing fans. Early indicators are that the rematch, which Pacquiao won by split-decision, will be a big winner at the cash register.

Just over 11,000 fans flooded into the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas and because the arena was sold out even more fans paid $50 each to watch it on the big screen in another room at the casino.

If you were watching television in the week or so before the fight it was difficult not to see the commercials hyping the "Unfinished Business" rematch as it was a multi-pronged promotion that will pay big dividends.

But it likely could have been even more of a financial blockbuster without the dirtiest word a boxing promoter has ever heard - YouTube.

The morning after the fight, anybody with Internet access could log onto the popular Web site and watch the entire Pacquiao - Marquez rematch free of charge. The night before, if you wanted to watch the fight and the three bout undercard, you could have done so on HBO PPV but you would have had to pony up $49.95 to do it.

But less than twelve hours after the fight had ended in Las Vegas, 14,332 people had already viewed the entire fight or portions of it on YouTube.

Now that may not seem like a large number, especially from a global perspective, but when it's put into dollars and cents the impact and power of YouTube hits home like a Manny Pacquiao straight left hand.

If all 14,332 that viewed the fight for free had paid the $49.95 pay-per view asking price it translates into $715, 883.40 of possible lost revenue. That's right, nearly three quarters of a million dollars. Real money, to be sure, and that dollar figure rises every hour as thousands more voyeurs log on and view for free. [details]

True, but you have to take into account the boxing junkies who watched it more than once.

[boxing_great]

interesting article to read.

[Guest]

Yeah, why couldn't those guys just wait a week and watch it on HBO for free...