Comments Thread For: Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev PPV Show Barely Cracked 160K Buys

[M Bison]

this was the superbowl for hardcores. casuals don't know who these guys are. ward might be a bit more known because he's american but it's not by much. ward is a gifted talent but it takes more than that to do numbers on PPV. .he needs to embrace the villain role..floyd didn't break records because people were in awe of his sweet science, they purchased to see him broken in half. .the death blow to PPV was the mayweather/pacquiao disaster. what these numbers prove is that there's not enough hardcores out there to save this sport. boxing needs casuals to buy in. or just scrap PPV altogether and bring big fights like this back on prime time. .the rematch will not be PPV if these numbers are accurate.

Suddenly PPV numbers don't care because this was the hardcores superbowl fight lol that's why GGG did 150k with Lemieux and he did 600k with Kell Brook, oh man that BIG FAT L!!!

[DoktorSleepless]

#glassed

[Illmatic94]

Suddenly PPV numbers don't care because this was the hardcores superbowl fight lol that's why GGG did 150k with Lemieux and he did 600k with Kell Brook, oh man that BIG FAT L!!!

why are you celebrating this though? it's a blow to the sport as a whole. .two fighters in the top 5 p4p bombed on PPV. so who is this a "L" for? i didn't clown on ggg numbers either. people just expect everybody to do floyd numbers and that's not realistic.

[M Bison]

why are you celebrating this though? it's a blow to the sport as a whole. .two fighters in the top 5 p4p bombed on PPV. so who is this a "L" for? i didn't clown on ggg numbers either. people just expect everybody to do floyd numbers and that's not realistic.

I know I'm just laughing at the people that might have.

I said from the start that this fight wouldn't do well with UFC 205 happening the week before it and Kovalev and Ward neither really being two big star names but HBO did their part to an extent.

You know Ward could have done huge numbers If he tried to fight James DeGale in Britain?
Could have done huge numbers with Froch in Britain too but he opted for Kovalev he's only got himself to blame dude doesn't want to promote his name by getting on a plane and doing some travelling.

[Cheek busting]

They seemed to just be looking for big names to build their brand and a loss was obviously going to happen...Maybe they are looking long term

True....

I got the impression they had money to lose, and toss around.

They started off great with the Cotto/Canelo PPV almost hitting one million...

Didn't they sign Rigo, too?

50 cent found out that it ain't easy to be a promoter - unless you got money to lose initially, and invest for the long haul, you're not gonna be successful.

You lose money or break even on most fights, but those 2-3 PPV's a year that break 500k or so are what makes you your money.

That's why Floyd made so much money his last 10 fights or so - he didn't have a promoter who he had to pay the standard 27% cut to (last I heard that is the standard percentage fee promoters take)... He had the money to put up front for his own fights, and got maximum return... I'm sure he still paid a percentage to his manager(s) Haymon, and Ellerbe... And when he was using GBP to help him promote for a while, he was prolly giving them a small percentage. But nowhere near the 27% most fighters under contract to big name promoters give up.

[R_Walken]

A little disapointed thought it'd be higher

Whatever it was a great fight for #1 P4P

[Cheek busting]

A little disapointed thought it'd be higher

Whatever it was a great fight for #1 P4P

I was honestly expecting about double that... On the low end I was expecting about 250k; high end around 380k.

[Ham Porter]

Are people still going to continue to deny that boxing is a dead sport? That number is beyond pitiful; both of these guys are elite, well established boxers in boxing and have received a ton of exposure on American networks. It just shows how tiny the core boxing fanbase actually is, and it's only going to get smaller as it fails to attract the younger demographic.

Years of cherrypicking, marinating and conning the public have finally come back to bite boxing on the arse. The chickens have well and truly come home to roost.

[Eastcoast]

Next fight will be on HBO.

I bought this fight but I also paid to see triple g fight Lemieux and Jacobs fight quillin. You gotta support your guys if you can

No it won't. Even a **** performing ppv still brings in more money (~$6mill) than HBO even 10 years ago would shell out. HBO once paid that much for a Lewis/Klitschko fight. Ward/Kovalev II is no Lewis/Klitschko...

People are saying ME & RN split the ppv 50/50. If that's true, RN may simply refuse to do the rematch all together. They've taken a shellacking at the hands of Ward. They've paid his whole $2mill to fight Paul Smith, then had to supplement close to that in his next two fight vs Barrera and Brand. Now this was supposed to be their big payoff and it sounds like they took another major loss for Ward.

[R_Walken]

I was honestly expecting about double that... On the low end I was expecting about 250k; high end around 380k.

Same here

I think Motorcity Cobra made a thread awhile where you guess the Postol/Crawford , Canelo/Smith & Ward/Kov numbers and I think I put down 305 for the Ward fight because I thought there's enough actual boxing fans that it would outdo that heaping pile of sh.it Canelo /Smith which I pegged at like 275-300

I was wrong hardcore boxing fans are cheap bastards. If your not going to come out of pocket for this then don't cry when you get mismatched garbage.