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

[BWC]

In the low 160's?!? F**king wow. If this is anywhere near accurate then the fight, as far as PPV success goes, was an outright disaster.

I guess I was incredibly naive because I really thought this fight could do in the neighborhood of half a mil

IDK why people thought this was a PPV success. I live in Phoenix and I could only find one bar in the entire city playing it. They must have charged these bars a fortune to air it..

[Kagami Taiga]

People are actually surprised?

[Vasyl’s dad]

So do we start calling ward "Mr. 80k" now?

[The Big Dunn]

If that's true, it's proof positive why boxing sucks. The fans would rather pay for garbage fights than an excellent one. Hope you all enjoyed watching two great fighters in the ring together, because it probably won't happen again for a while.

I don't think its this. Boxers have to be able to get people excited before the fight so they purchase tickets/PPV. Neither Ward or Kov have the charisma needed to attract casual fans prior to a fight. The ability to "sell" is in many ways the most important skill a fighter can have.

The people promoting this fight needed to make sure one of them "sold" the fight-either Kov should've been Drago/Anti American in the media pre fight or Ward should've been Ali/Floyd and been more brash.

When they announce the rematch, if both guys learn to "sell", they should do significantly more.

[NEETzsche]

I don't think its this. Boxers have to be able to get people excited before the fight so they purchase tickets/PPV. Neither Ward or Kov have the charisma needed to attract casual fans prior to a fight. The ability to "sell" is in many ways the most important skill a fighter can have.

The people promoting this fight needed to make sure one of them "sold" the fight-either Kov should've been Drago/Anti American in the media pre fight or Ward should've been Ali/Floyd and been more brash.

When they announce the rematch, if both guys learn to "sell", they should do significantly more.

I actually find Ward and Kovalev to be two of the most interesting characters in the sport right now. It is the promoters' fault for failing to build a compelling narrative and sell it to the public. Also, the weak tune-ups didn't help either, it was basically a waste of a year

[IronDanHamza]

The fans from 07-present don't understand that PPV's without big stars don't do massive numbers.

Not too long ago people say Mayweather-Guererro and Mayweatehr-Maidana as "bad numbers" when they did just shy of 1 million PPV's. Which is insane.

Fans became used to global superstars like Mayweather and Pacquaio hitting 1 million+ every time and thinking anything less was poor.

Floyd and Pacquaio used to do in the 300-400 range consistently before 2007-2008 when they became mega stars.

Roy Jones PPV's used to do 500 or less.

Any PPV without Tyson or De La Hoya in was not going to hit close to a Million and even Oscar's PPV's often fell short of the 1 million mark.

It's not that much of a suprise that a lot of these PPV's are failing to do 500k. None of the fighters involved are cross over stars yet like the Tyson's, the Oscar's, Floyd and Pacquaio's of this world.

[BrometheusBob.]

Disappointing if true. The tickets weren't super cheap though, so I wonder what the gate was. Either way most likely a decent loss for the promoters but I think the rematch has potential.

I wasn't expecting a whole lot more but dam, just sounds so bad given how good of a match up it was on paper and how much I enjoyed watching the fight.

[Kagami Taiga]

I'll just say this so everyone understands. Boxing has NO crossover stars. Not one. Not Golovkin. Not Cancel, Ward, Kovalev. Damn sure not Gonzalez and Lomachenko. No1 out there us even close to being as huge as Floyd or Manny or even prime Oscar.

[Dr Rumack]

I think 160 Americans being able to afford HBO is a success story.

[Eastcoast]

The build up for this fight was poor. Ward fighting Brand and Kovalev fighting Chilemba on a Monday night - nobody watched those fights, nobody cared about those fights, they weren't exciting.

This fight was made a year in advance! They should've had a pair of split-site double headers. Instead of Kovalev rematching a brain-damaged Pascal, Pascal should've fought Ward. Even a Ward/Hopkins fight would've built up some steam for the ppv card.

I see the same thing happening with the proposed Golovkin/Jacobs fight. Jacob's sitting out almost a year and then fighting a guy nobody cared about in Mora. Now they passed up the chance to do a double header on regular HBO to help build their March ppv...

Crawford/Postol was another bomb. Too little buildup for the ppv fight.
It's just lazy promoting, where they expect the fans to bail them out.