Comments Thread For: Amir Khan Returning To The Sport, Matchroom Bound

[Scipio2009]

Your on another planet. There’s literally zero chance Khan Brook happens as part of the same event as AJ-Klitschko. The main source of income from a fight is PPV revenue. Putting those to fights together would minimise the amount of PPV revenue you could generate cause your essentially selling people 2 PPV’s for the price of 1. Hearn/Sky would NEVER do that just look at the AJ-Wlad undercard.
It’d be like Hearn putting Brook-Spence on the same card as AJ-Wlad it makes no sense whatsoever.
It makes no sense from a financial or logical perspective and for that reason it will never happen.

I don't know how big a fight Khan-Brook is on it's own, and I don't know how well Anthony Joshua can sell a 2am fight.

I think putting the events together helps guarantee that the Joshua-Klitschko PPV number gets matched (which I don't think they draw separately), which is the near term goal.

Split it up, this next bit is just for argument's sake (no idea what business is done), and you've got a million homes for Joshua's US fight on Box Office at 2am and then another 700k-1m for a catchweight fight between Khan and Brook.

Put the shows together, and 2m homes in the UK is quite likely. Maybe I'm underestimating the appeal of the Brook-Khan fight, but I doubt that Joshua sell anywhere near 2m homes at 2am, and seriously doubt Brook-Khan sells anywhere near a million homes.

Could be entirely wrong, but that's how my analytical mind sees it.

[RJJ-94-02=GOAT]

I don't know how big a fight Khan-Brook is on it's own, and I don't know how well Anthony Joshua can sell a 2am fight.

I think putting the events together helps guarantee that the Joshua-Klitschko PPV number gets matched (which I don't think they draw separately), which is the near term goal.

Split it up, this next bit is just for argument's sake (no idea what business is done), and you've got a million homes for Joshua's US fight on Box Office at 2am and then another 700k-1m for a catchweight fight between Khan and Brook.

Put the shows together, and 2m homes in the UK is quite likely. Maybe I'm underestimating the appeal of the Brook-Khan fight, but I doubt that Joshua sell anywhere near 2m homes at 2am, and seriously doubt Brook-Khan sells anywhere near a million homes.

Could be entirely wrong, but that's how my analytical mind sees it.

I completely disagree man, AJ-Wilder would draw around the same with or without Khan-Brook IMO. AJ-Wlad has barely any undercard because the main event is the what sells the card and it didn’t really affect the PPV numbers.

The way I look at it put them together you draw about %5 more PPV buys if that. AJ’s drawing power stretches far beyond Khan’s and Brook’s in the UK. Essentially all the people who would buy Khan-Brook would also buy AJ-Wilder therefore it adds little value financially when you could sell it as a separate event and have a large percentage of the audience that bought AJ-Wilder also buy Khan-Brook.

The idea of them being on the same date is fantastic from a fans perspective, personally I’d like it to happen, but it’s just not realistic from business standpoint.

[Scipio2009]

You've got it wrong. It will sell out within days.

Please do your research on how the slimy bastard Hearn does business and his shady as fùck deal with ticket resellers StubHub.

Why else do you think this acquisition of Khan is huge in the UK for all parties involved? He's THE most high profile and versatile boxer the UK has who has influence in parts of the world, including America, that the Matchroom USA team needs.

The way it works is Hearn announces a fight. Tickets are up initially for sale for a short period to Fight Pass members. The following day or two ALL TICKETS are sold to StubHub who are resellers. The tickets are NOT in the hands of fans but in the hands of a third party business. Yet this is legally allowed to be called a "sellout" which Hearn always uses. The reality is none of these fights have sold out within minutes the tickets are still on the market.

StubHub inflate the prices by huge margins see the recent cheapest £44 original price ticket for Brook vs Rabchenko to the cheapest Brook vs Rabchenko with StubHub which went up to £128 as an example.

Another example is the AJ vs Klitschko fight. There were STILL tickets available and StubHub had to give them away for FREE to disadvantaged kids. They do this to look like they have morals and have the authorities look the other way.

They also did this with the Brook vs Spence fight where there were still empty seats almost an entire stand and I was there since I'm a local yet they called it a complete sellout.

These are the shady ways Matchroom and StubHub works and most people who aren't Brits don't get it.

Then it's obvious Hearn will sell complete mismatches and protect his fighters and keep domestic rivalries at arms length if it's in-house i.e Whyte vs Joshua.

Matchroom would be more likeable if Sky Sports didn't employ complete shills who all read from the same memo.

Kell Brook's home arena is something like 10,000 seats; Amir Khan hasn't fought in the UK in how long, but I doubt he sold out M.E.N. when he last fought in the UK (Google search shows that he's fighting at the 10k-seat Echo Arena near the end of April).

Do you honestly believe, in your heart of hearts, that StubHub is going to put themselves on the hook for needing to re-sell 70k+ seats (I have no idea how extensive the buy figure is going to be for the Fight Pass fans)? lol.

[Scipio2009]

Brother let me explain.Joshua-Wilder if both win against Parker and Ortiz will struggle to do more than 300K in America which is a huge flop.This is partly because you are relying on the African American demographic rather than the Mexican Americans who have no intrest in this fight.It will do the same as Ward-Kovalev.Joshua needs to be launched in America on HBO not Showtime who are increasingly biased to Wilder.Americans also cannot afford these high prices,one of my American mates told me they have to pay nearly $300 a month just for the TV and Sub.PPV is added on top of that,it's just too expensive to watch Premium Boxing.In terms of the UK at 5am in the Morning if it is a Bank Holiday Weekend it will smash or go close to 2 Million in my eyes.Wilder is very well known in the UK,trust me.

Deontay Wilder (c) vs Anthony Joshua (c), is going to be a fight to establish the first lineal/unified/undisputed heavyweight champion since the reign of Lennox Lewis, fifteen years ago!

You add that both guys can do the media run, both guys have personality/charisma, and there's jack all to compete with it over the summer (with the Golovkin rematch out of the way, the world isn't going to be waiting on baited breath for Alvarez-Saunders or any Alvarez fight, as Golovkin-Saunders would be after September anyway), and the African American audience isn't the lynchpin that you seem to want to think it is.

Floyd and McGregor sold 4.3m US PPV buys, at $100 a PPV, because they captured the attention of the general American sports public.

At even $75/$65 a pop, with the hype already built in the boxing world, both guys getting through their next fights in style, and the general sports media basically having from the 2nd week of May through August 25th (last Saturday in August) to sell the general public on the chance to see the first undisputed heavyweight champion in 15 years, you're bugging if you pegged the number at only 300k homes.

As big a fight as Ward-Kovalev was to the hardcore boxing audience, there was almost nothing in play to draw the non-boxing/non-sports fan.

Wilder-Joshua is a whole other deal.

[Scipio2009]

Showtime wont be intrested in any of these Garbage British Fights that is what they will think unless it has a World Title on the Line.Haye Bellew for example it was a meaningless money grab with no title on the line and it was put on some next channel in America.Showtime also want Joshua-Wilder as a PPV but AJ has to go to the US and fight their before meeting Wilder but he aint doing that and Hearn is getting more cosy with HBO.AJ Wilder will not happen until 2019/2020 trust me.

Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder, for the undisputed heavyweight championship is the biggest fight for both guys (for all the talk of Joshua-Fury, it may do monster business in the UK, but US viewers will remember the **** style performance against Klitschko and not bother with the fight any extra).

Showtime likely would've loved to have Joshua fight in the US first, but a lot of what was missed (making the media rounds, for the most part) can be made up with an aggressive fight tour (hit ESPN, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, and Las Vegas and you'd cover the US press while also giving the traveling boxing press enough to get their stories in too; add London/Manchester/Cardiff/Birmingham to cover the UK, and Frankfurt/Paris for Europe and you've got the bases covered).

Eddie Hearn has one fighter on HBO, with HBO having not bought a single fight from him yet; the coziness of said relationship is drastically overstated, imo.

[Scipio2009]

I completely disagree man, AJ-Wilder would draw around the same with or without Khan-Brook IMO. AJ-Wlad has barely any undercard because the main event is the what sells the card and it didn’t really affect the PPV numbers.

The way I look at it put them together you draw about %5 more PPV buys if that. AJ’s drawing power stretches far beyond Khan’s and Brook’s in the UK. Essentially all the people who would buy Khan-Brook would also buy AJ-Wilder therefore it adds little value financially when you could sell it as a separate event and have a large percentage of the audience that bought AJ-Wilder also buy Khan-Brook.

The idea of them being on the same date is fantastic from a fans perspective, personally I’d like it to happen, but it’s just not realistic from business standpoint.

Joshua-Klitschko was at Wembley basically in primetime in the UK; this discussion is supposing that Wilder-Joshua is happening in the US, putting the local fight time at 2am.

If the argument is that Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder, at 2am in the UK, will do the same business that Joshua-Klitschko did at 11pm in the UK, let that be known.

I'd think that that was a foolish idea to have, but everyone has their opinion.

Joshua-Klitschko was such an event in the UK that Mayweather-McGregor (after doing over 4.3m buys in the US), was apparently barely able to edge the buy figure in the UK; that's the bar that we're talking about here. I don't think Joshua-Wilder gets near that number from Las Vegas, so I figured a way to try and goose that number to the Klitschko one.

Joshua will sell a ton of homes, even at 2am, but I figured that have a big event during the normal time in the UK will help sell more homes.

Khan and Brook keep the Wembley money, Joshua throws in some points off of the PPV (not having a concrete Joshua example sucks, but you could take the average of the of the buyrates that Floyd was able to get on Sky Box Office for his fights, and then have Joshua and Khan/Brook split whatever comes in over that), and you've got enough of a pot there to pay everyone.

And Joshua maximizes the value of his UK TV rights, which he'll likely own outright in a Wilder fight.

Maybe I'm delusional, but I think fan interest and business interest lines up pretty darn well, in this instance anyway

[Scipio2009]

For this fight to happen in Vegas they would need over 50m pounds, doesn’t matter how they get it but that would be a starting point. Now maybe in England Sky can generate that for a Joshua v Wilder fight, but I doubt Vegas can... Canelo and Mayweather? Wilder or Joshua name doesn’t even come close to those two.

The spectacle of finally having one heavyweight champion is underrated here, imo. You add that both guys knock their opponents dead, while also being able to talk and be entertaining, and the casual interest in this fight is going to be absolutely nuts (made even more peaked if the fight happens in August, when there's almost literally nothing else for sports fans to care about).

Follow the price point for Alvarez-ChavezJr (maybe make the ringside seats more expensive, as Joshua sells them in the UK), put a press tour together (closer to the Mayweather-Alvarez tour than the 4 dates for Mayweather-McGregor; give the media markets a chance to see them), let the hype machine get going (James Corden is already rooting for Joshua, and I doubt that Les Moonves would keep Wilder off of Colbert and The Talk), and the money will roll in.

With 18,000+ tickets to sell, $20m at the gate isn't unheard of if the hype takes off.

Beyond that, 1 million PPV buys leads to $30m-$35m for the camps to divvy up. Add in the Sky Box Office money, and there's a path to get to that 50 million pounds figure.

[Ray*]

The spectacle of finally having one heavyweight champion is underrated here, imo. You add that both guys knock their opponents dead, while also being able to talk and be entertaining, and the casual interest in this fight is going to be absolutely nuts (made even more peaked if the fight happens in August, when there's almost literally nothing else for sports fans to care about).

Follow the price point for Alvarez-ChavezJr (maybe make the ringside seats more expensive, as Joshua sells them in the UK), put a press tour together (closer to the Mayweather-Alvarez tour than the 4 dates for Mayweather-McGregor; give the media markets a chance to see them), let the hype machine get going (James Corden is already rooting for Joshua, and I doubt that Les Moonves would keep Wilder off of Colbert and The Talk), and the money will roll in.

With 18,000+ tickets to sell, $20m at the gate isn't unheard of if the hype takes off.

Beyond that, 1 million PPV buys leads to $30m-$35m for the camps to divvy up. Add in the Sky Box Office money, and there's a path to get to that 50 million pounds figure.

That's why the fight needs building in America for it to happen there, at the end of the day Wilder doesn't gather the same interest from Americans point of view yet. He has the potential to but as of yet he hasn't.

No American network is going to risk or put down money on him, enough money for them to reap it back from PPV sales.

This is why that fight is a difficult fight to make as of now, all those figures you are throwing around are just speculation and wishful thinking, facts are Wilder has never sold a single PPV in America, nor Joshua. Joshua makes around £20m per fight at the moment in the UK, so he would expect to make more in a Wilder fight especially if he leaves the UK for that fight.

Wilder would want close to what Joshua is earning for their fight etc, so Vegas putting down money and hoping PPV sells for a fight that neither has ever sell in America would be a massive risk from their point of view.

[Scipio2009]

That's why the fight needs building in America for it to happen there, at the end of the day Wilder doesn't gather the same interest from Americans point of view yet. He has the potential to but as of yet he hasn't.

No American network is going to risk or put down money on him, enough money for them to reap it back from PPV sales.

This is why that fight is a difficult fight to make as of now, all those figures you are throwing around are just speculation and wishful thinking, facts are Wilder has never sold a single PPV in America, nor Joshua. Joshua makes around £20m per fight at the moment in the UK, so he would expect to make more in a Wilder fight especially if he leaves the UK for that fight.

Wilder would want close to what Joshua is earning for their fight etc, so Vegas putting down money and hoping PPV sells for a fight that neither has ever sell in America would be a massive risk from their point of view.

Will have to agree to disagree, especially if Wilder blows through Ortiz and Joshua blows through Parker, both fights on Showtime.

Time will show who's right

[PensionKiller]

Why do you keep mentioning Americans for.What have they got to do with this.It stinks of jealously and bitterness.Americans care about elite talent not average talent they support World Class Fighters not Average ones like we do.They dont envy at us,they laugh at us.Brook and Khan are doing this for the money they are not giving the fans back anything,their is no gurantee it will be a entertaining fight.It's just two average,damaged fighters who were well beaten by North American Boxers and are now back in Britain for a Loser's Clash.British Public are so small minded and guillable,Support dont win you anything,it's just a bunch of drunk english fans mixed in with Women who know nothing about Boxing.Americans dont stand for Medicority,We do.

You don't understand what the meaning of being a fan means.

People here support teams or people who aren't the best. However they show loyalty, enjoy it as a sport and have fun.

American's are disloyal and will drop you as soon as you lose.

If everyone only supported the elite fighters, then boxing would be a very ****ty sport. Boxing for me is from the gym where you have little kids training to amateur shows or even white collar boxing where you support your friend to big events.

People who only watch big events for me are fake fans. These are the type of people who generally don't actually know **** about the sport. They haven't been in a gym to spar or trained and put their body through the same pain.

Perhaps you're one of those people who doesn't actually understand it?

Perhaps last season you were a Chelsea fan and this season a Man City fan? Probability is, you're not a real fan.