Comments Thread For: Arum More Confident Than Ever Wilder-Fury II Will Do 2 Million PPV Buys

[NaijaD]

Fight parties don’t equal more buys. They equal less buys, people chipping in to buy the fight because $80 is too much for such an unpredictable product.

1 home buying the fight and inviting 20 people is still just $80 bucks.

That's a valid point which people seem to be overlooking, no doubt there will be a lot of viewers tomorrow but most of them will not be paying. Most of them won't be willing to be home alone and pay $80 for it..... they will be at sports bars, with friends at parties or even just streaming. A million US buys is simply not a realistic projection in my opinion let alone 2 million.

For me anything north of 600/700K is a success, without factoring the reported purses.

[komandante]

May v Pac 4.6 mil is still the record.

[marikudo]

100k ppv buys is more realistic than 2 million.

[Coachcody]

Too bad it's not on free TV...then you would have a true major league sport.

[JakeTheBoxer]

Andy Ruiz must be very thankful. Miller made him being a millionaire with 2 big money fights and a world champ ( with short reign).

[QballLobo]

2 million is a fantasy. First fight did 350k and this one doesn’t have much mainstream buzz to do even a million buys. Boxing fans or hardcore sports fans don’t drive PPV’s. It’s the casuals getting into the hype and not wanting to miss out paying $80 that will. This fight does not have that kind of push.
It’s a co promotion so it might have to do a big number for everyone to profit.

[BennyBlanco]

Doesn't cost them anything to advertise on networks they own.

Ever heard of "opportunity cost"?

ESPN and ABC ran 30-second spots during XFL and college football and during SportsCenter, among other things. Those are spots that would have easily sold for actual money, so they're giving up guaranteed revenue in order to advertise this fight. That's lost revenue, just as much as spending money is an out-of-pocket cost. Both have to be recouped, and both will figure in to the calculation of profit and loss.

[BennyBlanco]

I don't really understand what the enormous financial resources would be. Fox and ESPN devoted an incredible amount of airtime to promoting the fight, discussing the fight, airing shoulder programming for the fight, etc.

The idea that they need 1.1 or 1.2 million to break even due to "enormous financial resources" spent on the fight seems very strange. Not sure what Idec is referring to there.

Fox paid Wilder a PPV guarantee of $20M. Plus Fox and ESPN have to pay for the TV production, and with 30+ cameras, that's a huge production cost. Then there's the cost of all the shoulder programming, plus the cost of ESPN moving its shows to Vegas for the last few days.

And the huge cost (including opportunity cost/lost revenues) of all the advertising they ran for the fight.

If you include the cost of advertising and marketing, breakeven will be way higher than 1.2 million buys - especially since neither Fox or ESPN gets a piece of anything other than U.S. PPV revenues. Fox and ESPN do not get any part of the revenues from ticket sales, closed circuit/bars and restaurants, foreign sales, etc.

[DeeMoney]

Fight parties don’t equal more buys. They equal less buys, people chipping in to buy the fight because $80 is too much for such an unpredictable product.

1 home buying the fight and inviting 20 people is still just $80 bucks.

So I usually go down to the local casino or a nearby sports bar for the PPV fights. Sometimes they don't even have a cover, but at most its only $10.

Now I know they have to pay a lot more off the top, but I wonder how those numbers are factored in?

[Get em up]

At even a million buys that would be astronomical numbers considering todays market. I personally don't mind spending the money on it but like another poster said its gotta be the people who probably dont know anything other than 2 undefeated giants are fighting that has to put up huge numbers realistically I'll be shocked to see the 500k kind of numbers