Comments Thread For: Arum: Even If Crawford & Porter Want It, How In The Hell Do You Afford The Fight?

[elfag]

$70-80 for Crawford and porter? Hell to the NO!

Now $30-40 with a good undercard. Now we’re talking.

Fighters are going to have to realize they might have to take a pay cut too. 20% unemployment rate, tons of lay offs, tons of small businesses closing.

They should be happy to still have work and still make millions of ***ing dollars.

The guy at the auto parts store yesterday was super happy just to have a customer and make a $15 sale to me, why cant elite pro boxers be happy to make a million dollar fight deal.

[elfag]

Let's go through a brief business lesson so we can avoid the inevitable/irrelevant "ducking" or "greedy" posts:

1. Crawford and Porter are going to seek huge guarantees, as they should. I would imagine that for both fighters it would be in the neighborhood of $15-20 million. I cannot imagine Crawford would get less than $10 million and Porter would get less than $7 million realistically.
2. So now you've got to front $20,000,000.00 to fight and Arum and Haymon have to come up with this money to have it occur.
3. The impediments to setting up this fight, for a profit, would be that it could likely occur in Omaha if they want to sell out the fight in 2020. Brooklyn may not open up until 2021 fully due to its current complications. The live gate is important to a fight like this to generate income.
4. ESPN and FOX are not coming up with $10 million each to do a split broadcast. As such, you need a PPV. To get to both fighters guarantee, let's set at $80.00. You need a minimum of 250,000 buys to get to that minimum. The cable companies, satellite providers and streaming services all take their respective cuts out of the PPV, thus likely needing no less than 50,000 buys to meet these guarantees.
5. The promoters have to pay for advertising and other fees associated with promoting. I do not know all the details as I am not a promoter, but there's more than just putting up a ring in Omaha or Barclays.

In sum, this fight needs to do at least 300,000 buys to stay afloat, and maybe more. For the fighters to get more and promoters to make a profit, I would think 500,000 is the number. Fury-Wilder II did 800,000, but that was a heavily promoted fight with 2 participants who are exponentially more popular than both Crawford and Porter. Indeed, another issue will be the economy after this fight, and who has the disposable income to shell out $80 for a fight when they haven't worked in months.

Fighters like Crawford and Spence are doing just fine getting value for fighting on regular ESPN and Fox. When attempting to obtain PPV status, the fighter must be able to sell the fight. Heavyweights like Fury and Wilder do this easy. Their marketable and understand showmanship. They sold the fight. But at this juncture, Crawford and Spence cannot expect to sell this fight for what both are seeking realistically.

You're welcome for the brief economics/business lesson. Next time you feel the need to say "ducking" or "greedy", please refer back to this brief discussion so that you realize there's a lot more than putting on gloves to commencing a PPV. Stay blessed.

They will have to share some of the risk, it is being greedy if they demand crazy guarantees in this market.

I know exactly what crawford will be doing. He does not want to take a lower offer now and show the promoters that he will take low offers to hurt his negotiations in the future.

Everyone seen Mayweather-Pac stalled and in the end they made more money, but not everyone can sell a fight like those two. Most end up like Winky not taking the DLH fight and never getting that money back.

Crawford will be 33 this year and he rather not take a big fight, fight some bum and hold out for some mega fight that will never happen when hes 35 or whatever. The **** is a joke and the UFC is making a mockery of boxing when the best fight the best over there while boxers hold out until their mid to late 30s before stepping up (ahem GGG, ahem Ward) looking to maintain a near perfect record with wins over bums so they can cash out tail end of their career.

The economics of all this are tilted far to much in favor of the fighters at the top and not towards the fans who end up paying top dollar for past prime fighters finally getting around to fighting their rival.

Look at ***ing Khan-Brook they put that fight off for 10 years now, that is their reserve retirement payday fight even though its basically meaningless at this point.

[Boxviewer]

Let's go through a brief business lesson so we can avoid the inevitable/irrelevant "ducking" or "greedy" posts:

1. Crawford and Porter are going to seek huge guarantees, as they should. I would imagine that for both fighters it would be in the neighborhood of $15-20 million. I cannot imagine Crawford would get less than $10 million and Porter would get less than $7 million realistically.
2. So now you've got to front $20,000,000.00 to fight and Arum and Haymon have to come up with this money to have it occur.
3. The impediments to setting up this fight, for a profit, would be that it could likely occur in Omaha if they want to sell out the fight in 2020. Brooklyn may not open up until 2021 fully due to its current complications. The live gate is important to a fight like this to generate income.
4. ESPN and FOX are not coming up with $10 million each to do a split broadcast. As such, you need a PPV. To get to both fighters guarantee, let's set at $80.00. You need a minimum of 250,000 buys to get to that minimum. The cable companies, satellite providers and streaming services all take their respective cuts out of the PPV, thus likely needing no less than 50,000 buys to meet these guarantees.
5. The promoters have to pay for advertising and other fees associated with promoting. I do not know all the details as I am not a promoter, but there's more than just putting up a ring in Omaha or Barclays.

In sum, this fight needs to do at least 300,000 buys to stay afloat, and maybe more. For the fighters to get more and promoters to make a profit, I would think 500,000 is the number. Fury-Wilder II did 800,000, but that was a heavily promoted fight with 2 participants who are exponentially more popular than both Crawford and Porter. Indeed, another issue will be the economy after this fight, and who has the disposable income to shell out $80 for a fight when they haven't worked in months.

Fighters like Crawford and Spence are doing just fine getting value for fighting on regular ESPN and Fox. When attempting to obtain PPV status, the fighter must be able to sell the fight. Heavyweights like Fury and Wilder do this easy. Their marketable and understand showmanship. They sold the fight. But at this juncture, Crawford and Spence cannot expect to sell this fight for what both are seeking realistically.

You're welcome for the brief economics/business lesson. Next time you feel the need to say "ducking" or "greedy", please refer back to this brief discussion so that you realize there's a lot more than putting on gloves to commencing a PPV. Stay blessed.

Talking economics means demand and supply, thus why should the fighters be paid 15 - 20M when they can't generate enough money to make that possible, partially due to the economic climate we find ourself currently?

According to economic principles you can't ask more than the market is willing to pay. Otherwise buyers will look for an alternative which means bad business for the supplier. Being greedy in business can cost you dearly. In current situation fighters have to accept less purse or there will be no fighter, no cheque.

Feel free to correct me if my reasoning was wrong.

[Idunnoshet]

Arum is so full of ****. His excuse here is that after over 50 years experience in promoting fights he cant figure out how to make a fight between two of the top 5 welterweights profitable.

This is like the time how he said they couldnt make mayweather-pacquaio unless an entire new stadium was built and that the fight could only take place during mayweather's jail sentence so after he got that pushed back it was more excuses. MGM wasnt big enough for the fight but weird how several years later thats where they ended up fighting and no stadium was mentioned during those negotiations.

My thoughts exactly.
You beat me to it bro.

[elfag]

Talking economics means demand and supply, thus why should the fighters be paid 15 - 20M when they can't generate enough money to make that possible, partially due to the economic climate we find ourself currently?

According to economic principles you can't ask more than the market is willing to pay. Otherwise buyers will look for an alternative which means bad business for the supplier. Being greedy in business can cost you dearly. In current situation fighters have to accept less purse or there will be no fighter, no cheque.

Feel free to correct me if my reasoning was wrong.

You are 100% right. That idiot thinks he is smart writing out a multi paragraph patronizing thesis to supposedly teach everyone all that we dont know about business, except that his primary thesis is that the top fighters are not greedy, while maintaining that they expect everyone else involved to take on all risk and pay them so much that there is a high probability they lose money on the entire event, that is the very definition of greed, that guy is a complete ******.

This is also the fighters at the top, they can afford to hold out until next year, all the guys on the undercard making 5-50k those guys are getting ***ed with no fights being put together.

[SUBZER0ED]

While being exciting fighters, neither Crawford nor Porter are PPV stars. This, along with the fact that 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance, would suggest that people paying $70-80 for a fight is highly unlikely. And lastly, these two are good friends, so how much of a knock-down, drag-out fight can they produce? This is a tv fight at best right now. Take a paycut, entertain fight fans with a great fight, then come back in 6 months to a year with a PPV rematch.

[nacho daddy]

If all parties involved aren't run on greed then it's quite easy to afford it Bob..

It's a fight that people would like to see and Bob knows it. Throwing a number out to test the reactions is quite clever for Bob...

EXACTLY!! bro you got it. a trillionaire don't think they got enough money

[RuleOfTheSpear]

Crawford duck Porter

[pacmanis1]

Everyone is missing the valid point Arum is making though. He's not sure how many people he can convince to pack a stadium due to coronavirus, even after it's died down. No gate, that's a lot less money.

PPV revenue has so many splits that he would probably just break even on it.

I think he's delusional that fighting Spence would do any better. Porter has been seen by the mainstream.

His biggest issue isn't Porter's side. It's Crawford and his guarantees. That alone probably eats up the bulk of any money made and Haymon isn't going to foot money into the red.

Another valid point he brought up that I didn’t even think about is how will the PPV market be if people aren’t comfortable having fight parties. I personally order fights and if friends want to stop by cool, but it seems like there’s a lot of folks who have parties and everyone chips in a little bit to cover the costs. And then that even brings up another question of how many of those fight party fans are true fans? Maybe guys just enjoy having an excuse to have their boys over and have a party.

[Combat Talk Radio]

Another valid point he brought up that I didn’t even think about is how will the PPV market be if people aren’t comfortable having fight parties. I personally order fights and if friends want to stop by cool, but it seems like there’s a lot of folks who have parties and everyone chips in a little bit to cover the costs. And then that even brings up another question of how many of those fight party fans are true fans? Maybe guys just enjoy having an excuse to have their boys over and have a party.

It's not even just home fight parties. Bars, clubs, movie theaters, etc. all pay huge amounts of money to show fights. That revenue won't be there if people can't go to those places, either. So they can't do it at home, and they can't do it at some social something. You'd have to do it at drive-up theaters - which are near dead now. If they were still around, they'd be PERFECT. But even then there's not enough people to make it make sense.

I remember as a kid going to see one of the SuperBowls - whichever one it was that was Redskins/Bills? - and that was at Balboa Park in one of their theaters. They can't do that either.

So I'm just saying that Arum is not too far off this time, there's too much working against him. I really think a joint promotion is the only way you can raise that much money.