LOS ANGELES – The card headlined by the Deontay Wilder-Luis Ortiz rematch will mark FOX’s fourth pay-per-view boxing broadcast within an eight-month span this year.

Bill Wanger, FOX Sports’ executive vice president of programming, live operations and research, expects that the broadcast network will maintain that pay-per-view pace or close to it over the final three years of its deal with Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions. Wanger discussed FOX’s pay-per-view strategy and other topics during an interview with a small group of reporters prior to the press conference Saturday at Staples Center to officially announce the Wilder-Ortiz rematch.

Wanger wants to bring what would be considered pay-per-view-worthy fights to free television, yet he understands that purse requirements mostly make that approach impractical in most instances. Purses for Errol Spence Jr. and Shawn Porter were listed as $2 million apiece on their California State Athletic Commission contracts, but both boxers are believed to have earned much more money from their welterweight title unification fight Saturday night through bonuses and percentages of the pay-per-view revenue.

“Within our deal, we have four to five pay-per-views a year,” said Wanger, whose network announced a four-year deal with PBC in September 2018. “We understand that every fight can’t be a pay-per-view-level fight. That’s why we have 12 fights [per year] on FS1. That’s why we have 10 fights [per year] on FOX broadcasting, which are free. And that’s more than there’s ever been in boxing in a long, long time.

“So, our goal with this whole PBC deal is to bring great fights back to free, over-the-air television and basic cable television, in a maximum number of homes. And yes, there’s gonna be four to five pay-per-views a year, when there are special fights, like [Spence-Porter] and [Wilder-Ortiz].”

Multiple sources have informed BoxingScene.com that Spence-Porter probably will have produced approximately 275,000 buys, based on initial projections from cable and satellite operators. Spence’s first FOX Sports Pay-Per-View appearance – a unanimous-decision defeat of Mikey Garcia on March 16 – reportedly generated about 330,000 buys.

FOX Sports doesn’t officially reveal pay-per-view numbers from fights it distributes. Nevertheless, Wanger anticipates a strong showing from Wilder and Ortiz, whom Wilder knocked out in the 10th round of a March 2018 bout that was televised live on Showtime.

 “I think it’ll completely resonate [on pay-per-view],” Wanger said of their November 23 bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. “It’ll be a great rematch. I think we’ll have all of our promotional power in the fall leading up to the fight, in football and postseason baseball and college football. So, we’ll drum up some good business for this fight.”

Wanger wouldn’t comment on whether FOX has secured the co-distribution rights, along with ESPN, to the Wilder-Fury rematch, tentatively scheduled for February 22. Showtime also is expected to bid to distribute Wilder-Fury II, which is dependent upon Wilder overcoming Ortiz in their second bout.

Wilder-Ortiz will be the sixth major boxing pay-per-view show in the United States in 2019. ESPN, which distributed the Terence Crawford-Amir Khan card, and Showtime, which distributed the Manny Pacquiao-Adrien Broner show, accounted for two of boxing’s first three pay-per-view events this year.

There were just two major pay-per-view boxing broadcasts in the U.S. in 2018 – the Canelo Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin rematch (HBO) and the Wilder-Fury fight (Showtime). There were five such shows in 2017 (four distributed by HBO, one by Showtime) and six in 2016 (five by HBO, one by Bob Arum’s Top Rank).

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.