The Sports Business Journal has a report on the Time Warner synergy in promoting the Mayweather-Ortiz fight set to go this Saturday. This was the first time that HBO received help from its other outlets to promote a PPV fight.
Notably, CNN ran HBO’s 24/7 series over its network as well as having Victor Ortiz and Oscar de la Hoya on “Piers Morgan Tonight.” Promotion of the fight was run during Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN and on TBS during its airing of Major League Baseball. More promos were shown online at SI.com, Time.com, CNNMoney.com and Forbes.com. Mayweather also appeared on TBS’ “Conan” on Monday.
HBO will also bulk up its boxing promotion by adding “24/7 Overtime Live” after the finale of the 24/7 series Friday. It will also include a 6 hour block of boxing as well as 24/7 reruns prior to the PPV Saturday.
In addition, the Audience Network (formerly the 101) on DirecTV has been playing reruns of Mayweather-Mosley and Ortiz-Berto.
HBO aspires to break the sports PPV record set by Mayweather-de la Hoya which did 2.4 million PPV buys.
Payout Perspective:
The article is an interesting look at what will likely be the new model for promotion of a big boxing PPV. I’ve noticed that on DirecTV the PPV price for this fight has gone up $5 to $69.99 (for HD). The move was definitely fostered by Showtime taking Pacquiao-Mosley away from the HBO franchise this past spring. Not sure how the synergy is adding to the PPV buys but if you were to look at the box office, the extra promotion is not helping attendance as Bad Left Hook reports (via Dan Rafael) that the fight is far from a sell out as the MGM Grand is calling its VIPs to take tickets. Its unlikely that the PPV record will be threatened with this fight. However, the cross promotion of the fight across the Time Warner family is something we should see in the future.
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