Welcome to a special edition of Payout Perspective as we take a look at Pacquiao-Marquez IV. The fourth fight probably will not be the last as Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out Manny Pacquiao.
Marquez Planks Pacquiao
In what was the most intense and violent of the four fights, Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out Manny Pacquiao with a counter right hand on the button with just one second left in the sixth round. The KO gave JMM the first win, and the most devastating in their rivalry.
For Pacquiao, it’s a forgettable 2012 with two straight losses. With such a devastating KO, one wonders if it’s wise to continue to fight. There’s no question that he’s going to fight but it appears that he is fighting more for others than he is for himself. This could prove to be a dangerous proposition for Pacquiao if his heart is not in it anymore.
On a side note, Freddie Roach is having as bad a year as Pacquiao. Not only did his star pupil lose twice this year, but Roach lost Amir Khan after Khan was upset by Danny Garcia and Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. lost in his big showdown against Sergio Martinez.
Attendance and gate
Bad Left Hook reports that the attendance and gate figures show a sell out with a $10.8 million gate and attendance of 15,430 with 904 comps. It comes in second this year to the Mayweather-Cotto fight on May 5th which had a gate of a little over $12 million.
Payouts
Manny Pacquiao will receive up to $30 million for last Saturday’s fight. The $30 million includes a PPV cut of the buys. The night’s winner, Marquez, will only receive $3 million as he took a pay cut from their November 2011 fight. This should likely change if and when we see a fifth fight. It’s likely that Pacquiao will still earn more than Marquez although JMM should get a bigger cut of the pie.
Prefight Promotion
Top Rank streamed a Manny Pacquiao workout from the Wildcard Gym on its web site. In addition, it was aired in Times Square. A good promotion to serve as a reminder for those walking on the street in New York that Pacquiao has a fight coming up.
In addition to the mandatory 24/7 series, TNT included an additional program with the NBA on TNT’s Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller to promote the fight. It was shown after the NBA on TNT on Thursday night so it aired pretty late on both coasts. It was heavily promoted and talked about on the post-game show by Barkley and the other studio hosts.
The NBA on TNT also provided in game promos for the fight on its Thursday night prime time games. It helped that Barkley and Miller are fight fans as they talked about the fights even after the promo spots were done.
Reruns of the first three fights were available on the Audience Network and HBO. Although listings indicated that the fights were rerun on ESPN, I did not see them.
A new ad campaign for Wonderful Pistachios featuring Manny Pacquiao launched on Monday Night Football. More on this in the sponsorship section.
Pacquiao made his usual appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. Maybe after these last two losses he decides to go with Leno or Letterman.
Sponsorships
There were six official sponsors for the Pacquiao-Marquez fight: Tecate, Wonderful Pistachios, the Cinemax show, “Banshee,” the movie, “Django,” Filipino wireless provider, Smart and Mexican wireless provider, Telcel.
Tecate once again served as the official beer sponsor and offered its usual PPV discount. If anyone has benefited from this, please let me know as I have never seen this offer in my area.
Paramount Farms’ Wonderful Pistachios chose Manny Pacquiao for its “Get Crackin” ad campaign featuring the boxer. Pacquiao joins an eclectic group of pop culture figures including Snooki and Snoop Dogg to sponsor the company. He is the only athlete on the list.
The “Get Crackin” slogan signage was around the ring and on Pacquiao’s shorts. Unfortunately for Manny, the sponsor received a lot of visibility when he lay face down on the canvas.
The pistachio deal is for one year and is in the neighborhood of six figures according to the Sports Business Journal (subscription required).
Conclusion
A pre-PPV buy estimate for this fight had it at 1 million buys which seems about right. There was little buzz for this fight outside of the hardcore boxing/Pacquiao/Marquez fans despite the synergy of Time Warner. With the ending of number 4, a 5th fight would exceed 1 million buys based on how good a fight it was plus the added interest in seeing how Pacquiao rebounds.
If a fight that there was little buzz about outside the hardcore boxing fans can do 1 million PPV buys, then that proves right there that boxing is still huge. Way bigger than MMA.
Doesn’t not reflect boxing… that reflects Pacman’s star power…
1M PPV Buys with little buzz reflects more on Pacman’s star power than it reflects on boxing overall…
I’m sure that this event was, rightfully, a huge success but I wonder about the PPV star power of Manny moving forward. I hope I’m wrong. I truly do. But he’s 0-2 in his last two fights and arguably lost the one before that as well. Boxing fans tend to be less forgiving of losses and I think we’ll see that play out for Manny in 2013. Again, though, I hope that I’m wrong.
Manny should fold up shop and call it a career. What more can he do except be president of The Phillipines?
He is weak for not fighting Floyd Mayweather tho. They both are. But it did serve to keep them both relevent in-between fights. Good for them for working the fans. It’s like a wwe feud that never culminates in a match. Just ringside shouting and finger pointing.
Just the same like GSP fights do not reflect the popularity of MMA… just GSP’s “star power” which is less than 1/3 of Pacquiao’s.
Top level boxers dominate the most popular combat sporting events in their respective countries.
USA – Mayweather, Pacquiao
Mexico – Alvarez/Chavez/Marquez/Morales
Denmark -Kessler
Australia – Danny Green, Anthony Mundine
Ukraine/Russia/Germany – Klitschko Brothers
UK – Hatton/Froch/David Haye/Chisora/Burns
Indonesia – Chris John/Daud Yordan
Philippines – Donaire/Pacquiao
Romania – Bute
Khazahstan – Shumenov
Japan – Kameda
There’s no dispute that these 13 countries are dominated by boxing compared to MMA. The only place were there is competition is Canada with GSP although boxing has Bute & Pascal as huge draws as well.
Boxing also dominates
Argentina – Sergio Martinez, Lucas Mathysse, Marcos Maidana
Puerto Rico – Cotto/ Juan Manuel Lopez
Boxing popularity was always depended on a select few fighters, not the sport itself. It never had more than 1 PPV star at a time until Pac and Mayweather.No one but Tyson had million selling PPVs in the 90s.Only Oscar had it in the 00s and now it’s Pac AND Mayweater.
Not entirely true Felix.
The heavyweights moved the needle in the 90s… Foreman, Holyfield, Lewis.
But the same can be said for MMA now… GSP, Silva, and Jon Jones are the top guys and neither can crack 1 million US buys let alone 500k buys.
UFC aggregates buy rates across the world while boxing only reports U.S. buyrates.
I think the argument, though, isn’t that MMA is more popular worldwide than boxing. It’s not. I think the more valuable argument is that the gap has closed significantly. In the late 1990’s boxing and boxers were so much more popular than MMA or any of its athletes that it was literally not even worth a comparison. Now the paradigm has shifted quite a bit. It’s true that boxing is still the predominate professional combat sport globally but MMA has made absolutely gigantic leaps in its fanbase. In the 1990’s you had boxing’s top draws pulling in over a million PPV buys and MMA’s top draws pulling in 70,000. Now, you have a few guys in boxing commanding a million PPV buys and several in MMA bringing in half a million. Again, boxing is still tops. But the gap is FAR less than most die-hard boxing fans ever even dreamed it would be.
Sampson spreading more BS as ussual. “UFC aggregates buy rates across the world while boxing only reports U.S. buyrates.” Really? Prove there are other countries reported in the UFC PPV buy rates? You cant! Its only North American. In fact just about every other country gets those PPVs for free. ANd LOL at your “let alone 500K” comment. You would be hard pressed to find a PPV from either of those 3 held in North America that didnt break 500K. ONly some of Silvas fights that were not in the US didnt break 500K.
“Manny Pacquiao will receive up to $30 million for last Saturday’s fight. The $30 million includes a PPV cut of the buys.”
Now I know this incorrect. I can’t find it now but I read articles that clearly said the 30 million did not include the PPV cut. Also … who decided the fight had no buzz? It was well marketed. Boxingscene reported it was the most covered fight in years.
http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&opt=printable&id=60116#ixzz2EF4YMguk
@Brain Smasher
Sampson is correct. Non-NA countries appear regularly in Dave Meltzer’s top PPV market lists. Here for UFC 130 Dave notably says Australian cities made the top market.
http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2011/6/9/2214899/report-ufc-130-draws-around-300k-ppv-buys-mma-news
“The strongest markets for UFC 130 look to have been Las Vegas, Calgary, Toronto, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Sydney, Edmonton, Halifax, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal (interesting to note that market doing well for a non GSP fight),Honolulu, Sacramento, San Diego and Orlando.”
The strongest markets for UFC 130 look to have been Las Vegas, Calgary, Toronto, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Sydney, Edmonton, Halifax, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal (interesting to note that market doing well for a non GSP fight),Honolulu, Sacramento, San Diego and Orlando. – Dave Meltzer on strongest UFC PPV markets
@brain smasher
He’s correct, Dave Meltzer often reports countries outside the US and Canada in the PPV’s top markets. It still wouldn’t matter because boxing PPVs are US only.
http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2011/6/9/2214899/report-ufc-130-draws-around-300k-ppv-buys-mma-news
“The strongest markets for UFC 130 look to have been Las Vegas, Calgary, Toronto, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Sydney, Edmonton, Halifax, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal (interesting to note that market doing well for a non GSP fight),Honolulu, Sacramento, San Diego and Orlando.”
According to Dan Rafael the fight did 1.15 million PPV buys. I don’t know where this article is coming from saying there was no buzz for this.
I’m surprised to be Australia on there. When Will the UFC invite back Soa “The Hulk” Polalei?
Absolutely outstanding PPV numbers for this show. Reportedly did 1,150,000 buys. This further shows that Pacquiao and Mayweather are in a class by themselves. The next question is how much two straight losses will hurt Pacquiao going forward.
Why do people always ALWAYS conveniently leave out facts inconvenient to boxing in this boxing vs. MMA debate? How many decent or significant fights or fight cards does boxing have in a year?? Three, maaaybe four? And even with those, the undercard is relatively garbage. If the UFC concentrated all the best bouts on three or four cards a year, can you IMAGINE how much it’d kill boxing in terms of quality?? It would also come close to matching boxing’s numbers as well.
This is a stupid argument from Anthony. There’s 300 different boxing events each week in 50+ countries.
UFC simply cannot compete from a mass adoption level.
There may be 300 different boxing events each week in 50+ countries, but none of those are earning PPVs. Only three or four a year do real PPV nubmers and that’s what Anthony is comparing. If you add up all the small MMA shows you would come up with a substantial number as well, but we’re only talking about big UFC events that can draw solid PPV numbers.
The UFC may not be able to compete from a mass adoption level (though the expansion of TUF internationally suggests they are willing to try) but the sport of MMA as a whole is beginning to compete.
Yeah, again, from my vantage point the story isn’t that MMA is necessarily outperforming boxing globally. The real story is the overall paradigm has shifted dramatically. Not very long ago boxing purists laughed at the notion of MMA being popular at all and boasted that MMA wasn’t even in the same universe in terms of popularity. Now those same people simply argue that it isn’t equal to boxing. That an ENORMOUS change in the debate and evidence that MMA’s status in terms of popularity has been elevated greatly.
Look at the ratings on FuelTV, Look at the ratings for TUF.
Look around to all the band wagon fans during the Brock Lesnar days that are nowhere to be found.
To say MMA is on the upswing is laughable. It’s not… it’s stagnant at best and declining in reality. All the numbers point to it.
For Christ’s sakes, the UFC made Rhonda Rousey a champion. That has to tell you they are struggling for any sort of gimmick to give them a boost.
Seriously
yea i think 2013 will be the year of the gimmick in the ufc. with womens mma and constantly talking about a silva vs gsp fight that won’t happen