ESPN Dan Rafael drew Dana White-like criticism from Showtime’s Stephen Espinosa last week for stating that May’s Mayweather-Guererro PPV drew less than 1 million PPV buys. Rafael indicated that it sold around 870,000 PPV buys and wondered when Showtime would release an estimate.
If you understood the PPV business, you wouldn’t have to wonder “@danrafaelespn: Wonder when the network will put out an actual number”
— Stephen Espinoza (@StephenEspinoza) June 4, 2013
@stephenespinoza Funny, I was going to say if you understood it you’d know the fight did less than 1M.
— Dan Rafael (@danrafaelespn) June 4, 2013
Instead of an estimate, the public received the announcement that Mayweather would be facing Canelo Alvarez on September 14th. This is the fight that many assumed would happen next Cinco de Mayo weekend. Could moving the fight up to September be a result of the poor ratings from the Guererro fight? The Canelo Alvarez is the fight that Showtime hopes will set the all-time PPV mark.
Payout Perspective:
There are obvious reasons why this PPV may have scored less than expected. First, many did not know Roberto Guererro and it wasn’t clear how much of an opponent he would be for Mayweather. Second, which is tied with the first, is that there was not much buzz for the fight. Although I thought Showtime did a good job with its All Access shows, there was less controversy occurring running up to the fight. Finally, the practical reason is the $70 price tag ($65 for non-HD). This is the second straight $70 PPV which has not produced the numbers it was projected to do. Wrestlemania 29 earlier this year yielded slightly over 1 million PPV buys but did not exceed the numbers from the year before. Have we reached the tipping point for how much people will pay for PPVs?
Certainly, the return of Mayweather could have been overestimated which could concern Showtime and its investment in the highest paid athlete according to Forbes.
It doesn’t matter if the price tag of PPVs hurts sales a little. If raising the PPV $10 loses 100K or even 150K buys. They still make more money in sales. Then those 100-150K who didn’t buy the PPV will have $70 to purchase later PPVs they pay have normally not bought. So I don’t think it is important that sales declined. No one expects them to go up after a price icrease. The important facto is revenue or how many sales they lose. IF WrestleMania lost 300K+ I think it would stand to reason that the price certainly hurt rather than leaving us to mostly guess.
WWE raised their price $5 and could olose around 75,000 buys and remain the same. They lost like 100K buys. Which could be explained by normal fluctuation from year to year rather than the price.
Maywether’s low numbers I believe could be from a disappointed fan base. The mega fight with Pacman never happened and now Pacman lost and that fight is pointless now. Maywether is just going around fighting meaningless fights people don’t care about and I am hearing more journalist talk about it more and more. This is why there is no hype or much talk at all of his fights. He seems to just be going through the motions and people are slowing refusing to pay for it. I look for this trend to continue until someone else makes some waves or he has a scare and someone takes it to him and get interest.
Unfortunately I don’t think there is much to suggest we have hit the ceiling on PPV prices. But I do think this is a can of worms these promoters are opening that will destroy them down the road. When they do cross that line there will be no going back. They will be dependant on that money and fans will come back just dropping back to where they were. They will come to a realization and never come back. IMO the gradual increase in PPV prices is a business natural process of destroying itself. They are running 50+ million dollar events and they still risk it all for a few dollars more.
Brainsmasher cries
This is why Floyd is fighting Canelo. Showtime lost a ton of money on this fight by guaranteeing Floyd so much money. they didnt buy this card like his past fights.
Its why Showtime pushed FLoyd into the Canelo fight, probably offered him more money knowing that will actually sell huge amount of PPV and Showtime can make back the money they lost and even make money.
Floyd/Canelo is a 1.5-2 mill selling PPV and a huge gate. They will def be making a ton of money on that fight and Showtime needs it after the losses they took from this fight.
Floyd dont give a shit, he made his money and now he is gonna make even more fighting Canelo.
Great fight, cant wait for that one.
Sampson called this one. He predicted much lower than expected buyrate. Espinoza had mentioned 1.5 million as a realistic goal in one interview before the event. 870,000 is a tremendous amount of buys but not so much when fighter expenses exceed $36 million,
i have to agree with chris, the only reason this fight is being made is because showtime lost there ass on floyds last fight
that being said i am not impressed at all with canelo hes very overated,, and typical slow footed plodding mexican fighter, he will lose a boring 12 rd decision to floyd in another overpriced boring mayweather fight.
boxing fans are pathetic to even buy this fight
UFC fans are pathetic to buy any UFC payperview at any given time
And you are pathetic that you are on a MMA site. Shows how shitty boxing is that you have to come here. I guess those old boxing fans hasn’t learned how to use the internet. Maybe the boxing forums had an over whelming smell of Ben Gay. I would to be pretty worthless to ever go to a boxing forum just to troll. I guess you boxing fans don’t have much to do. Just sit around and collect you SSI and read AARP news letter.
hey sampson i think youre being a bit delusional here, the ufc trounces boxing in ppvs buys its not even close. if you add up the ufc does in ppv sales it annihilates boxing.
im a long time boxing fan, but there is no comparison there.
BS Simple Sampson just comes to hate on mma, you can tell he is a boxing fan who trolls mma forums talking shit.
kind of sad, even mma fans doing that to boxing is retarded. I dont get it, I’m a fan of both sports, would never waste my time going to boxing forums just to shit on boxing and big up mma.
I agree with the general sentiment; +800K PPVs is a lot, but with Mayweather’s payout, it leaves the balance books short of a few dollars.
Mayweather still takes Alvarez be UD.
As a fight fan, I’m perplexed that a Boxing focused post has turned into a MMA vs. Boxing argument in the comments. Some people need to get a life.
“ESPN Dan Rafael drew Dana White-like criticism”
Really? I didn’t see anything about being “A stupid BITCH” or “Your source is a faggot”
Would have been better if he did. You know the guy feels the same as Dana. Just because Dana isn’t a poser who puts on a act to please people doesn’t make him a bad guy. I wish more people in power would be honest and stop feeding us a bunch of shit.