One week before Manny Pacquiao’s return to the ring against Lucas Matthysse and the fight finally has a U.S. broadcast partner in ESPN + announced it will stream the fight live from Malaysia.
By the time Pacquiao fights Matthysse, it will have been over a year since his last fight on ESPN against Jeff Horn in Australia. Pacquiao lost a surprising decision in favor of Horn. The event brought huge ratings to the network as it was the first fight in the Top Rank-ESPN deal.
This event has had its problems as Pacquiao’s promotion recently ensured payment for Matthysse so that he would travel to Malaysia. A lot has changed for the Filipino former champion as he no longer is trained by Freddie Roach and Top Rank Boxing is not promoting this fight. Bob Arum is handling the media deals for the event but not promoting.
Payout Perspective:
Is it an ominous sign that we haven’t heard much about a broadcast partner until a week before the event which gives little, if any promotion time for ESPN+. It does provide the latest OTT platform another bit of content and with a cadre of Pacquiao loyalists still around, we should see a rise in subscriptions before next week. But, this platform is a significant drop from Pacquiao’s PPV star.
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