Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury face off for the third time Saturday night in Las Vegas in a much-anticipated fight that will end the rivalry. With the trilogy, there is hope for a big PPV turnout despite a sudden flooded boxing PPV market and multiple delays.
The trilogy was delayed due to the pandemic. Fury was set to walk away from the fight but Wilder enforced the third fight via arbitration.
According to an article from Sportico (sub required), this fight is receiving less traction in impressions than their February 2020 fight. While there are several reasons for the possible downturn in views of the promos, Sportico suggests that despite the money thrown at marketing and promotion for the event boxing is still a niche sport. While this may be true to an extent, the niche part doesn’t speak to the rise of Jake and Logan Paul
Notwithstanding the assertion, Fox had an ad blitz on Thursday Night Football during the Seattle Seahawks-Los Angeles Rams game. It was the first Thursday Night NFL Football game on Fox this season and Top Rank/PBC took advantage of the 14 million plus that tuned into the game. Will those viewers convert into PPV buys of $79.99. It’s hard to tell.
There’s a hardcore fan base of boxing fans and the casual viewer that will tune in to watch the big fights. It’s hard to tell whether the flood of boxing PPV upcoming will deter the casual viewer. This fall will have some marquee fights on PPV including Canelo Alvarez-Caleb Plant, Terrence Crawford-Shawn Porter and Gervonta Davis-Rolando Romero.
The second fight between Wilder and Fury drew a reported 800K-850K buys. The first fight drew 325,000 buys. Considering the uptick from their first to second fight, you might expect this one to be near 1 million buys. But, will it?
One has to believe that this event will be big and while it lost some momentum due to the pandemic, it should still be a big event. Remember that the Floyd Mayweather-Logan Paul fight actually drew 1 million PPV buys. While those circumstances were different as it was more celebrity entertainment, Wilder and Fury is a fight that a casual viewer would want to see.
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