Dan Rafael reports that the PPV buys for the Canelo Alvarez-GGG III fight this past Saturday drew between 550K to 575K units per Rafael’s sources. According to Rafael sources, 200K of the buys were from non-subscribers of DAZN.
The PPV broadcast price point was $64.99 for DAZN subscribers who pay $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually. For non-subscribers, fans paid $84.99.
Based on the sources, the buys would not cover the rumored guarantees for the fighters of a combined $75 million. The fight would have had to have done over 600K buys to ‘break even.’ Of course, the actual numbers will not revealed to the public, but the rough estimate suggests that this fight was past its expiration date. Although the two fighters garnered great interest for the first fight in 2017 and the rematch in 2018, too much time has past between the second and third fights. Obviously, the pandemic was a factor, but the animosity between the two camps as well as a lawsuit between Golden Boy and GGG over payouts from the second fight may have been another.
Based on PPV buy trends in combat sports and boxing, a 500K-575K buy rate sounds like a success. While Canelo is a draw, and this number suggests that there still is an ample crowd that will buy his fights regardless of the matchup, the advance for these events make it hard to make the money back. Based on ‘back of the envelope’ math, the PPV drew approximately ~$45 million (200K x $85 and 375K x $65) on PPV from DAZN. If the guarantees were $75 million, this would mean that the event would be $30 million in the red (of course that does not factor in gate, merch, licensing and international rights). Still, it’s hard to fathom you get another $30 million from those categories.
Canelo’s fight this past May against Dmitry Bivol drew a reported 520,000 PPV buys on DAZN. While I contend he is a draw, this may be a crossroads as to curbing expectations on how big his PPV fights will do which may cause a recalibration on expected revenues.
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