By Cassanda Cousineau of LVSportsBiz.com
You’d be hard-pressed to ask a boxing fan about the Four Kings and not get the correct answer back a great percent of the time.
Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, and Roberto Duran not only defined championship boxing in the sport’s lightweight division, they gave definition to superstar status for promoters.
Thanks to the today’s proliferation of digital platforms, comparing their contributions to promotional coffers isn’t an exact formula when it comes to the top of the division today, especially since the four most prominent fighters circle one each more on social media than they do in the ring.
That includes the likes of Las Vegas resident Devin Haney. The current WBC lightweight champion was the featured attraction vs challenger JoJo Diaz Jr. for Matchroom Boxing’s event held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena Saturday night. Haney retained his WBC belt with a unanimous decision over Diaz at the Grand Garden tonight.
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The 80s were a golden era when Sugar, Marvelous, Hitman, and Hands of Stone dominated headlines and Pay-Per-View. They didn’t have the benefit of today’s technology to sell pay-per-view via social media to promote sales.
Fans weren’t also lured to competing streaming service platforms like ESPN+ or Matchroom’s broadcast partner DAZN. The services are priced at either $6.99 per month, or $69.99 per year for ESPN+ or $19.99 a month or $99.99 annually for DAZN.
In a sport famous for giving its fans far less than what they’ve paid for, showing up hat in hand week after week for anywhere from $69.99 to &79.99 on average is getting to be a bit much.
While Matchroom’s Chairman, Eddie Hearn, was part of the colossal 800,000 buys Canelo Alvarez vs Caleb Plant Pay-Per-View in November, he hasn’t shied away from calling out the fact that the model, pricing, and lack of absolutely must-see fights is at the moment upside down in boxing. .
When LVSportsbiz.com asked the loquacious promoter his thoughts on whether Matchroom and its broadcast platform DAZN would eventually find a way to offer boxing via its app and on Pay-Per-View, he responded to it being highly likely.
“I see us doing a little bit of both. I think the beauty of DAZN is more affordable boxing, and more value for the money for fight fans. I think it’s important to have functionality, Pay-Per-View functionality. The ability to do it if a fight presents itself. Where you could be sharing it on another platform with Pay-Per-View or that fighter will only fight on Pay-Per-View.”
However, when it came to the recent slate of events especially in the last quarter of the year cannibalizing one another for fan financial contributions, Hearn was less than complimentary of Pay-Per-View.
Hearn’s full comments here:
“Cannibalization is the perfect word because if you look at the process over the last few weeks, you know, you had Canelo Alvarez who’s gone out and you know, done a huge amount of buys as he does. Then you have Crawford-Porter that does 130 [thousand] which is a disaster and then you have Tank against Isaac Cruz which could do 50,000 buys in a week.
“I mean, who knows. Then, you’ve got Jake Paul against Tony Fury. Then, you’ve got Charles Martin against Luis Ortiz. These Pay-Per-Views, I think the Tank Pay-Per-View is $74.99. Coming from the U.K. I can’t even understand how that even works. Do you know what I mean? I would get just taken out of the game. Pay-Per-View will always exist. I’m not, I’ve never been a Pay-Per-View is dead campaigner. What I’m saying is the right fights at the right time will always be Pay-Per-View.
“There’s too many Pay-Per-View fights that actually aren’t Pay-Per-View, and there’s too many, too close together. You can’t expect fight fans to pay $80 a month, or $80 every two weeks for one night, but it’s been great for DAZN. Our numbers have gone like that because fight fans have actually seen the value. They’ve said, “OK, we’ve seen Canelo Alavarez twice this year, we’ve seen Haney-Diaz, we got Lopez-Kambosos and it’s all part of our subscription.” So, I really feel like DAZN is making strides in the US and globally.”