Calzaghe vs. Jones a PPV smash hit....

Various sources have told Maxboxing that the recent pay-per-event featuring Joe Calzaghe and Roy Jones did under 225,000 buys. :atu::atu:

 

GOOD. Fucking farce of a fight.

 

Hardly surprising. I thought it would barely go over 300K, but oops.

 

No fucking way :: Surely not? ::

That's extremely low. I would have thought it would have done at least double that. Jesus.

 

Those numbers cant be true,.....I was told that pale skin meant,.. $$$$ WOOO HOOO... supremecism!, and it's a rare chance for us caucasians (excluding finger-waving American sportswriters ofcourse) across the world, to organise simultaneous family reunions where we huddle around television sets, and dance in the streets as a white man beats up a black man,...

I'll have you know, that American journalists can't possibly be wrong all the time, ...so on behalf of the principle of probability, what's REALLY going on you sneaky kraut?..:nono:

 

I can't believe they are that low. I'd figure the 24/7 show alone would have brought in close to those numbers.

 

and still roughly 35,000 more than Hopkins-Pavlik.

I wonder what the British TV rights went for. I've got a friend in England who said it wasn't on PPV over there which is interesting because Hatton-PBF was PPV. Hatton cleared as much if not more than Floyd because of the British PPV sales.

 

yeah Hatton-Floyd was on SKY, who like to ppv their biggest fights......Calzaghe is with Setanta....they are a fairly new subscription channel, desperate for viewers so they have been giving away some big boxing fights (Hatton-Castillo, Calzaghe-Kessler/Hopkins/Jones) for no additional fee....whereas SKY would certainly ppv them

It's more of a long-term gain, by gathering more subscribers...than the short term target of making lots of money from one event......so they aren't really comparable

 

Blame it on a tough economy and low US name recognition for Calzaghe to non fans.

I bought it ... fight was fun to watch. :bears:

 

people know jones jr is through. that third tarver fight hurt him a lot. calzaghe can't draw for shit here either. you can't throw two boring fuckers on a 24-7 and expect gold from shit.

 

that... and a dwindling interest in boxing... and Roy being on the slide for years... and offering the worst ever undercard among major PPV shows... and the show lacking a real promoter

 

Shut up Jake, it was the matchup, the boring fighters, the boring 24/7's etc etc :flip:

 

Jones-Tito was on track to get those numbers too until Don King went absolutely apeshit and went on every media outlet he could get his face and hair on and getting virtually no sleep for about a week straight. He saved that ppv bigtime. I guess this is what you get when you don't have a real promoter.


Even throughout his career, Roy Jones has always been a poor PPV draw, yet a big ratings getter for regular HBO. I'm actually surprised it didn't do worse.

 

This is inaccurate. My sources said it did 2.21 million ppv buys.

 

Non of those things help for sure ... but if the economy gets much worse it will be the end of shit like PPV fights regardless of fighters.

On a side note ... the under card was exceptionally pathetic. :shit:

 

Undercards rarely sell PPV fights other than to the hardcore fan, but having a shitty undercard hurts future sales.

If there were some action-packed quality fights on the undercard, the not so huge boxing fan could at least say they enjoyed themselves and might be more open to purchasing in the future.

 

Why would the economy have any bearing on the quality of a boxing ppv?

 

HBO seemed determine to let Jones-Trinidad fail. They gave it a countdown special, but left all of the legwork up to King. Perhaps the way it should be, but when you fork over that much cash, you'd think said party would want to do more to ensure it succeeds.

Jones wasn;t a top PPV up until the Ruiz fight. From that fight onward, every HBO PPV did decent to stellar numbers. Ruiz fight was 602,000. The three Tarver fights combined for more than 1.1 million buys, and of course the Trinidad fight at 525K. The list of fighters who wouldn't kill for those career numbers is very, very small

 

no it won't, in fact I believe the opposite will be true.

With Telefutura bowing out of the boxing business and ESPN no longer doing Wednesday Night Fights, boxing loses upwards of 60 televised dates per year. Translation: less dates available for promoters to showcase their fighters.

As such, expect more independent PPV shows to surface - and fewer and fewer promoters to stay in business. Either that, or simply keep their stars busy off camera against total cans.

The quality of boxing on HBO and Showtime might begin to improve. That's the good news. The bad news is, the fighters have to realize their current market value - which is usually the reason any fight worth a damn winds up on PPV to begin with.

 

I was simply agreeing with Jake's point that the under card sucked. I don't think it has any bearing on the sales of PPV unless it's a double header where either could draw buys.

 

You need to re-read that statement. No one said it would change the quality of it ... except maybe in a positive way because they won't bother to buy anything but the absolute best fights which could put an end to all these marginal fights being sold on PPV.

 

I know, i was just saying that i think having decent undercards would help sell more PPV's to the non hard core fight fan in the future.

This is especially the case if the main event turns out to suck.

 

I really can't blame poor ppv numbers on the economy. Your average boxing fan will watch a fight on PPV with a group of friends and they all fork over a few bucks each to pay for it. Sure, times are hard, but I don't think it's too hard to fork up ten or fifteen bucks. I bet the economy lost a few buys, but not too much of a dent.

What really did this fight in is the fact that it was never a competitive fight to begin with (Plus the shitty undercard). If it was just me and my brother at home, I wouldn't have ordered the fight. Sure enough, I found a bar that was showing it and watched it there. And the fight turned out being pretty much as I expected.

 

If the economy keeps heading in the direction it is (And I believe it will for a long time to come yet) you will see PPV buy's drop further and further.

As people struggle to pay for and find jobs for necessities , the first thing to go is disposable income and luxuries like PPV fights that can be seen a week later "for free".

As I said to Hanz ... what may change is the few fights that do , do marginally well on PPV will need to be very high caliber fights to draw sales.

That's my opinion and I'm pretty sure we're going to get to see if it's correct as the country goes into a sustained , deep recession/depression.

 

decent undercards give fans a reason to watch other fighters, rather than tune into everything else from basketball to bass fishing while waiting for the superstars to return. promoters have long forgotten this, instead getting greedy with license fees.

The lion's share of the fee goes to the main event, but instead of spending the rest on the card, the promoter decides to go 50/50 - 50 % on the undercard, 50% into his own pocket.

 

I agree it would help. I think the criteria for any PPV being worthy these days should either be high caliber undefeated / champion vs champion type fights .

Or Great double headers.

So many of these PPV's are absolute bullshit. I think it's a big reason Boxing's popularity has dropped off.

 

Everyone at my home basically ignored the PPV (Except the highlights of the main fighters ... ) and just socialized until the main fight began.

 

I agree that PPV buys will continue to drop. What I'm saying, though, is that promoters won't stop going that route. As interest continues to wane, everyone keeps waiting for ticket prices to drop - but they haven't. The sport has instead become conditioned to the notion that it has its core audience, therefore sell at higher prices to a smaller group, rather than trying to draw in more fans at a reduced price.

Also, the only PPVs that are available a week later are ones that are exclusive property of HBO and Showtime. Arum doesn't replay any of his independent PPV's, at least not a week later (often not even a month later, if ever at all). Other off-brand PPV's will randomly resurface a month or two loter on a FoxSports affiliate.

 

Yeah it seems like it's been like that for a long time now. The main event is basically the budget, and everything else bread crumbs. If you happen to see a good undercard it's usually an accident. ::

Last weekend's was especially awful as every damn fight went the distance.

If they are going to put on garbage fights/fighters at least make one of the matchups between a guy who can crack vs a guy with a glass chin.

Even one nice KO would excite people even if they are nobodies.

 

Everybody shits on the u/c. I really enjoyed the Salita-Campos fight.

However the Gato-Agustus fight was ok in spots and the Judah fight was unwatchable.