Initial PPV numbers are starting to come in for Golovkin vs. Lemieux, and the news is not good. Initial reports have the HBO PPV pulling in approximately 150,000 buys.
Reports vary somewhat at this early stage with some reporting as low as 125,000, so that is far from a final number, but if the final number is anywhere even remotely in that ballpark, the show has to be considered a pretty massive failure. This would be HBO Boxing’s lowest buys since a 2004 Vitali Klitschko PPV. Leading up to the fight, Tom Loeffler (Golovkin’s promoter) said anything above 200,000 buys would be considered a success.
Golovkin vs. Lemieux was designed to be the break-out fight for KO powerhouse Gennady Golovkin. Heavily promoted by HBO, Golovkin was seen as the “anti-Mayweather”, an exciting, action packed fighter who would give the casual fans a reason to care about boxing again. With Lemieux, in his first PPV outing, he was paired with another action fighter, but one entirely unknown to casual fans. The show sold very well at Madison Square Garden (20,568 in attendance), but those tickets sales do not seem to have translated to buys.
This was the first of two PPVs designed by HBO to find the next big boxing PPV superstar in the wake of Floyd Mayweather’s pseudo-retirement and Manny Pacquiao’s winding-down career (Canelo Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto is coming up November 21). Obviously, if these numbers hold, it did not achieve that goal.
For points of comparison, Mayweather’s first PPV main event was against Arturo Gatti in 2005 and drew 365,000 buys. Pacquiao’s was against Erik Morales in 2005 and drew 350,000.
