Next Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Marco Antonio Barrera faces Juan Manuel Marquez in defense of his WBC jr. lightweight title. Barrera is a surefire, first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, while Marquez was regularly listed among the best fighters in the world pound-for-pound before his dubious loss to Chris John last year in Indonesia. Long avoided by the sport’s blue-chippers, Marquez finally get his chance to break through to the upper echelon.
It’s truly an outstanding matchup. However, it has to be asked – is this really pay-per-view worthy?
Sure, it’s a tantalizing face-off among two of the sport’s best practitioners, but as of two weeks ago, this bout was being overshadowed and ignored by the immense shadow of a certain fight taking place on May 5th. And as Golden Boy Promotions and HBO Pay-Per-View were gallivanting around the country promoting De La Hoya-Mayweather, nary a word was said about Barrera-Marquez.
“Right now, frankly, every event is overshadowed,” admitted Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, on February 28th, in Hollywood, California, where the last leg of the promotional tour took place. Golden Boy promotes both Barrera and Marquez. But Schaefer would add: “The marketing campaign for a pay-per-view usually starts two weeks out to really hit full blast. So we are fully on track with the cable systems, with everything, with the marketing campaigns. So come tomorrow (March 1st) it’s all going to be Barrera-Marquez.”
Since that time, there has been an open workout in Big Bear for Barrera, with the obligatory conference call involving both main event participants and a media day for Daniel Ponce de Leon and Gerry Penalosa, who will be on the undercard. This Monday afternoon another press conference is planned on Olvera St. in Los Angeles.
But you get the sense that both Golden Boy and HBO are putting all their eggs in the May 5th basket.
“De La Hoya-Mayweather casts a shadow over everything in the sport, before and after it,” says the Sr. V.P. of Sports Operation and Pay-Per-View for HBO Sports, Mark Taffet. “However, Barrera-Marquez is such a good fight, such a competitive fight and features stars that in the Latino marketplace are major forces that I think Barrera-Marquez will reach its potential, regardless of any other factor.”
It is, as Taffet reiterates, a sterling hook-up (at least based on resumes, if not current styles) but in many respects it is a regional draw. The truth is that the large bulk of the buys will come from the western region. Most observers east of the Mississippi will look at this as a ‘west coast Mexican fight.’ And even the inclusion of Demetrius Hopkins-Steve Forbes, a bout featuring an east coast fighter against the season two runner-up of ‘The Contender’, most likely won’t produce any huge spikes in sales. As Bob Arum proved years ago with Butterbean and Mia St. John, it’s really the main event that carries the load in selling pay-per-view shows.
Barrera has shown that without a good dance partner (namely Erik Morales or Naseem Hamed) his pay-per-view numbers have been lukewarm at best. His bouts against Kevin Kelley and Mzonke Fana did less than a hundred grand and his rematch last year on the always pivotal third Saturday of September against Rocky Juarez did around 160,000 after their stirring first encounter last May. To put that into perspective, Morales, in the summer of 2004, did around the same amount against Carlos Hernandez.
So for all his greatness inside the ring, is he Marco Antonio B-side?
“You just said something important,” points out Taffet, “when Barrera is in big fights his numbers are outstanding. So clearly his fans respond to big Marco Antonio Barrera fights, as well as fans of the other big Mexican stars. As to why his figures have been a little bit softer in some of his other fights, I don’t know. But the important thing to me is, when you’re in the business of waking up everyday, trying to present the biggest, best fights on a regular basis, we know Marco Antonio Barrera fits that bill extremely well because when he’s in the big meaningful fights, his fans are there, the media support is there and as a result, while he has a broad menu of fights, we know it’s always worth focusing in on making the big ones with him because people are going to respond.”
No disagreement there, but here’s the problem: for as skilled as Marquez is, he himself has no real pay-per-view history – outside of headlining a small show in 2003 when he won his first world title against Manuel Medina – and is still a fighter that is relatively unknown to many casual fans. He simply does not bring the profile of a Manny Pacquiao, Morales or Hamed. In a perfect world, this fight would be an eagerly anticipated fight on HBO’s World Championship Boxing series, not a fight that fans have to pay another $44.95 to view. It seems that the days of Julio Cesar Chavez-Meldrick Taylor I being aired on regular HBO are long gone.
At one time, ‘pay-per-view’ meant that a bout was a true mega-fight, one that could not be missed. An event worth paying for. Last year HBO Pay-Per-View had 11 outings. Folks, in this day and age, there simply aren’t 11 ‘big’ fights in a given year anymore. And in the past, any pay-per-view show that didn’t hit the half-million mark was considered a failure by those in the industry. It seems now that 300,000 buys is the new benchmark for success. And while boxing sees their pay-per-view numbers hitting a plateau, the UFC’s numbers seem to be growing exponentially. Add to the fact that we are now in a universe where there is more broadband digital media opportunities than ever. Since the Tyson-Lewis bout in 2002, there are now 10 million additional homes with pay-per-view capabilities according to Bruce Leichtman, a former cable marketer on a story that appeared on Multichannel.com. So while those numbers keep growing, boxing’s numbers have stagnated sans De La Hoya.
The bottom line is that boxing on pay-per-view is diluted worse than pitching in Major League Baseball.
A few months ago, Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports, would admit to Tim Smith of the New York Daily News that 11 pay-per-view outings last year was, indeed, overkill. The very next day in Los Angeles at the opening press conference for this bout, I heard Taffet announce to the gathered audience that HBO Pay-Per-View had a banner, record-breaking campaign. So which is it? Is there a disconnect somewhere? There seems to be discrepancy in philosophies within the company.
&#I’d be happy to explain that,” said Taffet. “We had our second best year in history in 2006. But remarkably, while we did 11 events and generated $177 million in pay-per-view revenue – not one event broke a million buys. So we saw depth and a breath of support across more events than we’d seen before. That was very encouraging. However, for the health of the sport, we recognize there needs to be a rebalancing and there should be a mantra that when events are on pay-per-view, they’re important and they’re meaningful. Pay-per-view should stand for important, meaningful fights.”
Which is true, but they should also stand for fights that will resonate to the general public, not just the hardcore fan. Outside of De La Hoya’s return against Ricardo Mayorga (which garnered over 900,000 buys) no other event last year broke the 500,000 mark. There is a theory in hip-hop music that to go above a certain amount of record sales and to go platinum, you need to sell in the suburbs and midwest. Well, in boxing, going by that theory, boxing has it’s 300,000 to 350,000 core fanbase, but they have failed to consummate bouts that sell in Peoria.
Which means they should stay on outlets like HBO or Showtime (which has seemingly gotten out of the pay-per-view realm, thankfully.)
The dirty little secret of pay-per-view is that while many look at it as the Holy Grail, it’s actually the smallest forum that a fighter can perform on. And if you’re not a ‘Golden Boy’, it’s difficult to expand your fan base when your biggest bouts are on that medium. Remember, before he was exclusively on pay-per-view, Mike Tyson was an HBO staple in the late 80’s.
Yet nowadays, it’s gotten to a point where there have been competing pay-per-view shows on the same night. The exploitation of the same 300,000 to 350,000 loyalists continues. But where is the growth of the new generation of fans? I guess they must be at MMA shows.
Last year, HBO made a big fuss over the fact that they paid an exorbitant fee to put Jermain Taylor-Winky Wright (for between 5-6 million dollars) on their ‘Championship Boxing’ series. Well, the question here is, why wasn’t the same concession made for Barrera-Marquez? Could it be because the decision makers know that this fight will actually do some pay-per-view business while Taylor-Wright would’ve been a very shaky proposition? It seems to me that Latin fighters are actually punished for having fanbases that will support them financially, while their bigger, American counterparts get the bigger license fees on a regular basis despite lukewarm ratings, an inability to sell tickets and about the same range of pay-per-view buys.( But that’s another column for another day.)
I’ll say it right now, if HBO would stop overpaying their fighters – which means if you get paid $3-4 million and you can’t even sell 5,000 tickets and break a 4.0 in the Nielsens, you’re overpaid – and started doling out money to those who are really putting asses in the seats (which is the essence of business in professional boxing) and the participants had a more realistic market value, you’d have less pay-per-view fights. You hear it all the time from those in charge, “Well, we have to go pay-per-view to pay the fighters what they want.” Which may be true, but here’s the thing, when you overpay a boxer consistently in facing one mis-mandatory after another, well, what else are they going to expect for a real fight?
HBO could literally slash their license fees for every fighter under contract – and still be by far and away the best deal left on the table. In constantly bidding against themselves time and time again, they bid themselves out of the best fights being on HBO.
Most pay-per-views nowadays don’t not take place because a fight is THAT big. They happen because they simply have too many boxers under exclusive contracts, don’t have enough dates, and fighters have been receiving a distorted amount compared to their real value for years before. To draw a baseball analogy, pay too much for a set-up man, and you’re gonna get absolutely killed for a front line starter. It’s the Gil Meche theory; overpay a mediocre pitcher like him in the free agent market like the Kansas City Royals did this past off-season, and that just means that a Barry Zito or Jason Schmidt get that much more.
For the past few years, it seems that we have subscribed to HBO for the right to buy their pay-per-view shows.
But Taffet insists that their HBO ‘Championship Boxing’ series is their number one priority.
“Our franchise, absolutely, when we wake up everyday, is the live HBO ‘Championship Boxing’ business. We know that. That’s where we need to have a strong franchise for the health of the sport to be maximized. It’s always my preference to see great, live fights on HBO. Some fights are so big that they naturally go to pay-per-view. Then there are a number of others that are a little grayer. When it gets gray, I always prefer to see a fight live on HBO because the more fans that see these fighters and these matchups, the better the health of the sport and you know what? If that happens, I’ll never have to worry about the menu of pay-per-view fights because they’ll always be there.”
In addition to March 17th and May 5th, a June 9th pay-per-view show takes place at Madison Square Garden in New York between Miguel Cotto and Zab Judah, and then on July 21st between Bernard Hopkins and Winky Wright. Outside of De La Hoya-Mayweather (which will break records for a non-heavyweight affair), most likely none of these other events will break the 500,000 mark.
Years ago, they would’ve been on the regular HBO airwaves.
“In 2007, while we will do less fights on pay-per-view than we did in the previous year, I expect our revenues to be as strong as they were because we’ll have big fights and important fights that come towards the end of the year that will probably deliver an equal or greater amount of revenue,” says Taffet.
Quality versus quantity seems to be the real fight here.
NOT-SO-LEGENDARY NIGHT
Will they ever learn at HBO?
Get out of the business of promoting fighters with exclusive deals, and you won’t get stuck with mismatches like Wladimir Klitschko’s two-round blowout of Ray Austin. No blame should be put on Klitschko; he has a title he wanted to defend, and this was a mis-mandatory he had to fulfill. However, there is no reason why HBO had to subject its audience to this bout. Let the promoters do their job and put this show on with their own dime. Only problem is, K2 Promotions is another one of these shell companies propped up by HBO, so I guess they really had no choice but to show this embarrassment of a fight.
HBO traveled a multitude of time zones to show a bout that didn’t last five minutes – and this result was fairly predictable.
I’m guessing that HBO put at least $3-4 million dollars into this show. Now, just think of how many intriguing fights (especially below the jr. welterweight division) you could make with that type of money. Seriously, forget about good fights, but how many good rounds of boxing have you seen recently on HBO?
They have a slogan at HBO that says, ‘Building Legends, One Round at a Time’. Well, I’m still waiting for the next good one.
REAL DEAL INVESTIGATION
I read where Evander Holyfield – who faces Vinny Maddalone this Saturday night from Corpus Christi, Texas – will be conducting his own investigation into why his name has surfaced in some steroid/HGH allegations recently.
First person I’d interview if I were him is Lee Haney, who trained him in the early 90’s.
FINAL FLURRIES
It’s a good thing for Austin that Klitschko wasn’t wearing ‘puncher’s gloves’ in Cleto-Reyes, huh?….I read where 91-year old Roland Fortin has challenged 92 year-old Jack LaLanne to a fight. Scary thing is this could be more entertaining than most of the bouts I’ve seen on HBO recently….Some decent scraps this upcoming weekend as WBA super bantamweight titlist Celestino Caballero faces Ricardo Castillo (the younger brother of Jose Luis) on Telefutura on Friday night and on Saturday night the rematch between O’Neil Bell versus Jean-Marc Mormeck….I thought that HBO’s Countdown show for Barrera-Marquez (featuring our own Doug Fischer) was outstanding. They can still make a damn good documentary, I give them that….My Final Four: Florida, UCLA, Georgetown and Ohio St….
