IT?S one of the biggest digital broadcast deals struck in boxing history valued around $500 million, and unfortunately for Jeff Horn, Terence Crawford is ?the poster boy? for the game-changing move.
Top Rank has secured an eight-year deal with sports network ESPN to show 30 fights a year on their new app, EPSN+, and the first event on the digital platform will be Australian world champion Horn defending his WBO welterweight title against Crawford this weekend in Las Vegas.
This is justifiably why Horn feels like a pawn piece in a chess match played by Top Rank boss Bob Arum; it?s clear that Crawford is the preferred winner for the fight at the MGM Grand.
It won?t be screened on regular television in the US in order to drive subscriptions for the new app.
With so much money on the line and Crawford as the face of the app, it would be disastrous for Top Rank and ESPN if Horn defeated him in an event preserved for audiences watching on phones, laptops and tablets.
?Crawford is the poster boy, because he?s American,? said Arum, referencing the difficulties for foreign fighters like Horn cutting through to engage the lucrative US audience.
Arum refused to talk numbers on the TV deal with the Daily Telegraph, only saying: ?It?s a lot of money.
?We?ll continue to do major pay-per-view events, but fewer. And then we?ll have this platform to advertise it.?
But sources say it is close to $60 million per year over the eight years, with a possible two-year extension option at the end.
Viewers pay around $US5 per month to access the app, that includes archived fights, promotional documentaries and interviews, and the live Top Rank events.
With so much at stake, Crawford is the man Arum is pinning his hopes on to lead the organisation into a new era of gold in the digital sphere.
?I don?t think it would please ESPN if Terence lost,? Arum said.
?But again, it helps the brand, it helps boxing, if you get upsets like this. People like to watch sports where an athlete rises to the occasion and the result becomes unpredictable.?
Top Rank has struck first in the move towards streaming live fights with this ground-breaking deal, although insiders say Arum?s rival Al Haymon ? adviser to Floyd Mayweather ? is now working on a similar deal with the US?s Fox Sports.
The traditional pay-per-view model of boxing is on the wane as the next generation demands content on their devices, to be accessible wherever they are.
Arum detailed how significant this new foray into showing fights exclusively on an app could be for boxing?s future revenue stream.
?With ESPN behind us and the ESPN+ app with bandwidth that is infinite, we?ll continue to do linear platforms, but the linear can only do two fights whereas on the app we can show all eight fights on a card,? Arum said.
?There will be 12 events where the main guys will be shown on the app, not the linear channels. That will enable us to do more advertising, because there?s no band restrictions like there is on the linear. They?re limited to how many commercials they can run, but on EPSN+ there?s no limit.?
