No one enjoys dropping $50 on a sporting event, particularly on a televised event. It seems that as the months pass the number of pay-per-view boxing events proliferate, sucking our wallets dry. Is it fair? Can’t you watch other sports for free on television? Why should we have to unload half a Benjamin just to see a collection of fights, particularly when there is no guarantee that they will actually be worth the price of admission?
In the April issue of The Ring magazine, Ivan Goldman takes ESPN to task for a recent press conference the network held in which the new ESPN PPV series was announced. Goldman likened the event to a ‘mugger telling his victims they’re getting a deal of a lifetime.” Goldman’s view is shared by many, if not most, boxing fans. His derision is a fair expression of the current boxing fandom zeitgeist, and he’s to be commended for expressing in boxing’s premiere print magazine what many of the rest of us feel every time we shrink our tiny bankrolls to fatten the green mountain on which Don King sleeps.
However, Goldman and the rest of us who share his view are wrong.
The question regarding the fairness of PPV’s is more complicated than we often allow. Sure, $50 is a huge price for anything as unimportant in the grand scheme of things as a sporting event. But don’t we pay as much or more to watch football events? Try taking your family to a baseball game, and see if you get out of the affair having spent less than $100 after you have paid for parking, four tickets, $4 hotdogs, $3 colas, and a $5 cotton candy for your kid. The same is true for absolutely any professional sporting event.
With a PPV boxing event you can watch from the comfort of your own home, eating anything you want for much more reasonable prices. You can invite your friends over, splitting the cost, and bringing the total down to dollars apiece. The hefty price tag is actually a mirage, given the possibility of tapping the wallets of all your friends.
Of course, that’s a boxing match on television. At least when you are fleeced at the ballpark, you are at the ballpark! You are paying for the experience. Sure, and that defense works for baseball, football, soccer, hockey (if there were hockey this year), and any other sport you can think of that involves teams in an arena or field.
But it should be remembered that boxing is a very different animal. Boxing does not consist of geographically tied teams who play regularly in a local arena. Boxing is a sport in which individuals compete, sometimes as little as once or twice a year. The basic economy of the sport dictates that there are few venues where boxing events can successfully be held. You can’t just drop the upcoming Pacquiao-Morales fight in Denver, and expect to sell out the house. They have to fight in Las Vegas, or another major venue accessible to a certain fan demographic, if anything like a profitable gate is to be expected. Regardless, the fight is a singular phenomenon, and other than the thousands of lucky fans who have the pleasure of watching the event in person, the rest of us simply have to watch on television. There is no way to avoid this essential fact of the sport. Why not drop a few bucks on the show? Given that the $50 price tag is an illusion, since we can divide the cost among as many friends as we can fit in front of our televisions, it’s not a bad deal. The alternative is not seeing the fight at all.
But why pay anything, many will respond? Televised sporting is free, is it not? We can watch our local NFL team play every weekend during the season for no extra charge, so why not boxing? The answer is that most boxing is essentially free, or at least brought to us for the fee of the cable channel on which it is aired (a price we pay for just about every other show we watch). However, does the Packers fan in Dallas get to see Green Bay games every week for free? The answer is, ‘Absolutely not.’ That fan has to purchase a satellite system or a pay-to-view cable channel. And that is the price for viewing every game, not just select events as is the case with boxing PPV.
There is one more reason for the boxing fan to allow the periodic pain of the PPV price tag with, if not joy, then acceptance: the boxers deserve to be paid. Boxing fans pay lip service to the very real danger prizefighters of all skill levels subject themselves to each time they fight – in fact, each time they spar. Perhaps more than most other athletes, successful boxers must submit to a vicious training regimen to get over in a career that, at best, will keep them employed into their thirties – in the rarest of cases, a few years longer. And so few ever achieve a level of success that even pays the bills. Don’t the boxers who reach the highest levels of the sport deserve a big pay day to tide them over into their retirement? Don’t they deserve to be rewarded for the sacrifices they make, and the entertainment they provide?
The fact is, given the singular nature of boxing events, the only way to generate big revenue for big paydays is to make the money that television brings. Once on television, there are two primary revenue streams: commercials and PPV. For the big pay days, PPV is the best bet.
Does a lot of the money generated by PPV go into the pockets of network executives, big time promoters, managers and all the other folks who either make boxing happen or leech off the prizefighters? Sure. But a portion goes to the fighter, and the only way to bring elite paychecks to elite boxers is to showcase them on PPV once in a while.
Having made my case, I should, in the cause of fairness, point out some major flaws in the current PPV system. Boxing PPV often provides a handful of fights that present very little in the way of drama. PPV’s over the past year have been less than stellar, and some of the problem has been the matchmaking. One immediately thinks of the recent heavyweight PPV’s. These heavyweight fights should never have been included in PPV shows. There is a difference between elite fighters earning an elite check, and the best of the worst division in the sport getting a big payday for no discernable reason. When Larry Merchant opens a PPV broadcast by comparing the fights to a used car lot full of broken down Fords, then there is a problem in PPV land.
Another problem is that PPV shows are often two fight affairs laden with endless filler material. This is particularly irritating, given the fact that boxing cards invariably have up to eight fights scheduled. Even if the undercard fights are not the best match-ups in the world, they are better than thirty minutes of overproduced filler.
While HBO and Showtime need to get their acts together in this regard, ESPN looks to be doing things right in its upcoming broadcast. The Friday Night Fights series has blown the roof off of boxing in recent weeks, and there is every reason to believe ESPN’s PPV will continue the trend. With an excellent card including Kermit Cintron-Antonio Margarito, Juan Diaz-Ebo Elder, Shane Mosley-David Estrada and Jameel McCline-Calvin Brock, I can’t wait to split the $29.99 price tag among my buds.
So, invite ten friends over for a party. Have each one bring a few drinks or a bowl of guacamole and chips. Divide the price of the fight among you, and lose about $10 after the cost of the fight and snacks. Have a great time among friends and family, and thank the powers that be that even the most expensive PPV is infinitely cheaper than the most routine game hosted by your local losing professional baseball team.
