Top Rank boss Bob Arum announced earlier this week that he has received the formal bid from Showtime to air the November 12th Pacquiao vs. Marquez III pay per view fight.
After reviewing Showtime’s bid along with HBO’s, an announcement of which network will air the fight is expected from Arum in the next few days. He told The Ring:
“We received Showtime’s offer today,”
“We will review it and analyze it and make a decision probably within the next week.”
Despite personal preferences from many fans, there is currently no favorite as to which will land the event although the recent shake up at HBO could well play a part in Arum’s decision.
Arum claimed prior to Mosley vs. Pacquiao that part of the reason for taking his business elsewhere initially was down to the deteriorating relationship he had with HBO top brass.
Former HBO sports president Ross Greenburg is now gone however, and many believe current vice president Kery Davis will be soon to follow him out the door.
No replacement has been named as of yet for Greenburg and because of existing contracts and obligations, holding off on a new president seems a prudent move.
Any replacement for Greenburg named now would have little influence over bouts already scheduled for the rest of the year, and as such Arum dealing directly with the HBO bosses rather than the sports department is probably a good move.
That being the case Pacquiao vs. Marquez III could still go either way, and will likely come down to which network can help them sell the most pay per views.
Pacquiao’s May 7th fight against Shane Mosley aired on Showtime pay per view with advertising on parent company CBS, achieving sales of around 1.3 million buys. Exact figures for some reason are still difficult to come by.
By comparison Mosley’s 2009 bout with Floyd Mayweather achieved 1.4 million pay per view buys on HBO, and came at a time when Mosley was regarded as a much stronger opponent.
Undoubtedly then the fact that Pacquiao’s fight with Mosley was aired on Showtime rather than previous industry standard HBO helped to sell a lot of extra pay per views.
Whether HBO will have been able to draw support from parent company Time Warner in a similar way to Showtime’s support from CBS will likely go a long way to deciding which lands the fight.
An interesting aside is what kind of deal Floyd Mayweather received from HBO for his September tilt against WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz.
Mayweather has been a staunch supporter of HBO and as the current highest paid fighter in the sport, it would appear that he has good reason.
Showtime rolled out the big guns to lure Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley away from HBO earlier this year and are presumably doing so again to try to secure Pacquiao vs. Marquez III.
Could Mayweather, in not courting every possible option, be settling for less than he could be getting?
