Although we waited forever and ever and ever and ever, a news release from Golden Boy Promotions in conjunction with Mayweather Promotions Friday tells us that last month’s pay-per-view fight garnered 1.25 million pay-per-view buys and the second-highest non-heavyweight gross earnings in PPV history.
But what does it all mean? That is, in the ongoing “who’s the bigger star” debate with Manny Pacquiao, what does this figure tell us? What were the variables that made the buy rate higher or lower than perhaps it should have been? My short answers to those two questions: At least in the United States, it’s still Mayweather; and there are variables in both directions, but I am of the mind that this figure — while excellent for any boxing pay-per-view — is lower than anyone wanted.
A note on veracity, before we proceed: Since the networks usually announce these figures, not the promoters, there was some understandable skepticism about this figure, as there was to a far lesser degree with the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley numbers. So I picked up a phone and sent some e-mails. I couldn’t get anyone at HBO to comment on the record, but an HBO official said that “these numbers are indeed accurate.” We’ll talk more about this in a moment, too.
Richard Schaefer, Golden Boy’s CEO, had predicted beforehand that the fight would do 1.5 million buys. Promoters are always overhyping estimated PPV buys, so that’s no surprise. Originally, I thought 1.5 million was a realistic figure. That, though, was before we knew they would be charging $59.95 (standard) and $69.95 (high-def), or $5 more than any pay-per-view ever. And that was also before the undercard fight that had everyone buzzing most — Erik Morales vs. Lucas Matthysse — lost Matthysse to an illness.
In this economy and with people dropping their cable and satellite subscriptions in record numbers, that’s a very impressive number. Of course, those conditions have been in existence for past pay-per-views (although the subscription rates have been dropping ever-more over time), so it is not, overall, extraordinary for it to have mustered those buy rates compared to other PPVs.
