With the retirement of Oscar De La Hoya, the business of boxing has a huge void; not necessarily from a fighting standpoint - long before he was bludgeoned into retirement by Manny Pacquiao in December, De La Hoya had been a declining, part-time fighter for several years - but the industry lost its pay-per-view clean-up hitter. His last two pay-per-view outings, both losing efforts, garnered 2.5 million and 1.25 million purchases.
He retired as the game’s all-time pay-per-view king, generating over 14.1 million buys and nearly $700 million in revenue throughout the course of his career on HBO Pay-Per-View.
This Saturday night from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the biggest event of 2009 takes place when Pacquiao faces Ricky Hatton for the jr. welterweight championship of the world. Pacquiao has become an international figure and Hatton comes with his own sizable fanbase from England. So the question is, can either of these men fill the vacuum left by 'the Golden Boy', and can this event tally over a million buys, a magical mark that has only been reached a few times when either De La Hoya or heavyweights like Tyson and Holyfield were involved.
"Oh, yeah, we're going to well exceed that," said an effusive Bob Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, last Tuesday. "I'm telling you, De La Hoya-Pacquiao never sold out and never came close to selling out. This fight, you cannot buy a ticket, everything is sold."
On this day, Arum was in San Francisco on his way to the home of the Giants, AT&T Park, where Pacquiao was met by an overwhelming reception by a huge throng of his fans on Filipino Heritage Night on April 21st. A sell-out crowd would arrive, and commemorative bobbleheads of 'the Pac Man' quickly ran out.
"So it begins to tell you something," said Arum. "There's a much bigger buzz than there was on De La Hoya-Pacquiao. "This seems counter-intuitive since De La Hoya was involved. How could this be? Because everyone was convinced that it was another De La Hoya opportunity to make money and he was fighting a guy that had no chance," opined Arum.
The veteran promoter believes that because of his dominance over De La Hoya, Pacquiao now transcends the Philippines. And with Hatton being the biggest draw in Europe, that worldwide, this promotion carries more weight.
"Globally, it's way bigger. Pacquiao is not the same Pacquiao. Pacquiao has become an international star, an internationally known person," said Arum, citing the fact that Pacquiao was nominated by Time Magazine as one of the most 100 influential people in the world. "I mean, where else do you have CNN doing an hour show on a fighter? Well, he's not just a fighter."
Arum's counterpart at Golden Boy Promotions, Richard Schaefer is a bit more cautious.
“The magical one million number has only been reached by a handful of fighters with Oscar being the one in the last few years. Short of Oscar, you didn't really have any other fighter, period, who, on his own, reached a million homes. So Oscar worked hard on building up to be able to break that million mark, and I think a million for any card which doesn't have a De La Hoya on it, it's just a very, very tall order," said the Swiss banker, who believes that the current economy will have no real bearing on the performance of Pacquiao-Hatton.
Schaefer believes that expectations shouldn't be out of kilter with reality, adding, "In today's boxing world, breaking a half-million homes, in my opinion, is a mega-event, and breaking 750,000 homes, you're pretty much breaking into the top 20 or 30 or so, all-time. Breaking a million homes, the air gets even thinner. But I just want to say, if you have 500,000 homes, that's $25 million, gross revenue, just from the pay-per-view alone and you add the gate and the foreign and the sponsors and all these other revenues, you're having a $45 million night or more. That, in my opinion, is a success for ANY sporting event. So we need to be careful - and when I say we, I mean the media, the promoters, the fighters - not to set our goals, our expectations, at unrealistic levels.
"But having said all of that, I have to admit, I look at the signs and I compare the gate, how early people are buying closed-circuit seats in Las Vegas, which usually only happens in big events. So when you start seeing 2,000 closed-circuit seats sold, now when you see the gate sold out, when you see the kind of promotion, billboards everywhere, you see the kind of buzz with 24/7. You look at all these indicators, I sure hope we are going to break a million homes."
The total live gate for this week’s fight is approximately $9 million (to put that into comparison, De La Hoya-Mayweather, which was the most lucrative pay-per-view ever, had a record-setting gate of around $18 million). Judging by the reception that both fighters received on Tuesday afternoon for their grand arrivals to the MGM Grand, there is certainly a buzz that hasn't been felt for quite awhile in Las Vegas, which has learned the hard way that it is anything but 'recession-proof'.
They have dubbed this promotion, 'The Battle of East and West'. But that may be the problem, as neither Pacquiao nor Hatton hails from the United States. And while they bring a strong constituency with them to the dance, they don't have the crossover appeal of De La Hoya, who seemed to magnetically pull females and casual fans to his events en masse.
Most industry insiders believe that Pacquiao-De La Hoya will do in the neighborhood of 600-700,000 buys domestically.
Mark Taffet of HBO Pay-Per-View told Maxboxing, via email, "There are a lot of excellent PPV fights which generate 300,000-400,000 buys. But very few fights generate 500,000 or more buys and become true megafights. Pacquiao-Hatton has a lot of great things going for it which makes it a true PPV megafight. It's the first megafight in the post-De La Hoya era, so there is a lot attention focused on the event. Both Pacquiao and Hatton have participated in a PPV megafight already, with 2008's DLH-Pacquiao generating 1.25 million buys and 2007's Mayweather-Hatton fight generating 915,000 buys. Each of these fighters enjoys a strong connection to their fans and both are appearing in their second 24/7 series. There hasn't been a PPV megafight since December's DLH-Pacquiao, so there is a real pent-up demand with consumers."
Taffet's last point is important, as unlike the past several years, there has not been an over-abundance of 'major' pay-per-view events; in fact, this is HBO Pay-Per-View's first foray of 2009. Also, Pacquiao-Hatton has a very good chance of becoming a slugfest. On the downside, there is backlash from many fans against purchasing any pay-per-view events (which can range from merely not buying the event and/or watching an illegal internet feed). Not helping the cause is that the undercard, well, let's just say it doesn't have any bouts on the level of Simon Brown-Maurice Blocker or Azumah Nelson-Jeff Fenech. (But the belief is that while the hard-core fans care about the lead-up bouts, pay-per-view sales are driven by the main event. Remember, Butterbean and Mia St. John were featured on many De La Hoya undercards in the late 90's by Arum with seemingly no negative effect.)
"I know Arum is telling people it's going to break the all-time record and I think it's good, you try to shoot for the stars," said Schaefer. "But at the same time, I always want to be realistic."
Well, c'mon, Arum would never engage in hyperbole. That's just not his style.
Source: maxboxing.com
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