http://theboxingtruth.com/article.php?id=1903Oct 04, 2010 -
Here is an excerpt from an interview conducted with Ross Greenburg, by Thomas Hauser from Secondsout.com:
HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg calls the expansion of pay-per-view "the biggest economic issue in boxing" and says:
"I can't tell you that pay-per-view helps the sport because it doesn't. It hurts the sport because it narrows our audience, but it's a fact of life. Every time we try to make an HBO World Championship Boxing fight, we're up against mythical pay-per-view numbers. HBO doesn't make a lot of money from pay-per-view. There's usually a cap on what we can make. But the promoters and fighters insist on pay-per-view because that's where their greatest profits lie."
"It's a big problem," Greenburg continues. "It's getting harder and harder to put fighters like Manny Pacquiao on HBO World Championship Boxing. If Floyd Mayweather beats Oscar, he might never fight on HBO World Championship Boxing again. But if HBO stopped doing pay-per-view, the promoters would simply do it on their own [like Bob Arum did with Cotto-Malignaggi in June 2006] or find someone else who will do it for them."
$1.25 million.
That's the apparent figure HBO is throwing at the not-so-highly anticipated bout between Andre Berto and Freddie Hernandez.
For those of you that aren't aware, the average amount of money paid to promoters for ESPN's Friday Night Fight series averages about $30,000.
Using the most simplistic of math, the HBO brain-trust has apparently calculated that this bout between Berto and Hernandez is worth 40x more than the 120 or so bouts that ESPN equivalent would broadcast with their 40 dates.
So we have 120 bouts on ESPN Friday Night Fights or... one bout on HBO.
Is it just me or is there something drastically wrong with this proposition?
I'm not stating that Andre Berto should fight for free or that he should even perform for anything less than six-figures but $1.25 million for a bout nobody really cares about?
In the quotes from Ross Greenburg, he states that everytime HBO attempts to makes a HBO WCB fight, they are up against the MYTHICAL Pay-Per-View numbers. So now I must ask... based on the projections and MYTHICAL Pay-Per-View numbers for Andre Berto vs. Freddie Hernandez, what makes you bid $1.25 million on a fight of these proportions?
Here are the most recent Nielsen Media TV ratings for Andre Berto's three most recent outings as he headlined on HBO:
Berto-Quintana - 998,000 average live viewers
Berto-Urango 935,000 average live viewers
Berto-Collazo - 832,000 average live viewers
These figures are absolutely average if not below average. An example would be the Shane Mosley-Antonio Margarito bout generating a live audience of 1.9 million live viewers back in January of 2009 incomparison to the Berto-Collazo bout which aired one week earlier that drew less than half that amount. James Kirkland vs. Joel Julio generated 1.4 million live viewers in April of 2009.
So now taking into consideration the Pay-Per-View figures for bouts involving Hopkins-Jones II, Diaz-Marquez II, and Mora-Mosley... what would be the "MYTHICAL" projection for Berto vs. Hernandez?
Am I crazy or does that fight fail to generate 10,000 buys on it's own?
I'd even go as far to say that it falls short of 1,000 buys.
It might not even break 100 to be honest.
Andre Berto is not a Pay-Per-View attraction in any sense of any word being that he cannot draw a paying crowd to his live events and cannot draw above average television ratings for his bouts. Yet, somehow... someway, HBO deems it necessary to continue paying him seven-figure paydays to grace their airwaves.
It's this type of situation that wreaks havoc on the boxing industry here in the U.S. as you have fighters who generate nothing in terms of a real fan base or revenue generating capabilities due to their lazy promoters who simply mooch off of their relationships for easy six-figure paydays.
For $1.25 million you could make a triple-header of:
Chris John-Celestino Caballero
Jorge Linares-Ricky Burns
Beibut Shumenov-Tarvoris Cloud
That'd be a fair offer for a solid triple-header allowing all the combatants to make well over six-figure paydays if divided right down the middle.
But it's ok.
We have the pleasure of seeing the HBO boxing budget spent overpaying for match-ups no one deems interesting.
Thanks.
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