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 It's a price that he and millions more will pay to watch an
undefeated Floyd Mayweather take on Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas
on Saturday in one of the year's biggest sporting events.
"You can definitely get that much and possibly even more for the
kind of fight that is going to happen Saturday," said Jaimes,
who is used to paying $50 or $60 for a PPV fight. "It is
no-holds-barred pricing."
The showdown between the two top fighters, years in the making,
is expected to smash pay-per-view records, both in terms of buys
and revenue. Mayweather's defeat of Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 has
the buy record of 2.48 million households, while his 2013
showdown with Canelo Alvarez has the revenue record of $152
million.
The pairing has also brought together rival networks HBO and
Showtime to co-produce and co-distribute a boxing match. The
only other time they have done so was when Mike Tyson fought
Lennox Lewis in 2002.
"Given what we are seeing in the early ordering part is that
this will be a very, very successful night," said Ken Hershman,
president of HBO Sports.
Hershman, however, won't make projections, noting that they are
working with "an untested retail price point" and they don't
know how that will impact what he calls the "grouping
phenomenon" of viewers.
Jaimes, for one, is probably fairly typical in that he is
gathering with family and friends to watch the fight and they
will likely split the cost. The standard broadcast costs $90,
but high definition is the only way to watch boxing, he said.
If 3 million households purchase the standard PPV package, that
means $270 million in revenue. But some are predicting the fight
could be seen in up to 4 million homes.
RIVAL NETWORKS
That the boxing world can break pay-per-view records at a time
when the sport has faded from cultural prominence speaks to the
uniqueness of the match-up.
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"This is going to be a data point that is going to eclipse previous
data points," said Ed Desser, president of consultancy Desser Sports
Media, Inc. "But I don't think you can come to the conclusion that
boxing is back in the mainstream."
Desser believes that unlike baseball, basketball or football, boxing
suffered from not having a league or a commissioner looking out for
the long-term interests of the product.
That left the premium cable networks - HBO owned by Time Warner Inc.
and CBS Corp-owned Showtime - developing the sport as part of their
broader business of building diverse audiences and programing for
their subscription services.
HBO has Filipino southpaw Pacquiao under contract, while
Mayweather's fights are shown on Showtime.
Pacquiao, who is 57-5-2, agreed to 40 percent of fight revenues, to
Mayweather's 60 percent, and together they take the biggest part of
the pay-per-view haul, the most lucrative revenue stream of the
fight.
HBO and Showtime stand to make a small cut from pay-per-view,
splitting between them just 7.5 percent of revenue.
"We are not in the pay-per-view business, per se, we are in the HBO
business," said Hershman. "We use pay-per-view as a tactic and a
tool where necessary and this is obviously one of those times. We
could never afford to put a fight like this on HBO."
As to putting aside the rivalry between the two networks, Hershman
said they don't always see things the same way, but that this
collaboration was working well.
"We'll go back to bashing each other's heads on May 3," he said.
(Reporting by Mary Milliken; Editing by Frank Pingue)
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