Yeah, that’s a lot of money for a fairly meaningless fight.
Boxing icon Manny Pacquiao (60-7-2, 39 KOs) recently left Top Rank and has joined the Premier Boxing Champions roster, and in less than two weeks, Pacquiao will be taking on Adrien Broner (33-3-1, 24 KOs) on a Showtime pay-per-view event in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s Pacquiao’s first United States fight since his win over Jessie Vargas in November 2016, and Broner’s debut as a pay-per-view headliner.
At stake on January 19th — yes, this is the same night as UFC on ESPN+: Cejudo vs. Dillashaw — is Pacquiao’s WBA secondary welterweight title, which means close to nothing since Keith Thurman is the real WBA champion in that dreadful sanctioning body’s most convoluted of belt systems. Pacquiao’s last two fights have been on ESPN and ESPN+ respectively, so this is a return to PPV for him, and the cost is uh… not fan friendly.
It was revealed on Tuesday that this card has been priced at $74.99 (for HD viewing), the same as Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury last month. That event exceeded pre-fight projections and topped out at around 325,000 buys. When Pacquiao fought Vargas two years ago, it did 300,000 buys, the 40-year-old’s worst number since 2008 when he fought David Diaz.
Pacquiao is obviously set to make a lot of money that would otherwise price his fights out of airing them on regular Showtime or even FOX Sports, but while this isn’t a bad matchup, it really is not “$75” compelling for pay-per-view. At least not for me, and I suspect many other fans as well. On the plus side for those in the United Kingdom, it’s being shown on ITV Box Office at no extra charge.
As former HBO Sports Marketing executive Evan Rutkowski put it, if you buy sub-par PPVs such as this one, you’re effectively pushing for more of them. The UFC has a set schedule of 12 whereas boxing fluctuates on a yearly basis, so this is more geared to boxing, but may apply to MMA too.
Nevertheless, Bloody Elbow will have extensive coverage of Pacquiao vs. Broner, which features a genuinely interesting co-main event between light heavyweight contenders Badou Jack (22-1-3, 13 KOs) and Marcus Browne (22-0, 16 KOs).