AMERICA AT LARGE:Economic situation not reflected in the current exorbitant pay-per-view prices for big fights, writes George Kimball
"If the handwriting wasn't on the wall by then, it surely should have become obvious over the next six weeks. While Hopkins' upset of Pavlik ranked as an aesthetic success, in promoter Bob Arum's own admission "the pay-per-view numbers sucked".
IT'S THE economy, stupid! The catchphrase, coined by Bill Clinton adviser-turned-television pundit James Carville, was prominently posted on the wall at the Little Rock headquarters of the successful 1992 presidential candidate, and in a slightly altered form - It's the stupid economy! - it became something of a clarion call as the recent presidential election played out.
With president-elect Barack Obama wrestling with the quagmire he has been bequeathed by the Bush administration, the nation's CEOs are already lining up at the public trough. Hoping for a piece of the same pie Wall Street bankers are already dividing up, the Big Three automobile manufacturers have apparently decided that continuing to conspicuously attach their corporate logos to big-time sporting events while simultaneously grovelling for the public assistance they insist is necessary to their survival might be a bit unseemly.
General Motors, which had purchased $77 million dollars worth of Super Bowl advertising over the past 15 years, revealed a few weeks ago that it would not be running ads on next February's telecast at all. Then, a few days ago, GM, which is looking for a $10 billion taxpayer bailout, announced that it was ending its nine-year association with Tiger Woods, thus terminating an arrangement that had paid Eldrick some $7 million annually.
The National Football League has responded to the downturn by reducing ticket prices for January's play-off games by an across-the-board average of 10 per cent, and for the first time in its 43-year history, the cost of some Super Bowl tickets has been slashed as well, from $800 to a mere $500 apiece.
Yet in the face of this obvious trend, the pay-per-view price for the Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas on Saturday week has been pegged at a world record-equalling $54.95. Should it follow in the footsteps of this fall's other two big PPV fights - Bernard Hopkins-Kelly Pavlik in October, and Joe Calzaghe-Roy Jones Jr. earlier this month - both its promoters and participants (and in the case of one of the principals in the December 6th fight, they are one and the same) could be in for a rude awakening.
De La Hoya-Pacquiao is an intriguing fight, to be sure, but it wasn't exactly one the public was clamouring for. A non-title match-up of a 35-year-old boxer who has lost three of his last six fights against an opponent who has only one fight as a lightweight making his 147-pound debut is, well, interesting, but is it the sort of attraction that is going to save pay-per-view in this day and age?
If you asked a man on the street to name one boxer today, the first name off his lips would probably be that of Mike Tyson, who hasn't fought in three and a half years. If you asked him to name a British boxer, he'd probably come up with Lennox Lewis's name, not those of Calzaghe or Ricky Hatton. And if you pinned him down to an active boxer, one who'd fought in the past year, De La Hoya is probably the best he could do.
That Oscar continues to occupy a place in the public consciousness is probably attributable to the same mentality that would lead the same Everyfan to name Tiger Woods, who hasn't swung a club in anger since June, as the top "current" golfer, rather than that other guy who just happens to have won the last two Majors.
That lingering cachet of De La Hoya's name was evinced a year and a half ago, when Oscar (then 2-2 in his last four fights) earned upwards of $25 million for his losing effort against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Mayweather-De La Hoya, with 2.15 million buys, shattered the extant record (the previous standard of 1.99 million came in the infamous 1997 Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson "Bite Fight"), and as the bout's co-promoter, the Golden Boy probably doubled his announced take.
In order to secure the Pacquiao fight, De La Hoya agreed to a 62-38 division of the PPV revenues, against guarantees of $15 million (for himself) and $11 million (Manny's end). And when the 16,000-seat MGM Grand sold out for a live gate of $17 million in a matter of hours, co-promoters Richard Schaefer (the CEO of De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions) and Bob Arum were rosily predicting a million and a half buys. Interestingly, the box-office run in Vegas came less than a week after the Lehman Brothers' collapse, and preceded the subsequent meltdown of Washington Mutual by a matter of days.
If the handwriting wasn't on the wall by then, it surely should have become obvious over the next six weeks. While Hopkins' upset of Pavlik ranked as an aesthetic success, in promoter Arum's own admission "the pay-per-view numbers sucked," with a reported 190,000 buys.
Three weeks later came Calzaghe-Jones at Madison Square Garden. Although a heavily-papered house brought the live attendance to over 14,000, the pay-per-view returns failed to reach 225,000 - "between dismal and a disaster," an HBO source told the boxing website SecoundsOut.com.
From a boxing standpoint, De La Hoya-Pacquiao should hardly rank as an attraction more compelling than the two aforementioned bombs, but between the circus atmosphere with which it has been surrounded since its inception (the promoters obtained clearance from Homeland Security to make the official New York announcement at the Statue of Liberty) to HBO's "24/7" promotional series to an all-out blitz being conducted on the internet, it figures to top its immediate PPV predecessors. (The Calzaghe-Jones sale may not even have recouped HBO's production costs for the "24/7" series preceding that fight.)
To be sure, the economic climate in Britain and Ireland isn't significantly better than that of the US market, but while Sky subscribers across the pond may be grousing over being charged PPV fees to watch Amir Khan try to bounce back from a loss, the overseas price is by comparison a bargain.
Consider, for €21.95 (£14.95), Sky Box Office viewers not only get De La Hoya-Pacquiao but the live card taking place at the Excel Arena - Khan vs. Portmarnock's Oisin Fagan, the Enzo Maccarinelli-Johnathan Banks cruiserweight title fight, Nicky Cook's WBO 130-lb. defence against Steven Foster, and, if anybody cares, a bout featuring Audley Harrison - for roughly half of what US customers are being charged for De La Hoya-Pacquiao and what is by any standard an undistinguished Las Vegas undercard.
The lion's share of PPV buys don't come until the night of the event, so nobody's panicking - yet. Its promoters still speak rosily of a million and a half buys for De La Hoya-Pacquiao, but the guessing is here that they'd settle for half that number right now. The verdict of the public, in any case, will speak volumes about the outlook for pay-per-view boxing in the age of the stupid economy.
