Leading boxing promoter Eddie Hearn had another big year this year in his home country of the UK but also branched out properly to the US for the first time with his billion dollar deal with streaming giant DAZN.
DAZN separately did a huge deal with Golden Boy Promotions and the biggest star in US boxing Canelo Alvarez worth $365 million that took him off of pay per view in the US and onto the subscription service of DAZN.
After that bit of business specifically, many online signalled it as the end of pay per view in American boxing and promoter Eddie Hearn has been vocal in that viewpoint too.
Swiss – American based promoter Richard Schaefer disagrees with this notion however and points to other sports like Golf and others starting to get into the pay per view market in the US sports landscape at the moment.
Speaking to Barbershop Conversations YouTube (hat tip) he gave a detailed response on the subject:
Perception is often reality in terms of fans and media’ opinion in boxing which obviously has big implications on purchases of boxing fights but ultimately there is a cold, hard reality of things too in terms of who is right and who is actually wrong from a logical, rational and purely numbers standpoint.
If pay per view isn’t dead yet in US boxing the price point certainly is.
No one is going to pay 80-100 bucks per pay per view event anymore.
That price point is totally garbage now.
It needs to be brought way down — perhaps only for the very best fights should a maximum of $49.99 be charged moving forward.
There’s just too much choice out there now for American sports fans.
It’s a consumer market now.
