posted November 20, 2009 at 16:40 EST in Boxing Articles
Pacquiao vs. Cotto Fight Brings in Record PPV Numbers
by Charles Jay
Pacman, Cotto Score At Box Office; Floyd's Next
Welterweights - Date TBA
(Wager good till December 31)
Floyd Mayweather -165
Manny Pacquiao +125
Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Angel Cotto may have waged all-out war last Saturday night, but they were a love match at the box office.
The WBO welterweight title fight has drawn an estimated 1.25 million buys, which translates into $70 million in revenue, and that does not count overseas revenue. The satellite home market was well-represented, accounting for about 48% of the action. Because of the way billing cycles work from the different cable and satellite systems that participated, it may be some time before all the money trickles in, which will almost certainly make the figures even higher.
Pacquiao's take could be as high as $22 million, while Cotto will make $12 million.
Pacquiao is a major star in the Phillipines, where activity on the streets comes to a stop whenever he fights, but as far as the U.S. take was concerned, Cotto's neck of the woods was the big winner. The island of Puerto Rico produced 110,000 subscriptions, its most ever, and a monstrous total considering that the U.S. territory is populated by four million people. While Cotto may have lost the fight, he certainly maintains a lot of his marketability.
There were two pay-per-view fights this year that topped the million mark in buys - the recent Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight was the other - and that hasn't happened since 1999, with the Trinidad-De La Hoya and Holyfield-Lewis fights.
Marquez was not a small part of the PPV draw, but Mayweather is generally considered to be the established pay-per-view star, and with the rise of Pacquiao, who drew over two million total buys for his fights against Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and is a serious challenger to the title of #1 "pound-for-pound" fighter, a match between the two is regarded not only as a natural pairing, but one that would shatter all records for pay-per-view boxing.
Negotiations for the fight are slated to begin soon.
Bob Arum, who scored very big with last weekend's fight, contends that the parties involved would be "idiots" to slow down the momentum that has been generated by the encouraging PPV ventures, but if past experience has been any indication, coming to a deal won't be a picnic, and things are bound to get personal at times, since Arum, who holds promotional rights to Pacquiao, had a rough breakup with Mayweather, as he did with De La Hoya.
In a fight such as this, both sides are going to be looking for the advantage in terms of the purse. It's not just about money; it's also about ego, at least for the fighters.
The promoters also have to be satisfied; stories published about these negotiations have said that Arum will be "representing" Pacquiao, while Golden Boy Promotions "represents" Mayweather. Actually - and this is a concept writers find hard to understand - managers represent fighters (unless the fighter is representing himself); technically speaking, the promotional organizations represent their own interests.
They have to be satisfied with a deal and then they, in turn, make a deal with the fighters, unless they are acting in the capacity of an "agent" for a pre-determined percentage fee, in which instance someone else becomes the promoter.
In the case of Mayweather, it appears as if Leonard Ellerbe, who is listed as a Mayweather "advisor," has given the green light to Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer to hammer out a deal.
The television apparatus, in effect, becomes the real "promoter," and in this case it would be HBO pay-per-view. Fighters are guaranteed a certain amount of money, but to minimize the downside, there is a "back end" built into the deal, where the combatants can earn relative to their drawing power, and that is what accounted for the boost in both Pacquiao's and Cotto's take from their fight.
While we can debate all day about whether these kinds of numbers mean that boxing is "back" or that it still needs to be "saved," there is little doubt that the "24/7" programs that HBO has used to pump up interest in these pay-per-view productions has been a dead solid winner, because it allows the audience to get to know the fighters on a much more intimate basis. According to Mayweather, the whole concept for "24/7" originated with him.
In the BetUS boxing futures odds that are already up on the fight, Mayweather is listed as a -165 favorite, with Pacquiao at +125.
