By Vince D’Writer: For some unwarranted reason, someone thought it was a good idea to have a third fight between undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin. Marketing for this fight focused on the bad blood between the two boxers, as boxing promoter Eddie Hearn emphasized how much the boxers hated each other and predicted that the trilogy fight would be boxing’s night of the year.
On Saturday, September 17 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, Canelo Alvarez won a fight that lacked action and was described by fans who attended the fight as a difficult event to watch. Many fans left the arena shaking their heads due to the fact that the trilogy fight was a disappointment and did not live up to the hype. The actual event was underwhelming for fans, and the newly released PPV numbers will amount to a costly disappointment for DAZN.
According to veteran boxing reporter Dan Rafael’s sources, the Canelo vs. Triple G trilogy fight generated between 550,000 and 575,000 pay-per-view buys in the United States. With a combined $75 million purse payout for Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin alone, DAZN needed roughly 600,000 purchases just to break even. The numbers also revealed the fact that only 200,000 non-subscribers ordered the fight, which was priced at $64.99 for DAZN subscribers and $84.99 for non-subscribers.
During promotion for the fight, Eddie Hearn predicted that the trilogy fight would generate close to a million pay-per-view buys. The reported numbers are well below Hearn’s prediction, and the question is, how can a boxing star like Canelo generate such pedestrian numbers? To begin with, the trilogy fight did not have any kind of buzz due to the fact that boxing fans were not excited about this fight. It was just a fight the fans didn’t ask for. Alvarez was coming off a loss and Golovkin showed signs of decline every time he entered the ring.
In the interest of fairness, it should also be noted that the trilogy’s fight numbers could have been affected by a high amount of illegal streaming and online piracy. The practice of broadcasting fights has become a major issue in the sport of boxing because it affects projected numbers and, more importantly, it affects profit margins. In the age we live in, piracy is going to exist, but the only way to counter this problem is to give fans the matches they are willing to pay for.
Despite the trilogy’s poor pay-per-view numbers, Canelo Alvarez remains the face of boxing, but the only way Canelo will be able to continue his reign as the biggest draw in the sport is to give fans the fights. what do you want to watch. . The trilogy fight between Canelo and Triple G felt like an event that DAZN was trying to force on the public. Right now, a matchup against David Benavidez is the fight that is in high demand. On paper, it’s a 50/50 fight, and it’s also a fight that boxing fans would actually pay to see.
Dan Rafael is a credible boxing journalist, but Eddie Hearn disagrees with his report of pay-per-view numbers, as Hearn responded on social media by posting the Pinocchio emoji. The reported numbers for Canelo-GGG 3 may be true, and are most likely false, but if the numbers are accurate, that means the reportedly highly anticipated trilogy fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin made the subscription-based platform of DAZN losing millions of dollars.
