DAZN has officially announced that last Saturday’s third fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin “had a global audience of millions, with more than 1.06 million purchases generated worldwide, including PPV and DAZN subscriptions.”
To be extremely clear here, because sometimes people see a number and stop reading to go yell on social media:
That includes PPV and DAZN subscriptions around the world; this fight did not make 1.06 million PPV purchases in the United States. Dan Rafael reports that the fight made 550-575,000 buys in the US, for what it’s worth, but more on that in a bit. That said, DAZN says it’s the No. 2 “biggest boxing event” on the platform in the US since its launch here in 2018, and that it’s the No. 3 “biggest boxing event” globally on DAZN as of the date.
They also report a sharp increase in numbers at bars, restaurants, casinos, and movie theaters compared to Canelo’s May fight with Dmitry Bivol (who made 520,000 purchases in the US), and big numbers on social media and online. the app stores. which, you know, whatever, that’s something you say to sound current and modern.
The great argument above all
Canelo was paid a purse of $45 million and Golovkin was paid $20 million. That’s a lot of money spent on just the two wallets.
Promoter Eddie Hearn has gone back and forth with Rafael on social media about the whole thing. He cites the live gate as a help with the money, which he obviously would to any degree, and that the “vast majority” of the purchases (he suggests that means more than Rafael’s sources say) were from the United States. .
The fight was made available on pay-per-view at much lower prices in the UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, in particular, and was also on pay-per-view at a similar price in Canada. In other DAZN territories, it was subscription, and they didn’t have the fight in Mexico, Latin America, or Kazakhstan, but to be fair, you’d expect the number of purchases or subscriptions anywhere except the US to be significantly lower than in USA
DAZN hasn’t reported any overall revenue numbers from the fight or any exact breakdown of purchases vs. subscriptions, where this stuff is coming from in x number of numbers, etc. so it’s all “said, said, sources say, no , that’s wrong but I won’t elaborate” stuff without it.
This is all an argument that can be framed with comparisons to past numbers of Canelo vs GGG PPV, and some will, but while it may not be apples to oranges there, it’s not apples to apples either. Boxing’s market and distribution has changed dramatically since 2017-18, when Canelo vs. GGG fights generated 1.3 and 1.1 million purchases through HBO’s pay-per-view.
But nobody sells a million boxing pay-per-views in the United States anymore; the Tyson vs Jones showcase in late 2020 reportedly made 1.6 million, and the Mayweather vs Logan Paul showcase in mid-2021 reportedly made a million, yes, but those were novelty events that weren’t directly sold to the boxing audience, and the consumer expectations would also be different.
For all that matters, they weren’t actually boxing events, even if there were actual sanctioned fights on the card. The suggestion of boxing was the selling point of these events, but it wasn’t boxing as a normal boxing show. With Tyson vs. Jones, the Jake Paul vs. Nate Robinson fight likely boosted the numbers, but it’s rare for a previous fight to have any real impact on sales.
Let’s break down the reported numbers of major boxing pay-per-views after Canelo vs GGG 2 in 2018, including those events so you can clearly see how it has performed in recent years:
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We absolutely have to emphasize that these are reported purchases from various sources; almost all of them would be questioned by distributors or promoters, but they also don’t go through with that by releasing any “official” numbers anymore. They just say it’s wrong and wait for people to stop talking about it, which will happen every time in a week or so. I don’t want it to seem like I’m excluding Jake Paul’s other fights, but the talk about the other two was so out of control and it was hard to believe I didn’t want to put them on the list. The claim for Jake Paul’s PPV Triller fight in April 2021 with Ben Askren was 1.2 to 1.6 million buys, which would be another novel style event even though it was a sanctioned fight. Reports on Paul’s second fight with Tyron Woodley on SHO PPV in December 2021 were so inconsistent that I don’t even want to bother trying to figure it out; one report was 65,000, which seems absurdly low, and they told me Showtime was happy with whatever number it was, but they wouldn’t tell me they weren’t either. In any case, Jake Paul is a different market than boxing, but I included the first issue of Paul vs Woodley because it doesn’t seem like insane hype or media success.
In short, comparing what boxing PPV is now to what boxing PPV was even in 2017-18 without taking into account the massive changes in the industry makes no sense other than to say that PPV was bigger and more stronger than now, particularly for big event fights. No one is making a million purchases in the US for a straight up boxing match anymore. It hasn’t happened since HBO got out of the sport. Almost no fight has come close. No one is selling a pay-per-view in 2022 expecting to get a million buys in the US.
And yet, everyone seems happy enough with returns to keep doing pay-per-views, particularly in a case like Gervonta “Tank” Davis, whose fights are pay-per-view despite so many people loudly proclaiming that every one is a devastating failure. In that sense, we never really know the exact expectations of someone important, I mean anyone who makes money from the event, and obviously everything also varies depending on the event. Maybe 200,000 is really good for some things; maybe 500,000 is a disappointment for other things.
How many PPV purchases did Canelo vs. GGG 3 really make? We will never have a concrete answer. To tell the truth, we’ve never had concrete answers about any of this. Eventually it becomes a number that everyone accepts.
In this case, Rafael’s number will probably end up being the one that everyone accepts, unless DAZN publishes a different direct number of US PPV purchases or even the exact number of global PPV purchases, and they deliberately didn’t. with your press release.
