DAZN Returns to Pay-Per-View for Canelo-Bivol


LAS VEGAS — At his final press conference Thursday, Saul Álvarez, known as Canelo, looked over to Dmitry Bivol, who was posing for a routine pre-fight photo.

At Saturday’s match at T-Mobile Arena, undisputed world champion Álvarez with 168 pounds will jump into the 175 pound weight class to challenge Bivol. The match excited avid boxing fans wondering if the skill and strength of 5-foot-8 Álvarez could translate into a higher weight class versus 6-foot Bivol. And Mexico has a built-in audience, with Álvarez, a native of Guadalajara, with a fight card making the headlines over the weekend. Cinco de Mayo.

The event will be transferred to DAZN, the service that recently signed Álvarez to a two-game deal. Only, DAZN subscribers will need to pay an additional $60 for Saturday’s card. Non-subscribers will be charged $80 for the fight, which comes with a one-month subscription.

DAZN is selling Saturday’s fight pass as pay-per-view, in a major strategic shift for a company that positions itself as a sports-centric version of Netflix, where subscribers pay a monthly fee to access the company’s entire library of content. When DAZN started its boxing operation in 2018, then-CEO James Rushton called it a pay-per-view model. expensive and inefficient.

The pay-per-view axis shows DAZN critics and competitors that the financial reality of high-end boxing is hitting the streaming service like an Álvarez exaggeration.

“Calling for an end to pay-per-view is a good marketing angle, but the reality is very different,” said Stephen Espinoza, president of Showtime Sports. “They just didn’t have the volume to have a consistent subscriber base.”

But Joe Markowski, DAZN’s vice president, described the pay-per-view movement as a natural response to the emerging market.

“It’s not something we miscalculated,” Markowski said. “This is about DAZN stepping into a new phase of its growth in the US. We have to make decisions like this from time to time if we want to keep fighting fights like this to fight fans.”

At its launch, DAZN entered the boxing market with two major transactions. First, it signed an eight-year, $1 billion contract with Matchroom Sports to provide quality fights that would justify consumers’ decision to subscribe. Then, Álvarez’s promoter at the time announced a $365 million deal with Golden Boy, which would give the streaming service 11 matches, assuring the presence of boxing’s biggest individual attraction on the DAZN platform.

DAZN had hoped the deal would result in a third game. Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin, had also partnered with the streaming service. The first two Álvarez-Golovkin matches totaled 2.4 million pay-per-view purchases; that’s a huge number in a sport where 300,000 is considered an achievement.

But since those blockbuster contracts, Álvarez’s relationship with the Golden Boy has fizzled out in a string of lawsuits. As a no-promotion agentÁlvarez played a number of matches under Matchroom and DAZN. 73,126 spectators to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Last November, Álvarez switched to Showtime and knocked out Caleb Plant to earn the undisputed super middleweight title and collect a reported $40 million payout. Matchroom president Eddie Hearn said these big guarantees make Álvarez’s return to pay-per-view inevitable, whatever the platform.

“It’s impossible to do Canelo Álvarez fights without bleeding out millions of dollars as part of a tiny subscription cost,” Hearn said. “Time is ticking. Things change. The market has changed. If you want to fight Canelo, this is how you should do it.”

Boxing does not have a team sports analogue for the pay-per-view model. The NFL isn’t putting the Super Bowl behind a paywall, and Netflix isn’t charging extra for the new “Ozark” season. However, subscriptions, sponsors, and royalty fees do not generate enough revenue to support the eight-figure guarantees Álvarez orders.

Espinoza suggests thinking of watch-and-pay as a crowdfunding program funded by fight fans.

Álvarez, 31, reportedly purchased 800,000 pay-per-views for his November game where he ripped off Plant, expects a more complex challenge this Saturday. In his first fight in the light heavyweight division, beat Sergey Kovalev by knockout In November 2019, Álvarez, who is 5 feet-8, needed several laps to adapt to the 6-foot-tall Kovalev’s size. Bivol shares Kovalev’s stature, but with a better tactical boxer and a long, well-timed punch that could break Álvarez.

“He’s a light heavyweight and one of the best in the division. He’s a great fighter,” Álvarez said in a Zoom interview. “It opens up the possibility of me being the undisputed champion at 175.”

Undefeated in 19 professional matches, Bivol enters Saturday’s game with bulletproof confidence.

“I believe in me,” Bivol said at a press conference. “I’ve had a long journey so far and now I have to do my job.”

Boxing enthusiasts may find the pairing of styles intriguing, but selling the match to a wider audience still depends on Álvarez’s star power. His $15 million guarantee is a small fraction of his down payment for the Facility match, but it also hints that Álvarez expects an unexpected drop when he gets his share of the pay-per-view revenue.

After Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano drew 1.5 million viewers for their main event on DAZN a week ago, Markowski expects strong sales for Álvarez and Bivol.

“We have targets to hit,” Markowski said. “We’ll follow up on Saturday and beyond.”

The emerging market has changed the definition of pay-per-view success. In 2015, the long-awaited showdown of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao attracted 4.6 million purchases; Prior to that, every fighter routinely purchased over 1 million pay-per-views. But Mayweather and Pacquiao were generations of stars with mainstream fame. Espinoza said that for most other headlines, 100,000 purchases are respectable, and 300,000 is impressive.

Espinoza and Markowski say pay-per-view is best used as an occasional addition to programming so that broadcasters don’t tire or humiliate customers by paying a premium for lackluster events.

“Once we get the filet mignon prices, as long as we deliver the filet mignon content, I think it’s okay,” Espinoza said. “The problem is when you charge fillet mignon prices and deliver ground beef.”



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