Confessions of a Bad Fan

This is sacrilege in many circles. I am sure some of my fellow hardcore boxing fans will tell me that I am helping to kill boxing.

I've never watched a pay-per-view fight live. Ever.

It isn't just that I haven't shelled the money out personally to watch it by myself. I've also never chipped in with friends to buy a pay-per-view at five or ten or twenty dollars each either. Nor have I gone to a sports-bar and paid a cover to watch a live pay-per-view. I've ever even watched a pay-per-view fight someone else paid for, as a freeloader.

Today, after I had finished catching up with Ring Theory for the day, my wife called me from work and said that I could order the Pacquiao-Margarito PPV if I wanted.

I said no without even thinking about it and then I tried to talk myself into watching it because I was worried that I had hurt my wife's feelings. My wife, whether her feelings were hurt or not, agreed with me that it was probably better not to spend the money and to watch it a week later*.

I made some statements about why I didn't think this particular fight wouldn't be worth the PPV buy and I do stand by them**. They aren't the real reason I didn't want to shell out the dough. It isn't even because I am cheap, because I'm not. I would probably pay even more to see the fight live, were it an option, despite my objections to buying it on tv.

The real reason I didn't immediately make my wife happy by accepting her very thoughtful and caring gift was because I've never thought there was a PPV worth buying.

Writers complain about PPV undercards all the time. Writers also complain about how small ticket PPVs keep developing fighters off the radar of all but the most hardcore fans. I agree with those complaints, but I have a bigger complaint.

I don't care how good the fight is, how exciting the match-up, or how famous the A-side star may happen to be. I don't see the value for the dollar. I consider myself a hardcore fan. I've watched fights on ESPN, Fox Sports, Versus, and You-Tube I know many others haven't. I've watched fights on Spanish language broadcasts where I could not understand the commentators because I've been gone from California for too long to remember any Spanish. I'd certainly shell out more than the cost of a PPV for tickets to a live fight.

I think PPV broadcasts are one of the things most responsible for killing the sport in the US.

Think about it.

The World Series, the Superbowl, and the NBA Championship are much bigger events than any single boxing match. They are more lucrative and (to any but we hardcore boxing fans) they are more significant. The NHL pulls in a lot more money than boxing and hockey is not the sport foremost on every American's mind. I would be willing to bet that Major League Soccer and the WNBA pull in more money than boxing in the US as well; they certainly get more attention from the American sporting press.

I'm sure there are hardcore football fans who would shell out the money to watch the Superbowl on PPV. I'm sure there are enough to make a lot of money for the teams involved and their ownership; possibly*** more money than they get in their share of the Superbowl tv revenues under the existing system used by the NFL. So why isn't the Superbowl a closed-circuit event?

The NFL is neither as stupid, as greedy, nor as contemptuous of the people who buy their tickets as boxing promoters. If the NFL limited the viewership of the Superbowl to those hard-core fans willing to shell out $50-$100 for the privilege of watching it, the Superbowl might bring in a lot more money for two teams but the sport as a whole would lose a lot of money. This is happening in boxing. It's why so many professional fighters have day jobs.

In the early days of radio, major league baseball struggled with the idea of giving the product they sold away for free to people who had not purchased tickets. Owners and executives like Bill Veeck and Larry MacPhail realized that stadiums couldn't hold the number of people who could get access to the sport over the airwaves. Radio broadcasts were even better than free advertising: someone would pay them to advertise their product. Radio and television didn't stop fans from wanting to buy tickets. They created new fans who bought more tickets, whole families of fans who bought tickets in blocks instead of single men who bought one ticket here and one there.

There are reasons boxing isn't all over the radio or network tv now, sure. Some of them have nothing to do with PPV fights. Hell, most of them have nothing to do with PPV fights. A lot of the penny ante PPV cards killing the exposure of young prospects are because these cards are the only way to make some tv money. I won't deny that.

The big ticket PPV, however, is not a reaction to the marginalization of boxing in the media. The big ticket PPV came about at a time when lots of people would have watched the same fighters on HBO, on Showtime, on basic cable channels, or on network tv. Enough people would have watched those shows that there was a market for selling them instead. Boxing, which is a working class sport, became too expensive for the casual, working class fan.

How did anyone expect that to turn out?

I'm not trying to minimize extra weight classes, corrupt syndicates (either promotional syndicates or the alphabet gangs that claim to 'govern' the sport), or the lack of American talent. These all play a role in the marginalization of boxing too. There are lots of problems with boxing. There are lots of great things about boxing too, that's why I love it. It's why I watch it all I can, read about it all I can, and write about it for free whenever I'm able to watch it.

It's just that none of the great things about boxing justify the price of a PPV ticket to me. I can't be the only fan who feels that way. It's part of why 900,000 PPV buys (roughly equal to the devoted viewership of public access cable across the country) is a successful PPV event.

Who knew Bob Arum and Oscar de la Hoya were so stupid?




*This is actually a very funny joke: it was only as I wrote this blog entry that I realized it is an HBO PPV and I only have Showtime right now. So I won't be able to watch it next week anyway.

**I don't think it is going to be a particularly exciting fight. I think Pacquiao will prove to be good for the fight to be competitive or Margarito will prove too big and strong for the fight to be competitive. I don't mean to say the fight will not be entertaining. Just that I don't think it will be PPV-buy exciting.

***I only say 'possibly' because I know there is a lot of advertising money invested in the Superbowl, so both teams could theoretically make a lot of money with their share. I just can't bring myself to think it is still more money after it is split 32 ways and the league takes its cut off the top.