It has to be pretty damn tempting to pirate the fuck out of a shit show like this Saturday’s $90 Canelo-Berlanga card.
I’m no saint by any stretch of the imagination, and I try not to steal any unauthorized content if at all possible. But I’ve turned to the dark, soul-sucking Firestick hack to watch without paying. In my defense, though, I try to limit that to shows unavailable here in Mexico.
But for regular folk? People with no direct stake in the sport, other than being consumers? How can you blame them for flashing a big, stiff middle finger in the faces of those who are charging hefty fees for shows that frequently aren’t even really the shows they want to see?
I had started writing this PPV and Boxing column early last week, to get my Notes from the Boxing Underground done early because a camping trip would be taking up my entire weekend. But then, Saudi point man Turki Alalshikh talked about lowing the price of his Riyadh Season pay-per-views and the issue blew up.
Per Twitter rip-and-read content creator (duplicator) Michael Benson, Alalshikh plans “to lower boxing PPV prices to £20 in the UK/$20 worldwide and said the Artur Beterbiev vs Dmitry Bivol PPV will be £15 UK/$15 worldwide on Oct 12th.”
“People [watch] illegally because the price is high,” Alalshikh is quoted as saying. “This is in the future will not build boxing. If I give good fights with a good price I will increase the fanbase.”
A few days later, Benson announced that the US price for the September 21 Anthony Joshua-Daniel Dubois pay-per-view, per Turki, would be $19.99.
The announcement would befuddle people who correctly pointed out that Joshua’s fights as a headliner, with the exception of the Francis Ngannou bout, have normally aired in the US on “regular” DAZN and were not pay-per-view. So, really, Turki’s big budget plan to attract fandom begins with charging 20 bucks for something that used to be free, as part of the basic streaming package (as well as a pay-per-view fee for the upcoming October 12 Beterbiev-Bivol undercard, topped by Shakur Stevenson-Joe Cordina-- which has absolutely no business being a pay-per-view event).
But, okay. Fine. Let’s just assume that pay-per-view prices WILL be lowered and that Joshua-Dubois and Stevenson-Cordina are just early-stage, bad business outliers. Who doesn’t like cheaper stuff, right?
Will this help with the problem of piracy and, in turn, “increase the fan base?”
I hate to be the perpetual cynic, but probably not.
Piracy is a much more complex issue than, “they steal because it’s too expense.”
Back in the earlier days of the internet, piracy nearly broke the back of the music industry-- and it wasn’t entirely because CDs were too expensive.
File sharing services like Napster and Limewire appealed to people, not just because they were free, but because they allowed the consumer to pick and choose the music tracks they wanted to acquire without having to buy the whole album. They allowed people to explore new artists and genres without having to invest their consumer dollar into the experimentation. Also, they let music be downloaded in an easy, convenient way that allowed for flexibility in the manner it could be enjoyed.
When the music industry gave the consumer that same degree of flexibility and freedom, via streaming and legal downloading, at a reasonable price, piracy lost its appeal for many. At the very least, the industry was able to live with the existing level of theft.
The boxing business offers none of that consumer-friendly freedom and flexibility with their product. Boxing forces fans to be “all in” with their purchasing decisions, insisting they pay for a product they may not entirely want and, honestly, many not even be completely familiar with. They want fans to view all their shows as “must see right now” events, and pay accordingly.
The boxing pay-per-view model is based on the constant and incremental milking of the sport’s most loyal fans, completely to the exclusion of any effort to bring new fans into the mix.
It doesn’t matter whether the pay-per-view costs 90 dollars or 90 cents, people won’t pay for something they don’t know and don’t care about. So, ultimately, although price does matter to an extent, it’s not the major issue with boxing’s dwindling base.
The issue before the issue is that boxing has done a piss-poor job in exposing the general public to its athletes and, along with that, in creating matchups that appeal to those who aren’t already sold on the product.
That’s where Turki and his gobblers miss the point. The secret in building boxing is in the first stages of a fighter’s professional life, not at the tail end.
It’s funny that the one thing that WOULD grow boxing-- exposing potential fans to young fighters on the way up the ranks-- is something Turki has never cared to address (Probably because, in reality, he’s really only interested in, ultimately, looting the sport and taking big-ticket events back home to Saudi Arabia).
By the time fighters establish themselves at the championship or main event level, it's too late to really sell them to new fans. They’re demanding too much money at that point for promoters to do anything but pass the hat to existing fans for purse funding. Turki’s idea of “fixing” the sport by addressing the elite-level shows is a little like trying to grow baseball by only addressing how much exposure the World Series gets.
The restructuring of pay-per-view prices also brings up the question of who’s going to pay for the change.
With fighters not likely to cut their own pay rate and boxing companies charging LESS for their shows, how can organizers ever turn a profit? It’s naive wishful thinking to believe that cutting pay-per-view prices by three-quarters will result in four times more buys. Unless the Saudis plan on sponsoring shows, at a loss, for all eternity, there’s no way to cut prices AND make quality fights. Unless, of course, the long-term Turki plan is to create a monopoly by undercutting competition, cornering the market, and THEN forcing down fighter pay-- something that, more and more, looks like the Saudi strategy when it comes to boxing.
So, whether the idea of lowering pay-per-view prices is pure posturing or just naive business ideation (or maybe both), the reality is that it won’t make a whole lot of difference. Boxing’s problems go way beyond that of price point.
Anyone truly serious about boxing’s fight against piracy will have to go a lot deeper than price.
Unfortunately, nobody actually in the business can bother themselves to address the necessary issues. They just find it much easier to bleed the fans...and grovel for Saudi money to beef up their own earnings.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com