STEVE’S SOAPBOX THE ULTIMATE QUESTION By Steve Kim
programming for HBO Sports from 1989 to 2000. “And then it became a little more sporadic, with the thought that a monthly series really wouldn’t work because you’re just going to the well too much. “Asking people to pay for the same product that they were otherwise getting from you without paying is sort of foolhardy. It’s bad marshaling.” Keep this in mind: In that era, HBO was the gold standard for the sport with a robust budget. Being on the network meant you had made it as a fighter, and being on one of its bigger pay-per-view shows usually meant it was a superfight. The kind that had crossover appeal. The reality was that not every fight – no matter how good the participants – was meant to be put behind a paywall. Case in point: At the end of 1991, TVKO aired the showdown between two future Hall of Famers – James Toney and Mike McCallum – from the Convention Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for Toney’s IBF middleweight title. They engaged in a classic bout that ended up as a draw. For as good as that contest was, it failed to move the needle in terms of buys. By the time they rematched in the summer of 1992, it was broadcast on regular HBO. DiBella explained: “When you were getting into the niche stuff and it turned out to be a great fight and did a rematch, we wanted the eyeballs of HBO, the mothership. We didn’t want people to have to pay for it.” What some people don’t understand about the utilization of pay-per-view is that it isn’t just about the big fights where the boxers’ purses go far beyond the license fee a network is willing to put up. It’s also used to create revenue for fights that were oftentimes rejected by the network or simply did not fit into its yearly budget. There was a time when promoters would actually produce independent pay-per-view cards on their own. Top Rank had their own “Latin Fury” and “Pinoy Power” series that kept their boxers active as they essentially
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I t was announced recently that DAZN would be offering an “Ultimate” – their word, not mine – subscription. It would be a package that would come at the tidy cost of $44.99 per month, or $449.99 annually, which would include a “minimum” – again, their words, not mine – of 12 pay-per-view events throughout the year. There’s been an abundance of outrage on social media over this new option. Much of it centers around the fact that when it first started in 2018, DAZN claimed that for the price of your subscription, you would be getting all of their boxing content. At that time, it included fights involving the likes of Anthony Joshua, Gennadiy Golovkin and, most notably, Canelo Alvarez (who could be considered the last true pay- per-view franchise in the game). You actually got more for less. But in recent years, not only has the price of the monthly and yearly subscription
Holyfield vs. Foreman was the inaugural TVKO pay-per-view event in April 1991.
risen, pay-per-view is now a regular facet of DAZN’s lineup. Now it seems that they will have at least one pay-per-view event per month. It reminds me a bit of TVKO. You remember them, right? Long ago, they were the pay-per-view arm of HBO Sports when it was the dominant force televising boxing in the States. Later, TVKO was rebranded as HBO Pay-Per-View. TVKO was actually meant to be a monthly series of pay-per-view fights as it began operations in April of 1991 with the heavyweight title bout between Evander Holyfield and George Foreman. They found out quickly that this just wasn’t sustainable. “It was a monthly pay-per-view show for a while,” recalled Lou DiBella, who was the senior vice president of
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