Top Rank Goes Without HBO Help For Two-City PPV Boxing Twinbill
Promoter Arum Looks To Go It Alone With Distribution, Marketing On Six PPV Cards In 2009
by R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 2/9/2009 2:00:00 AM
Top Rank later this month will offer a unique pay-per-view boxing event featuring middleweight Kelly Pavlik and former welterweight champion Miguel Cotto — with each fight originating from different cities.
The event is the first of six potential PPV boxing shows that the Las Vegas-based company will distribute in 2009 without the marketing and distribution punch of HBO, according to Top Rank president Bob Arum.
The promotion's Feb. 21 PPV fight card will first originate from New York City's Madison Square Garden, where Miguel Cotto will face Michael Jennings for the vacant World Boxing Organization welterweight title.
Once that fight is over, the cameras will shift to Youngstown, Ohio, where hometown fighter Pavlik will defend his World Boxing Council middleweight title against Marco Antonio Rubio.
While the logistics of airing two fights from separate venues is tricky, Arum said it adds to the richness and value of the event.
“Doing the event from Youngstown and New York means that you're going to get a better than usual buy-rate out of both the East Coast and Midwest, and if it proves successful we may very well go back to it for future fights.”
Regarding the future, Arum says Top Rank will distribute some six PPV boxing events in-house in 2009. Typically Top Rank and other boxing promoters sell their events to HBO PPV to market and distribute to operators, satellite companies and telcos.
But Arum believes that Top Rank has the knowhow and expertise to perform such back-end duties on its own for mid-range PPV boxing events. Top Rank last year distributed several small events targeted to Hispanics.
“We have enough experience in the PPV business to distribute events ourselves,” he said. “We've done that over the years and we're getting better at it. We're bringing to PPV the fights that the fans want.”
Arum however, said potential marquee matchups like the May 2 Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight will most likely go to pay-per-view distribution outlets like HBO.
“For those events, I can see a reason to get the muscle of the premium networks behind it because there are other aspects that we frankly can't bring, like the ability to offer [HBO's pre-fight miniseries] 24/7,” he said.
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