Promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport was shocked with what he felt was a lack of proper promotion for last Saturday's rematch between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev.
Hearn, who considers Ward to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, believes the promoters involved missed the boat with generating the proper pre-fight buzz for the event.
If his company was handling the event, Hearn feels confident that Ward-Kovalev II would do no less than 300,000 pay-per-view buys.
"If I was promoting that show I would have guaranteed no less than 300,000 buys. That might sound arrogant but deep down you know it that I could have smashed that pay-per-view. Pound-for-pound one of the best fights in world boxing with two guys that hate each other and you can’t do 170,000 pay-per-view buys? [Golden Boy Promotions] just did Canelo vs Chavez Jr. for over 1 million buys and it was a complete mismatch. Frustrating.”
He's one of the better promoters in the game right now so he certainly could've done a better job than what we saw no doubt. They basically did nothing to promote this. Either you were aware of it already because you're a boxing fan or you probably just never were aware it was going down at all.
Considering it was as poor a promotion as you'll ever see I agree with him. I'd love to see Eddie over here. He'd be dealing with a much weaker fanbase, but way more people to try and reach.
SaadOffTheDeck wrote:Considering it was as poor a promotion as you'll ever see I agree with him. I'd love to see Eddie over here. He'd be dealing with a much weaker fanbase, but way more people to try and reach.
Yeah. It's really false to pretend that anybody "promoted" this fight. It happened, Boxing fans were aware of it. There was virtually no promotion.
I wonder though if he paid for commercials and billboard signs, would he get a return on his investment? I think Ward couldn't draw flies to a pile of dog crap. The media and fans were mostly not interested even though it was a rematch of the two best light heavyweights. Fights like Canelo vs. Golovkin sell themselves. Nobody could have significantly improved the pay-per-view numbers of this rematch. It should not have been on pay-per-view. If they fight a third time, they should put it on regular HBO.
Hearn would've achieved better PPV numbers, but no way he would get 300K. 200K would be a huge achievement in a fight between a boring American and a Russian who failed to appeal to casual fans.
P.S. Please note that I didn't mention Ward being very dirty, as American casual fans would love to see an exciting dirty American smashing Russian's nuts along with his face.
Promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport was shocked with what he felt was a lack of proper promotion for last Saturday's rematch between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev.
Hearn, who considers Ward to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, believes the promoters involved missed the boat with generating the proper pre-fight buzz for the event.
If his company was handling the event, Hearn feels confident that Ward-Kovalev II would do no less than 300,000 pay-per-view buys.
"If I was promoting that show I would have guaranteed no less than 300,000 buys. That might sound arrogant but deep down you know it that I could have smashed that pay-per-view. Pound-for-pound one of the best fights in world boxing with two guys that hate each other and you can’t do 170,000 pay-per-view buys? [Golden Boy Promotions] just did Canelo vs Chavez Jr. for over 1 million buys and it was a complete mismatch. Frustrating.”
My thoughts are this... Ordinarily a fight like this would do a MILLION PPV's or more -- because both Kovalev and Ward are ATG boxers.
You rarely see a match-up as good as this... However, when they put in a crew of 4 American officials again -- 3 American judges and an American referee -- that meant the fight was going to Ward again unless he got knocked out -- which was very unlikely to happen... Everybody knew this fight was rigged from the outset and nobody wants to buy a fraudulent sporting event, which they felt it was going to be... Even Floyd Mayweather and Roy Jones said Kovalev won the 1st fight and everybody knew this was going to be a repeat -- just look at 2 of the judges' outrageously biased scorecards... Look how many fans swore off Boxing after the 1st fight... Many said, "I'll never buy another PPV because it's all rigged."
Only one judge was for Kovalev at the time of the stoppage. They made sure to have two in favor of Ward. If the fight went the distance, the decision would have went to Ward again.
Some of the talk from the promoters wasn't encouraging leading up.
You could tell easily.
Hearn would have to properly explore the landscape out here.
Look at what Eddie has expressed about fights in Vegas and the UK correct me if I'm wrong ....
We start our fights later in the UK and people are tanked up, afterwards they go home.
Vegas didn't have the buzz because it started earlier.
Where Eddie makes his mistake is that when a crowd pours out onto the Vegas strip after a big fight the night has begun, they don't go home.
Just a pointer.
I was shocked when I realized it was two weeks away. I'd heard practically nothing about it, and had assumed there were another few months of buildup coming.
I'm not sure that Hearn could do that bad of a job even if he tried to.
He's absolutely spot on here, two of the best in the world fighting for 3 belts, if he had the opportunity to promote it, everyone would have made boat loads of cash. He gets a lot of stick but can certainly sell a fight, he's a very smart chap.
Roc Nation, Main Events, Kovalev Productions, Ward Productions...lol...we aren't exactly talking about some world boxing powerhouses with a laundry list of experiences promoting a PPV event like this. Toss in the fact that HBO has like 30 cents left in the budget for Boxing marketing, i'm sure that the fight made way less than it should have.
But Ward is just not a popular boxer and I really don't think that anyone could have turned this into a 1 million buy event. Not even the best promoter in the world I think right now which is definitely Hearn IMO.
crusader wrote:I was shocked when I realized it was two weeks away. I'd heard practically nothing about it, and had assumed there were another few months of buildup coming.
I'm not sure that Hearn could do that bad of a job even if he tried to.
caldo2025 wrote:Roc Nation, Main Events, Kovalev Productions, Ward Productions...lol...we aren't exactly talking about some world boxing powerhouses with a laundry list of experiences promoting a PPV event like this. Toss in the fact that HBO has like 30 cents left in the budget for Boxing marketing, i'm sure that the fight made way less than it should have.
But Ward is just not a popular boxer and I really don't think that anyone could have turned this into a 1 million buy event. Not even the best promoter in the world I think right now which is definitely Hearn IMO.
caldo2025 wrote:Roc Nation, Main Events, Kovalev Productions, Ward Productions...lol...we aren't exactly talking about some world boxing powerhouses with a laundry list of experiences promoting a PPV event like this. Toss in the fact that HBO has like 30 cents left in the budget for Boxing marketing, i'm sure that the fight made way less than it should have.
But Ward is just not a popular boxer and I really don't think that anyone could have turned this into a 1 million buy event. Not even the best promoter in the world I think right now which is definitely Hearn IMO.
HBO doesn't spend money on ppv.
HBO absolutely spends money on promoting an HBO PPV event. Don't be silly.
