As a second fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao potentially gets shelved, World Boxing News looks at the Pay-Per-View on the United States scene since their disappointing but lucrative first bout.
Mayweather and Pacquiao traded blows on May 2nd of 2015. It remains the most purchased PPV of all time on 4.6 million buys on US soil.
Fighting a rematch had still been projected to make at least 2 million. A number which would have been enough for Mayweather and Pacquiao to outshine every single paid platform fight since then.
The only exception would be Mayweather’s clash with Conor McGregor. The cross-codes battle has been taken out of the equation since ‘The Notorious’ hasn’t boxed since then.
Below are the top fifteen offerings since ‘MayPac 1’. Canelo is the obvious leader – by some stretch – in the shrinking market today.
No fighter has been able to make it over the half a million mark – besides the Mexican – since Mayweather eventually fought Pacquiao.
The fact is, without Canelo over recent years, Pay-Per-View would certainly have struggled to survive. PPV now faces a new threat against the streaming services of ESPN and DAZN.
ESPN are still players in the PPV game, as are Showtime and FOX, but without Canelo the format needs a breakout star to take over.
Now that Canelo has moved to DAZN in a nine-figure move, it will be hard for PPV to survive moving forward until this happens.
TOP PPV’s SINCE MAY 2015:
1/ Canelo v Gennady Golovkin I (HBO – September 16, 2017) 1.3m
2/ Canelo v Gennady Golovkin II (HBO – September 15, 2018) 1.1m
3/ Canelo v Julio César Chávez Jr. (HBO – May 6, 2017) 1m
4/ Canelo v Miguel Cotto (HBO – November 21, 2015) 900k
5/ Canelo v Amir Khan (HBO – May 7, 2016) 600k
6/ Floyd Mayweather v Andre Berto (Showtime – September 12, 2015) – Manny Pacquiao v Timothy Bradley III (HBO – April 9, 2016) – Manny Pacquiao v Adrien Broner (Showtime – January 19, 2019) 400k
9/ Errol Spence v Mikey Garcia (Fox – March 16, 2019) 360k
10/ Deontay Wilder v Tyson Fury (Showtime – December 1, 2018) 325k
11/ Canelo Álvarez v Liam Smith (HBO – September 17, 2016) – Manny Pacquiao v Jessie Vargas (Top Rank – November 5, 2016) 300k
13/ Gennady Golovkin v Daniel Jacobs (HBO – March 18, 2017) 170k
14/ Andre Ward v Sergey Kovalev (HBO – November 19, 2016) 165k
15/ Gennady Golovkin v David Lemieux (HBO – October 17, 2015) 150k
Did not make the list:
Andre Ward v Sergey Kovalev II (HBO – June 17, 2017) 130k
Terence Crawford v Viktor Postol (HBO – July 23, 2016) 55k
*Not including Floyd Mayweather v Conor McGregor
